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.

Have you made sure the turn on signal to the aerial amplifiers is connected? If it isn't you've got two aerials feeding into RF attenuators so naff all signal arriving at the radio.

The USB DAB adapters are cheapo software defined radios so not brilliant at the best of times as there is no tuned front end (as they can be made to work from medium wave up to a couple of Ghz with the right software). Very different to an actual DAB radio that has tuned inputs and will only work on DAB frequencies.

Difference between AEB (Leonardo and Millennium) and Tartarini connections

blueplasticsoulman wrote:

As i say, i still suffer from a bit dodgy reception here and there so i tend to just stick the internet on and use the Radioplayer app. Works flawless then.

DAB reception can be iffy if you are out in the sticks but the problem I've got is that DAB hasn't been adopted in much of Europe so my Kenwood DAB radio don't do a lot. However, a 3G/4G tablet allows me to use internet radio and feed that into the line in on the Kenwood. My biggest gripe with internet radio is the drop outs. It'll drop out, then come back but a few seconds before it dropped out until after a couple of hours it's about 5 minutes behind the times. Even worse when, as I did a few days ago, you are moving from one country to another as you're changing networks too so I was losing it for about 5 minutes every time I crossed a border and it had to roam to a different network and then connect again.

Martyuk wrote:

but I would like to try and start dispelling the myth of unreliability, EAS is crap and whatever other stereotypes people want to throw out there.

My thoughts entirely. All cars have their faults but it seems that the P38 has got a bad rap for a couple of fairly minor, easily fixed, problems. With the number of us running LPG we could probably start to dispel a few myths there too.

We wouldn't need another website, we've already got a pub, all we'd need would be somewhere to post any local shows we might be attending and see if anyone else fancies coming along. A pub outing if you like. I live 3 miles from the East of England showground where the LRO show is held every year. Hundreds, if not thousands of Defenders and Discoverys but virtually nothing for the P38 owner. I found a display for the Range Rover Register there a couple of years ago but why would I want to pay £32.50 a year for a magazine and members discounts from places I never use?

All I'm suggesting is we attend a few shows, both ordinary classic car shows and dedicated Land Rover ones, to show that not only do some of us love our P38s but with a little attention they can be reliable too. Between us we've got a wide range from the super shiny ones of Orangebean, BPSM and Robbo (to show that somebody loves them) while I've got the workhorse that started life thrashing up and down the M6 towing dead vehicles off the road and now spends it's life thrashing around Europe more often that not with a couple of tonnes hitched up to the back (to show that they can be reliable). Then we've got Rutland Rover who takes his to off road trials. When I did an off road course at Land Rover a few years ago they reckoned that a P38 with EAS can go to places a Defender can't. So between us I think we can show that they don't actually deserve their reputation.

Huh? How did that happen? Must have something to do with the alcohol.....

Not a premature congratulation, I'm over an hour late as we are 2 hours ahead of UK time here. Here's wishing you all a good one

Not a premature congratulation, I'm over an hour late as we are 2 hours ahead of UK time here. Here's wishing you all a good one

I've just finished reading Ben Fogle's book, Land Rover, The story of the car that conquered the world. It was bought for me by my daughter as a Christmas pressie and was bunged in my bag on Wednesday when we set off. Admittedly, it is about the history of the Series/Defender and written from the perspective of someone who is an owner rather than a historian but other models get a few mentions. The P38 gets one mention where it is referred to as the unreliable, unloved Land Rover that was dropped as soon as possible.

From that point of view, I definitely think we should try to attend as many shows as possible to prove that they really aren't unloved and as unreliable as people think. I'm at Dina's parent's house in Latvia watching mine slowly disappear under a nice layer of snow. We didn't do it in one hit this time but had an overnight stop in Warsaw but even so, it's done 1,520 miles and the trip computer shows an average speed of 64 mpg. It hasn't missed a beat, used no coolant and the oil on the dipstick has dropped by maybe 1mm below the full mark. Pulling into the hotel car park in Warsaw, found the covered VIP parking area and what did I see? A P38, that's what......

On Warsaw plates so local, presumably a V8 from the presence of front fogs, no badge on the back but black leather interior so either an SE or HSE and likely to be a pre 99 from the 16" wheels, amber indicators and lack of factory sat nav. But sitting next to a Bentley and a Porsche is where it really belongs. I doubt the owners of any of these were resident in an ibis budget hotel so suspect that for a fee locals can park their cars in the security of the hotel car park

At one point on the journey I looked at the odo and decided I was getting close to another dash photo opportunity but next time I looked it was showing 345, 722.4 so I'd missed the chance of a picture of it showing 345,678.9, Unloved and unreliable my arse. Dina told me I'll just have to wait until 456,789.0......

If the starter is losing drive then it has to be a problem with either the starter or the ring gear. It's a pre-engaged starter so should stay engaged all the time you keep the key turned not lose drive like the old bendix type.

I think it's more a case of parallel will work on any car, irrespective of how the heater plumbing is arranged but series will only work on a limited number of cars that have a full flow heater system..For an installer doing a number of different cars it's going to be safer to stick with parallel on everything then he knows it's going to work.

All I can say is that with mine having the flow going via the vaporiser before the heater, Nanocom reports my heater temperature as around 65 degrees with a coolant temperature of just under 90, quite hot enough for a decent heater output. We normally use the analogy of water flowing through pipes when trying to explain electricity but to turn it on its head, it's just the same as resistors in parallel, whichever has the lowest resistance will flow the most current......