To start with you are preaching to the converted as we all own one, despite their foibles. They get looked down upon by the Land Rover One Life, Live it, crew as they aren't macho enough. The fact that a P38 on EAS will piss all over a Defender off road is something some of them know and are jealous of, others just don't think they can be any good off road as they are simply too civilised. The early ones did have problems and that got them the bad reputation as well as the EAS and electronics that were simply alien compared the agricultural engineering Land Rover independents were used to. You have to understand how something works to diagnose a problem with it and they simply didn't understand how it worked. It was this sort of thing that fooled my mate in France when he first got his. Multiple faults with the interior lights and EAS that didn't work all caused by an iffy microswitch in one door latch. Who would look at a door latch to fix a suspension problem? Once you understand how things work, it all falls into place.

But, as I have proved, look after one and it will look after you. A 3,200 mile round trip to Latvia and back at New Year, two runs to Belgium and back recently and a 2,300 mile trip around France last month, 450 miles of that towing a grossly overloaded trailer which I estimate weighed something approaching 5 tonnes. That in a 20 year old P38 with 359,000 miles on the clock that uses no oil or coolant and just keeps on going.

I've had the pleasure(?) of driving a lot of the classic cars that people lust after and in all honesty, none of them really did anything for me. They are nice to look at but they don't drive like a modern car and the same goes for the RR Classic. I owned one for 3 years, a 93 LSE so one of the later ones and while it was OK, it drove like a truck compared with the P38.

I agree, the Classic now looks dated (although the final ones with the Brooklands bumpers still look good), the L322 looks OK from the front but from the back it looks way too tall and skinny (probably why they've gone for the sloping back on the L405) but the P38 just looks right from all angles. Not only that, despite it's reputation for unreliability, I reckon it is the most reliable, it doesn't suffer some of the problems the later ones have with everything being linked by canbus so a failure of one thing screws up everything else. The L322 suffers from EAS leaks just like the P38, biggest difference is that the whole front strut has to be replaced (at over £300 a side) rather than just an air spring at a 6th of the price. It also suffers from a sticky solenoid inside the steering column that releases the steering lock. If it sticks and doesn't release, it won't even allow you to turn the key to start the engine. It doesn't give any warning either and I've seen people describe it as a minor inconvenience. If you are just going to nip to the shops it might be but if you've just stopped for fuel at the French/Italian border and you can't even start the engine, it's a bit more than a minor inconvenience.

Admittedly I'd like the 300 bhp of the BMW 4.4 litre motor in the earlier L322 (wouldn't even consider a post 2005 with the Ford engine) but I couldn't put up with the nagging feeling in the back of my mind every time I turned the key or the looks of it. Even after owning it for almost 8 years now, I still sometimes find myself looking out of the window at my P38 sitting on the driveway, it just looks so right. The only one that looks like a modern successor to the P38 is the current Sport, the L494, the proportions look right and it doesn't look as bloated as the current Range Rover, the L405.

If it's a solenoid contact problem, you will still hear the solenoid click, just the starter doesn't turn. If it does nothing at all it's likely to be brushes as the solenoid engages in series with the starter so it is turning slowly and slots into the ring gear easily. Brushes can be changed but, as Clive says, it's messy.

I think the black plug, grey plug was just to make identifying what you had easier. If someone wanted a new sensor but wasn't able to supply a VIN number, it would be easier just to ask what colour plugs it has.

It is but I'd still suspect the O ring on the heater outlet rather than a core plug considering the age of your car. Unless you've been regularly driving it through sea water or it's been run for years with plain water in the cooling system I wouldn't expect core plugs to have rusted through this soon (unless LR ran short towards the end of the production run and bought some Britpart ones......).

Not sure they are, they are a strange square shaped thing. They may use econoseal pins and sockets but not the housings. I'd be inclined to change the connectors for supaseal or similar if the originals are getting a bit crusty. One of mine may well be the same, I get a logged lambda heater fault on one, despite having changed the sensor, but as it isn't used 99.5% of the time, I've not done anything about it.

The other thing you can try if you don't mind taking the cluster out again, is to turn the bulbs slightly. They twist in (as you must know having changed the bulbs) but the ends of the tracks can get tarnished. So if you twist them in then back them off a touch so the contacts are bearing on a clean area of the track, that might do the trick. Otherwise you could be looking at a break in the track feeding them. I've got a spare scrap cluster, I'll have a look at it and see if I can see where the track could have broken.

