God that's horrible. The ad says it's been used on a shoot, what as, the target?

and everyone reckons laying underneath the car with no axle stands and the suspension on high is dangerous. Seems to me that laying in it is far more dangerous.......

Couldn't you have got a free hand to the seat switches and just moved the seat a bit further back?

The theory is that if the followers are dished then the lobes on the cam will no longer be flat but curved so putting a new follower in will mean only the centre of the lobe will be in contact with it. Then it's a toss up whether it wears the new follower so it is dished the same as the one that came out or wears the end on the cam lobe to get it flat again. Thinking about it, there's a good argument for fitting Britpart followers, you'd never wear a camshaft out......

As Brian says, it's just to make it convenient so you have everything displayed on the one screen rather than having to look at the LPG screen on a computer and check the lambda readings on an OBD reader. Singlepoint systems sometimes use a separate lambda sensor but not always. They work best with a 0-1V lambda sensor but on things like the GEMS P38 with 5-0V sensors there is a setting in the controller to allow them to use those instead. Mine has a separate 0-1V sensor purely to drive the LPG system but the Ascot is using one of the 5-0V ones (as is Gordon's car). What I found is that at idle on LPG the sensor stops giving an output and stays at 5V all the time. This is ignored by the petrol system as it runs open loop at idle but the LPG system sees it as a lean mixture and tries to compensate for it all the time so you end up with a default actuator figure far higher than it should be resulting in it running rich all the time.

Your timings look perfect, petrol at 4.31mS and gas at 5.30mS works out to 1.23x, perfectly in the 1.2-1.5 range they need to be. So the map at idle is right, you need to see what it is like at different points on the rev range and different loads.

I'd say 1mm dish on the follower is too much really, OK, the hydraulics will take up a lot of slack but that much would be pushing it. Is it just the one? I've got a set that I took out of mine and fitted new ones but only 3 or 4 had any appreciable wear. I can bung a couple in the post if you like.

Almost certainly will be going again, probably sometime towards the end of the summer but no definite plans as yet. Then again, I never plan anything more than a few weeks in advance anyway......

I drive, Dina sleeps. When I feel like a break, I stop and she takes over. If she feels OK to take over, she drives while I sleep but if she doesn't we'll stop so I can sleep for an hour or so then carry on. I end up doing most of the driving but as we need to stop every couple of hours to fill up with LPG take that opportunity to get a coffee, food and have a break for a while.

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.