dhallworth wrote:

We took the ferry from Newcastle

That's cheating :) Dover-Calais, turn left, through Belgium, Holland, Germany and into Poland. Overnight stop in Warsaw (£18 for a room and breakfast for two in an ibis budget a short walk from the old town) then head north out of Poland into Lithuania and then continue on into Latvia. Our destination was Saulkrasti, a smallish seaside town about 30kms north of Riga which is where Dina's parent live. Coming back we did it in one hit but with stops whenever needed, leaving Saulkrasti about 6pm on Friday and arriving at Calais, 1,300 miles later, at 10pm on Saturday. Good job Dina enjoys a road trip as much as I do really.

Is it done yet?

That amount of steam looks pretty normal in cold, damp conditions when running on LPG. Sounds more like you've got a number of small leak points and as soon as the level gets down low enough, you lose flow through the heater. Start looking for the rest of the leaks.

Went for a run up to Tallinn on Tuesday just to have a look around and to tick Estonia off the countries visited list. Saw the signs for the ferry terminal and realised I'd said that next time we'll take the ferry to Helsinki and come back via Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Should make it interesting. Just outside the village where Dina's parent's live there's a campsite so there's accommodation there should you decide to come along (there's also a couple of very nice hotels too if you don't fancy camping). Set in the sand dunes amongst pine trees next to the beach, it looks to be a nice place (or would be a nice place in the summer, looks pretty bleak this time of year).

In answer to those that think a P38 is unreliable, we got back home about 5:30 this morning after a completely uneventful run.

Opened the bonnet twice in that time, once when I arrived in Latvia and again when I got home. No coolant loss, minimal drop in oil level and nothing else needed any attention. The trip meter is actually 153 miles short as I forgot to reset it until I was getting off the ferry in Calais on my way out. The new set of Vredestein Quatrac 5 tyres fitted before leaving seem pretty damn good. Didn't get the chance to try them in anger on snow but in the wet (of which there was plenty....), they gave a lot more feel to the steering than the Goodyears that were on it before.

Economy was pretty amazing too. I know the LPG sold in the UK is 100% Propane and in Europe it is usually a blend of Propane and Butane which, in theory (due to the stoichiometric ratio for Butane being lower) should mean you use less but I wouldn't have thought it would have made this much difference. Pumps are going to vary so a fill isn't always going to stop at exactly the same amount but by dividing mileage with fill quantity would give me a miles per litre figure. If this was then multiplied by 4.54 would give an mpg figure or by multiplying by 67 litres would give range on a full tank. Every fill was good, and there were quite a lot of them, but would you believe 228.2 miles on 59.29 litres? That's 3.85 miles per litre, or 17.5 mpg, and a theoretical range of 257 miles. That was cruising at anything between 65 and 80 mph (depending on traffic) through Germany, Holland and into Belgium. The gas pump I filled from in Germany had a label on it showing that in summer it gave 40/60 Propane/Butane and in winter 60/40 Propane/Butane but how much of an effect that would have I've no idea. No matter, it still worked out cheaper on fuel than it would have cost the two of us to fly there and back.

Just got to clean it now, it's absolutely filthy!

Afraid to say it does nothing for me. The colour is boring (with apologies to anyone that has one in that colour) made even worse by the bumpers and other trim being body coloured so it almost looks like it's been dipped in a big vat of paint and the interior with the dark coloured seats but Lightstone coloured trim just looks odd to me too, it wants to be one or the other, not looking like someone has changed the seats but nothing else.

and someone's drilled a hole in the roof to fit an aftermarket radio aerial......

I can't remember if the pictures of the connections are of the plug on the cable or the plug on the ECU. Easiest way to check if you have a Leo/Millennium is to identify the 12V pin and work the others out from there.

gordonjcp wrote:

Slight blowing between cylinders wouldn't cause a loss of low-speed torque, would it?

It would cause a lack of grunt right through the rev range but be more noticeable at lower revs. Much like running on 7 is noticeable at idle but once the revs are up it's just a slight lack of poke......

blueplasticsoulman wrote:

Went to Maplins. Got the bits. Built it to spec. Looks great. Does it work? Does it shite!!!!!

