I've been busy too. Ordered on Monday afternoon, delivered yesterday (but had something else on last night or I'd have fitted it then) and fitted tonight. Absolutely beautifully made and a perfect fit too. After putting the coolant I drained out back in, I had to put about another 3 litres in to top it up and after taking it for a run, it'll still need topping up once it's cooled down.

Checked it with the Nano and running at between 86 and 89 degrees even after some welly in Sport mode compared with 91-93 with the old one in there so seems to do what it says it does. For £159 with free delivery, it isn't worth bothering with a standard one, especially if you do any heavy towing like I do.

dazer2000 wrote:

Correct, and strange mine does the bouncing locks bit in the heat as well, fine since July I can get the dog out the boot again now !

So there was your hint. It was warning you of impending doom during the summer, locking you out was just a matter of when not if.......

The biggest worry with bouncing locks is what happens if they decide to bounce and stayed locked when the car is running with the keys in the ignition and you not in the car? Then it is going to do it's self test on the cooling system and let you know how long it can sit at idle before boiling up.

and even if it was tested and found to be fine, how much longer is it going to last? Until I changed the switches in my drivers latch, I would get the dancing locks trick but only in hot weather so during the winter it didn't do it. Something else you are never going to find just by sticking a meter on the leads and checking the switches.

The only difference is the early ones have a socket on the latch itself, whereas the later ones have a flying lead with the socket on it. You can fit a later one on an early car but make sure you tie wrap the excess cable out of harms way but you'd have difficulty fitting an early one as the cable won't be long enough. Your best bet is to wait a couple of weeks until Marty is back home and get one of his refurbed ones with new switches rather than risking using one from a breaker that may be no better than what you already have.

Yes, on mine. It was coming out of the dipstick tube hole and running down the side of the block. The little bracket on the dipstick tube that is screwed to the edge of the rocker cover was a little too low on the tube so it wasn't pushed hard into the hole in the block allowing oil to come out from there. A dollop of RTV on the tube stopped it.

dazer2000 wrote:

Now, is there anyway that I can de activate the keycode EKA thing for future ? or is that wishfull thinking !

You can but don't. You can go into the BeCM settings with the Nanocom and change EKA Enabled to EKA Disabled. In theory that means that all you need to do if it is immobilised is lock and unlock it again. However, this assumes that all of the microswitches in the drivers door latch are working properly. If, as I discovered on my Ascot (see https://rangerovers.pub/topic/688-help-now-i-m-really-in-the-sh-t), the key switch microswitch has failed for whatever reason, then you can't unlock it. Or you can unlock it mechanically but not electrically so it doesn't turn the immobiliser off. To add to it, if the keyswitch isn't working everything will appear to be normal while it is locking and unlocking on the fob, but after a flat or disconnected battery, the fob will have lost sync.

You shouldn't still have Keycode Lockout displayed after 40 minutes and while it is, you can't do anything. It should change to engine Immobilised, press remote or enter EKA after 10 minutes on an early car or 30 minutes on a later one.

Can't tell you which one has which colour plug but the cut off is up to VIN WA410481 and from XA410482. WA is a 98 model year and XA is 99 model year so if Flum has a grey plug on a 2000, it follows that the earlier one will be the black plug.

Like I said, keycode lockout only comes up when the battery is first connected and it will go out after 30 minutes on a later car to be replaced with the request for the EKA. While Keycode lockout is displayed it won't do anything, it won't accept the EKA, it won't let you connect with a Nanocom (or any other diagnostic), you just have to be patient.

No idea why it is flattening the battery if the BeCM is going to sleep unless you have another fault that is waking it up regularly or the battery is just not well. The battery on the Ascot went flat after standing for 10 days so I checked the current draw and once everything was sleeping it was drawing around 18mA. I swapped the Halfrauds battery that was on it for the Bosch one that was on the SE and it hasn't gone flat since. So unless you have a known decent battery, I'd be inclined to change it.

Nanocom prices do vary as Colin is based in Cyprus so they are priced in Euros. I bought mine pre-Brexit vote so the exchange rate was much better and it was a couple of quid over £300. Now we are down to damn near 1:1, that's made them pricey.

Orangebean wrote:

Only thing I've disabled/ snipped is Superlocking motors as I work around the doors.

Oh ye of little faith. My Superlocking is still enabled and I use it virtually every time I lock the car. Although we did discover at last years Summer Camp that it isn't working on the drivers door.

You say it won't accept the EKA, are you sure you're entering it correctly?

Marty, you're not the only one, I've only had to use the EKA about 3 times in 7 years and I've only got one key too (which everyone says is asking for trouble).

KeyCode Lockout will come up if it was locked when the battery went flat and has now been charged/changed. Depending on the year, you have to wait 10 or 30 minutes before it changes to Engine Immobilised, press remote of enter EKA code. If the battery has gone flat while it was locked, then you'll need to enter the EKA as the fob will have lost sync.

Thanks for the update, that would explain why in the past I'd seen a BeCM with a build date of 2026 or something equally ridiculous. That was obviously before I updated the Nanocom firmware.

BBS-GUY wrote:

Noting that if Key Fob syncronisation has been lost and the BeCM is in the alarmed state, having a failed Micro switch in the door lock prevents both re syncing the Key Fob and taking the BeCM out of its alarmed state.