They are on LRCat, Allbrit.de and microcat on page G02035, item 2, although all of them say for GEMS but the blocks are the same. You can get a set from various manufacturers from LRDirect (https://www.lrdirect.com/602152-Core-Plug-V8-Block/?keep_https=yes). There's 4 on each side of the block about half way up and you should be able to see them from underneath without taking anything off.

Also, if you look in RAVE at Overhaul Manuals (rather than workshop manuals), Engines, V8, Description and Operation, page 2, it shows a pretty grotty picture of the engine components. Core plugs are numbered 4.

Edit to say that you found it while I was looking it up....... Although that picture only shows 3 there's actually 4 on each side, one adjacent to each cylinder.

Are the rest of the panel lights coming on? You haven't turned the brightness down to nothing have you?

Yes, the shorter one attached to hose 14. but equally it could be the return as that is steel too. They are here, under Water Rail in the engine section rather than the cooling system for some unknown reason. There's also an O ring that would be where I would start.

Unless it's a core plug on that side of the block, I'd be looking at the heater inlet pipe. That's about all there is on that side that can leak. The pipe/hose layout on a GEMS is a bit different but I had to replace the steel section on mine as it was leaking.

Some of you will have met him at the summer camp, others will know him from his knowledgable posts on here and on the dark side. I PM'd those that knew him a few weeks ago as he had emailed me to say that he had been diagnosed with Leukaemia, was in hospital on chemotherapy but expected to be up and about in around 10 weeks. I emailed him a few days ago asking how things were going and received the following email a few minutes ago:

Hello Richard

I'm sorry but Mark died today - he contracted a horrid fungal chest infection and spent 12 days sedated in intensive care but his lungs deteriorated over night and they had to take him off the ventilator today. PLease can you let all his landrover friend and P38ers know

He was a huge charcter and will be very much missed.

Vici

RIP mate, you'll be missed.

Mine gives a bit of a hard change going down when the idle is above normal (like when cold or when I had a sticky throttle butterfly) but so smooth if the revs are at idle that you have to look at the rev counter to see if it has actually changed down. If it was on something older with a kickdown cable I'd say it was that being out of adjustment but as it's electronic it may need driving to learn the shift points again.

Does seem a bit steep. I meant to ask my daughter's boyfriend as he's in insurance but it all went quiet. With club entry we would have got our own parking area and as we don't have a club as such, then it would have been a bit odd.

Looking at this https://www.thebillingoffroadexperience.co.uk/world-record-attempt/ it appears it's £8 for a day and another fiver to enter the world record attempt. So who's going?

At least it's an easy job to do. Not quite the easiest though. Received an email from my mate in France who had discovered that the passenger side carpet was soaking wet (UK car), thought it might be an AC drain so thought he would ask me before tearing the dash apart. My reply was:
Put suspension on high and leave a door open (engine off). Crawl underneath and if you look up the side of the gearbox about where the cable connects, you'll see a conical rubber thing hanging out of the underside of the car. Squeeze that and you'll get water, mud and dead leaves all down your arm. You are spot on, it is the AC drain and they clog up.
Half an hour later I received this:
Yep, a thing a bit like a black rubber sea anemone.
Squeezed it and was rewarded with a T-shirt sleeve full of water with black scummy bits in.
I wish all P38 problems were as easy to fix!!

He can't say I didn't warn him, he just didn't expect there to be quite that much water in the drain tubes......

A hose is a hose so you would think they should be OK. I got one Britpart one that was too small and no amount of persuasion or lube would make it fit and I've heard that sometimes the ones with Tee's in them leak at the joins (or the plastic Tee's crack). Otherwise I can't see them being a problem.

So did we get club entry or have we got to book in ourselves?

Who is still up for it anyway as it might be worth meeting up somewhere outside and arriving in style.....

Blend motors, yup
Headlining, yup,
Suspension, yup
Heated seats, hmm, maybe we leave that one to Marty. I did mine but I'd need more than a weekend......

The later the better for me. I don't have anything needed on mine but I'll give others a hand with whatever.

But if you do choose to use nuts and bolts, make sure you use washers and nyloc nuts or you'll be pulling the door panel off again in a few days to stop it from rattling.