Can't even get static out of it. I've tried everything and i dunno where i've gone wrong.

You won't get static on dab, but you'll get a signal or nowt. Where have you put it? I'd say that it should work if you gaffer tape it to a garden cane and stick it vertically upwards above the roof of the car, otherwise all bets are off.

If you've got a 16mm, 8 point spark plug socket for the smaller type plugs, then it's a perfect fit on the head bolts.

The frequencies I gave are for the Morborne transmitter which is the main one for our area, so runs 66kW on each station. You've got Heart right, and I just remembered it from programming the radio in Dina's car. If the system can cope with rds it should return to the strongest signal for each station.

Get on with it then. Should have it done by about midnight.......

As a quick and dirty way I'd be inclined to pull the head off, check it for flatness and, assuming it is within spec, whack a new Elring gasket in there with a new set of stretch bolts. Make sure you clean the head and block faces properly. It'll get you back on the road in no more than a day (assuming it doesn't need to be skimmed). At worst it'll keep you going for a few thousand miles, or at least until the weather is more conducive to working on it. Hardest part is the manifold heatshield and bolts but you know that anyway.

This one here

The roads are a bit mucky out here too....

blueplasticsoulman wrote:

If indeed it does work, the perfect place for it will be up the side of the windscreen behind the plaggy trim.

Where it won't work...... Putting it next to grounded metal would be the same as not bothering to strip the screen off the inner. It needs to be in free space so would work reasonably well on a household system surrounded by nothing that is grounded but in a car might work better than a stick on the glass one (which are pretty pathetic at the best of times) but not by much. What that design is doing is creating an end fed quarter wave dipole. The unscreened end is one pole of the dipole, the stripped screen is the other end and the coil is creating a choke to create an end to the earthy end of the dipole. As anyone that uses radio will tell you, the only place for an aerial is out in the open.

Not sure if it is standard or something that plod added but I've got a grommet near where the rubber tube goes to feed power to the upper tailgate that allowed me to run the cable from my magnetic aerial into the car above the headlining.

RutlandRover wrote:

For the reverse camera I think I'm going to wire the power connections at the camera end to the number plate lights. It means I'll have to have my lights on for the camera to work and the camera will be powered up permanently but I think that will be easier than trying to run power and earth from the reverse lights in the lower tailgate, up a rear pillar, across the roof, through the rubber cable conduit in the upper tailgate and then down to the camera, I'll then connect the reverse trigger on the headunit to the BECM reverse wire as initially planned, this should then kick the headunit in to reverse mode as needed.

No need to pick up power from the reversing lights themselves, you can pick it up from a connector near the RH rear light cluster where the different coloured wires all change to white wires to go to the upper and lower tailgates. Feed to the LH reverse light is on a Light Green/Black wire and to the RH reverse light on a Green/Black.

Or, if you do it how you suggest, power the camera permanently from the ignition switched supply available from the connector behind the LH tail light cluster put there in case you want dual trailer sockets (White/Orange wire in a 4 way connector, with a ground on a Black wire). I've used that supply to put a couple of 12V power sockets in the boot.

You may find that the head unit switches to the reverse camera if it sees a video signal on it, in which case you will need to power it from the reversing lights if you don't want to have to manually select and deselect it.

For FM in our area, it's 90.1 for Radio 2, 92.3 for Radio 3, 94.5 for Radio 4, 99.7 for Radio 1, then there is another on 95.8 and one on 107.2 (I think, as I don't use FM these days).

The fob should still work you'll just need to be nearer the car for it to pick up the signal. However that also means any other stray signal will need to be that much nearer too.

With that amount of heat under the bonnet, the interior would very quickly ignite. I don't think there's an obvious difference between a pre-2005 BMW or later Jag engined L322. 2010 got the facelift but the most obvious change then was the front bumper and rear lights but lots of owners have updated earlier cars with those anyway.

Yes, single blue wire to the etched aerial on the rest window. Just unplug it.

The aerials themselves are on the rear side windows, the amps for them are either side underneath the trim panels. The additional little black box on the offside is the remote receiver.