super4 wrote:

but do you realise that the rest of us are going to have to keep the P38's on the road now and make them Classics otherwise all your knowledge will be wasted !!

I got asked how old my car was last week when going through security at Dover port. "20 years" was my reply, "and how long do you intend keeping it?", "at least another 20 years", so mine at the very least will be a classic. The knowledge I've picked up over the years will help me, even if I've got the only P38 left by then......

Check the inertia switch first. Power to the pump goes from the relay to the switch and then onto the pump. If you are dropping the tank, get yourself some 8mm ID fuel hose first, the steel fuel pipes often rust above the tank so you might as well replace them while it's dropped. I had to do those on the SE as the return had rusted through so it was pissing petrol out as soon as the engine was started. As said, dropping the tank isn't that difficult as long as you have a spare jack to lower it down, I didn't even need to disconnect the filler hose.

i recently replaced the front discs and pads on mine and for the first few miles the brakes felt worse that they had before I'd changed them but they soon bedded in. If you have air in the power circuit you don't get a spongy pedal like on a conventional system, you get a slight delay between hitting the pedal and the brakes coming on (as it has to compress the air bubble before anything happens). When I first got mine the brakes felt OK. They worked and stopped the car but, like you, I had nothing to compare them against. Then I flushed the system and bled it all through and the difference was very noticeable, much more bite and no delay. I had a bus change lanes in front of me a few months back, hit the pedal and fooled the ABS by locking all 4 wheels at 70 mph. If I hadn't been wearing a seatbelt I would have put myself through the windscreen!

If the viscous is seized it isn't a whistling, it sounds like you have a jet engine under the bonnet. You should notice it when you start the car after it has been standing, there's a roar as you rev it which goes away after a few seconds of running as the viscous frees off (unless it's bloody hot and you need it).

The reason why the idle revs went up is that the ECU stores a value, around 0.5-0.8V for the TPS at closed throttle. As you open the throtlle this value increases so the ECU causes the idle air valve to open to raise the revs so it acts like a progression jet in a carb and gives more controlled performance at very small throttle openings. By fitting a different TPS this would have raised the voltage to above what was stored so the ECU thought the throttle was open very slightly and raised the revs accordingly. It should adapt over a period but I've found that if the stored value was higher than the actual value it will adjust up but doesn't seem to adjust down if it's the other way round. Resetting the adaptives will set the stored value to the actual value but also resets other variables to base settings such as fuel trims, MAF air flow rate, fuel flow rate, etc which adjust to account for manufacturing tolerances and drift in component parts.

As you've got a Leo fitted then the LPG system and petrol system are virtually totally separate. I suspect you've disturbed something and broken a wire somewhere, either the common feed to the petrol injectors or something in the vicinity of the emulators.

This one came with a 10 year warranty, maybe because earlier ones broke......

What I couldn't understand is that if I take stuff to the council dump, there's an area for small electrical items and they would quite happily take it yet leaving it out with the recycling bin, which goes to exactly the same place, and they didn't?

Got as much of the dust off under the bonnet as I can but I can safely say that brake cleaner doesn't work. It turns it into mud then evaporates so it's even harder to get off! All I need to find is a ford that hasn't dried up.

Make your own blank..... You're an engineer ain't you?

Yes, I suppose the Evoque is just the next model up from this.....

No, the old one packed up so I put it out with the dustbin. The dustman didn't take it but somebody else did before I had chance to take it down the dump........

Having just bought a brand new Dyson, I suspect someone might not appreciate that idea......

Cleaned the fan and shroud off and wiped some of the worst off the alternator and other places. Hopefully it will just get blown off over a period

Under the right hand rear panel, the one at the side of the boot. If it's been unplugged, it won't plug itself back in though so no worries there.

I quite like Mer, gives a nice shiny finish to paintwork without the elbow grease needed with wax. It's a wipe it on, leave it for a couple of minutes and wipe it off job. I can do the whole car in about 15 minutes on the very rare occasions I do it. Not sure what's in it but it doesn't make the black bits go white like wax polish does. Good on fibreglass too and as one of my other cars has GRP bodywork, I originally got it for that.

I thought about using brake cleaner but figured that would wet it and make it even harder to get off. Air line might shift some of it (the engine stays pretty dry except when I spill oil down the rocker cover after missing the filler) and I was concerned that as well as drowning the electrics the pressure washer could end up blasting a dust and water (i.e. mud) mixture into the alternator which probably wouldn't do the bearings and brushes a lot of good. However, having given it some thought while sitting in a traffic jam today, all I'm going to do is wipe the fan blades off so they are clean and see how much gets blasted off by the airflow on my 800 mile run on Friday night/Saturday morning.

Edited to add that if I knew what APC was I could use it but these cleaning products are pretty alien to me. I've got T Cut, Turtle Wax, Mer and AutoGlym glass cleaner and that's about my lot as far as cleaning goes.

WD40, Water Dispersant formulation number 40. It was originally formulated as a waterproofing agent for tents and the like (in fact, if you buy a can of tent waterproofer, it smells exactly the same) but they found that it will also do other things, ish. It's the jack of all trades, master of none in an aerosol. Great if you want to use it to disperse water but other than that, use something formulated for the job you are trying to do. Plus Gas is my preferred option too but when I ran out I used Dave's favoured 50/50 mix of Acetone and ATF. Missus was not impressed that I'd nicked her nail varnish remover though.

Unless they charged you an arm and at least three legs, I doubt they fitted the later receiver (especially not in Switzerland with their prices), and if they had, then the remote locking would still work. I suspect all they did was unplug the receiver completely so it does nothing.

Opened my bonnet last night to find that it isn't only my tyres that are covered in Billing dust, so is everything under the bonnet! Can any of you detailing freaks tell me how to clean it off? I've got a pressure washer but am a bit concerned about spraying water around under the bonnet. Obviously I wouldn't spray on the ignition coils but what about everywhere else? What bits should I avoid?

You could always try putting a small container (aerosol can cap?) under the pipe. If it fills up it's coming out of the pipe, if it doesn't, you've got a crack in the tank.

Grounding the green/red wire should simulate operating the CDL switch in the latch and cause the doors to unlock.

If the earth is disconnected, or connected last, the doors will lock. Looks like you've had a real bodger in there, biggest cause of most problems on an older P38 (that'll be all of them then) people messing with things they don't understand.