Don't I know it! Fortunately I've got a pretty good understanding of how it all works and was able to sort it. Even without the info that OB posted, I would have got there eventually. Unlike a friend who bought a P38 with a faulty door ajar switch. That caused the central locking to not work, the dash to constantly tell him that the door was open, the air suspension to not work (resulting in the previous owner spending a fortune on replacement compressor and valve block) but no interior lights on as the previous owner had removed all the bulbs. He was gobsmacked when I told him everything was down to one little microswitch and a refurbed latch from Marty cured all the problems.

Don't they do the registration for you for £7k? Over 10 years old so wouldn't need an IVA test, only an MoT and a lot of testers wouldn't be too fussed about a speedo in kms so it would be dead easy to register one.

Clive603 wrote:

Still having problems coming to terms with 63 not being the new 23.

I hope not, I'm only a year behind you and despite thinking rigor mortis has set in when I wake some mornings after a day or two of doing things people tell me I'm too old to be doing, I still carry on as I always have done.

My daughter had a Jap import Toyota MR2 Roadster until someone ran into the back of it and wrote it off. Speedo in kms so that had to be changed when imported and a few other odd bits of spec. I notice from the ETM in RAVE that the radio is different but a Jap radio tunes a different part of the band so chances are that will have had to be changed too. I'm not so sure they are worth the premium in all honesty. Low mileage but having lived somewhere hot means that things like air springs will have perished with age rather than mileage so you could find just as much needs doing as a car that has lived here all it's life with twice the mileage.

Looks a bit odd to me. The seats and door armrests appear to be a non-standard colour, they aren't light stone or dog turd brown. It almost looks like it was originally light stone and someone has dyed them, even the trims on the ends of the seat armrests don't match. The wood doesn't look like it matches either. It may just be the photos but the wood on the doors looks darker than that above the glovebox and different again to the wood around the window switchpack, even the ashtray cover looks to be a different wood to that around it.

Yes, I suspect that the fact that both axles are driven on our cars is the reason why they are plated to tow a greater weight than the car. As far as trailers go, it's the MAM, or Gross Vehicle Weight as it used to be called, that is relevant. So even a little box trailer that may weight about 100 kgs when empty, will have a MAM of up to 750 kgs so doesn't need to be braked (and can be towed by these youngsters). It also means that every trailer must now go through an IVA test so it can be plated and certified to show it's MAM. Technically, gone are the days when you could just weld together a few bits of angle iron, stick a pair of wheels and a tow hitch on it and use it (even though lots of people still do).

There was a big fuss a few years ago within the motorhome fraternity who are in the habit of towing a small car behind their mobile 3 bed detached. Even though quite a few smaller cars weigh less than 750 kgs unladen, it's that MAM that is important and with all other than the Smart car, their maximum loaded design weight is over 750 kgs. The law states that a trailer with a MAM of over 750 kgs must have brakes on all wheels so a simple A frame isn't good enough, they have to have a mechanism that applies the brakes on the car being towed. That also means that a braked two wheel dolly that lifts two of the towed cars wheels off the ground still isn't good enough as the other two wheels aren't braked.

The rules are completely different for recovery as opposed to transport, where a dolly or spectacle lift are good enough. The emphasis being on getting the dead or damaged car off the road as quickly as possible. So when you see one of these transporters loaded with scrap cars off to the crusher with an extra one on a spec lift on the back, that is actually illegal as the car on the spec lift is being transported rather than recovered.

I thought Mer was just an alternative to using wax. Lot less elbow grease required and it doesn't make white streaks on the black bits either.

Proves how often I polish cars though.......

BrianH wrote:

In either case 750kg is a heavy trailer,

No it isn't, a P38 doesn't even know it's there! I regularly tow around 2.5 tonnes and my car will cruise at 75 mph (on the continent where they don't have this stupid reduced speed limit if you are towing) with that on the back, it just takes a little longer to get there. Heaviest I've towed was a boat on a trailer with a combined weight of around 4.5 tonnes. Other than it being over the maximum weight for the car it was made worse by the trailer not having any brakes. I had to remember to only apply the brakes when pointing in a straight line.......

Ah yes, forgot about the restrictions on younger drivers. I passed my test long before 1997 (about 20 years before) so I've got BE and C1+E on my licence so am OK for a vehicle up to 7.5 tonnes with a 750 kg trailer or a lesser vehicle with a trailer up to the maximum plated towing weight of the vehicle. So with the P38 I can tow a braked trailer up to 3500 kg. The one I've hired is a twin axle braked box with a MAM of 1700 kgs so while I can drive it, someone with a newer licence can't.

As an observation, the P38 (and the Disco too I think) are one of the few vehicles certified to tow a trailer that weighs more than the car.

Depending on how Saturday goes, I may still need to unload the trailer on Sunday morning but me, the car and the trailer will be available on Sunday afternoon if needed. Probably better to use my car anyway, I'm on half price fuel remember.......

I've obviously missed a couple of steps. After mine had been resprayed I left it for a couple of weeks, went over it with G3 on a power polisher and then Mer (by hand). It looked so good, it's only ever been washed since then. Are you saying it wants wax on top of the Mer?