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?

When are you doing the furniture shifting Dave? I've got some to do on Saturday and have hired a 8'x5'x6' box trailer for the job. As the hire place isn't open on Sunday I can't take it back until first thing Monday morning and will have finished the job by Sunday lunchtime at the latest. So if it does piss down, I'll have a means of shifting stuff and keeping it dry on Sunday afternoon/evening.

You'll never know, you may have had a lucky escape or you may have lost out on a good 'un. There's always the chance that the seller has a change of heart and offers you it for 1500 as they turned down the offer from the other buyer. It does look to be a standard 4.6 HSE but with the Westminster badges. I very much doubt a Westminster for export would have been any different to a RHD Westminster, the various limited editions that went to the US were the same spec as those sold here except for having the steering wheel on the wrong side. The Hurricane wheels were fitted to quite a few different variants, there's a set on my '97 4.0SE.

There's a lot to said for sticking with the devil you know too.

Which is another advantage with running on LPG, the fumes that fill the car smell quite pleasant and don't make your eyes sting like petrol exhaust does.

If you can get the engine number the first part of it will tell you what size it is, A number starting 58D is a 4.0 litre, and a 4.6 will start with 60D.

That one will be the correct one if it has been changed. You also have a PM.

Or somebody simply put the Westminster badge on the back and the sill plates to make it look more upmarket. Microcat should decode the VIN and give you the original spec/colours, etc when it was built.

Been there, done it. Open the upper tailgate, open the lower tailgate then with a screwdriver, flick the latch over in the top of the lower tailgate that the upper would normally latch into. That will make it think that the tailgate is closed so the suspension will still work and it will also stop the dash from beeping at you and displaying Tailgate Open every time you start to move off.

Ahh, the curse of the ex-Pat, pensions paid in Sterling that are plummeting in value when converted to Euros. There's a glut of property for sale in France currently at knock down prices all being sold by Brits that are moving back for that reason (and fears over what will happen post Brexit). You'd need a similar system to that fitted to yours, whether you chose to go for another Zavoli (or any other AEB based system) or something different is up to you and your wallet. As for removing it, that would depend on how closely the guys that do the test look at it. If you could leave the main bits in place and disconnect a few vital parts then it wouldn't be too difficult but if it needed to appear that there was no LPG system fitted, then it would take almost as long to remove it as to fit it.

I had a look on leboncoin (https://www.leboncoin.fr/) the french equivalent to Autotrader/Gumtree and even a dead P38 is being advertised for that kind of money. Whether they are selling is a different matter but it seems that a doggy left hooker is worth a lot more over there than a decent one here. So 2k would still seem to be a decent price even for one that needs a bit of TLC.

super4 wrote:

And rough cost if I try and LPG it ?

I answered that while you were typing your last.

Just had a look at the two videos. The second one is definitely a Westminster in Bonatti grey but the one you are looking at almost certainly isn't. The Land Rover badge is missing from the tailgate and I suspect someone just stuck a Westminster one on because they could. There isn't a shot that shows the speaker on top of the dash, but the car in the second video doesn't have it either, so maybe the book is wrong and not all of them had it? It'll need a Martrim headlining kit too as well as a bit of TLC here and there.

Now if I was to be devious, I would suggest the way forward for you would be to buy it and get it back to the UK, have an LPG system fitted, register it here (something I'm doing all the time on imports from all over the world), then take it back to Spain and run it around on UK plates.......

super4 wrote:

And feasibility of converting to LPG - and cost if I do it myself ? (have to hide the LPG from Spain MOT each year !)

As it's a Thor (the later Bosch controlled engine), it would need to have a multipoint LPG system similar to that you have fitted on your existing one, you wouldn't get away with fitting a singlepoint. Consequently, removing it wouldn't be simple, there would be the injector blocks to remove, holes in the inlet manifold to blank off as well as the rest of the underbonnet stuff. Then there would be the rewiring of the petrol injectors so it would still run on petrol (you wouldn't simply be able to unbolt the ECU and leave the plugs dangling as they intercept the wiring to the petrol injectors).

Cost of doing it yourself would be in the region of £600-700 if using all new parts. France and Portugal are the same in as much as an LPG system must be fitted by an approved installer so it might be worth finding out what it would cost to have it done legitimately. One member on here moved to Portugal and had his done professionally for much the same reasons.

One other thing that suggests it isn't a Westminster but an HSE with a Westminster badge, is the fact that it has a 4.6 engine and all the Westminsters had either the 4.0 litre petrol or 2.5 diesel. They obviously found a Westminster badge easier to get hold of than a Vogue SE one......

I've no idea but it seems a bit of an odd attitude to me to own a car that you can take off road on the odd occasion and the rest of the time you have to drive around at 50 mph with earplugs in. Last week when I went over to France there was a group of 4 of them on the same ferry and I went past them on the Autoroute just outside Calais like they were standing still. Yet when I did the off road course at Land Rover the guys there where saying that a Range Rover on air will go places a Defender or Disco can only ever dream about but still cruise at 80 mph in perfect comfort.

Someone has fitted a cheap aftermarket exhaust. Some cars had only tailpipe but most had two, but it doesn't make a lot of difference.