Of all the different systems fitted to the P38, the DSP one is the worst when it comes to wanting to fit anything aftermarket. As most of the processing was done in the DSP amp, there's only a stereo output to the amp and a separate output for the sub. You'd need to bypass the amp so the left and right feeds to it are linked to the front speakers and run a separate two pairs for the rears. Ideally you'd need to add some crossovers too. Having looked at the work Marty has done and the grief it has caused him, I'm really glad I don't have a car new enough for it to be fitted with the DSP system.

Rough running when hot, and dying completely in some cases, is often a symptom of a failing crank position sensor. Usual way to test is to carry some cold water and give it a good soaking to cool it off when it starts playing up. If it then runs OK, that's the problem.

Mines locked up a couple of times but I found that a squirt of contact cleaner in the plug and OBD socket seems to sort that out. I knew about the ABS sensors showing as wrong and thought that had been sorted with the latest firmware release but I found another one recently. While sorting out the blend motors on the Ascot it was insisting that there was a pot fault on the RH blend motor, yet when I looked at the live data, I could see the feedback value changing as I changed the temperature but the LH one didn't. Temperature changed on the RH side too and didn't on the left so I knew it was the left one that was duff. Due to a bit of a faux pas on my part, I suspected there might be a problem with the HEVAC so swapped it with the one in the SE to test. The one in the Ascot is the early version, the one in the SE has obviously been changed at some point as it is the latest version. That showed the fault correctly as being on the LH blend motor and not the right.

However, despite it's odd little foibles, which you soon get used to, I still think it is by far and away the best tool on the market.

I've got a slight water leak in the Ascot but I know exactly where from. The plastic bits of the sunroof mechanism had broken on both sides so needed looking at. Got replacement bits from a company called Bross Auto Parts based in Turkey who sell the bits on eBay. They appear to be 3D printed parts and needed a little fettling to get them to slide properly. Got the LH side done and working fine but took the RH runner off and bought it into the house to do it last night. Left the sunroof glass just sitting in the hole but as there's no runner on one side, it was sitting a bit lopsided. It rained last night.......

Not bad since 30 December 2015, that's around 17.7 posts a day. Eat your heart out RRTH......

I would think Colin would honour the discount if you were to buy a GEMS unit and the Thor licence in one hit (or the other way round).

Can't say fairer than that even though a lot of us on here have already got one. As Colin is based in Cyprus (don't blame you, the climate is somewhat better than here) the prices are in Euros and I bought mine when the Pound/Euro rate was much stronger meaning it was a few pence over £300. Still not cheap but it has probably paid for itself on my own car compared with paying my local Indy to plug his Testbook in. Add to that the convenience of having it with me and being able to plug in to a number of other cars it's worth every penny. I went down to my mates in France a couple of weekends ago and going through the list of things I needed to bring with me he asked if I could bring the Nano. Not that there was anything wrong with his car, he just wanted me to plug it in and check for any irregularities.

He's somewhere the other side of the river in the bit that's still trying for independence. Kernow I believe they refer to it as.

The regenerative braking means that instead of a mechanical brake they use the movement to turn a generator to produce a tiny bit more electricity to put back into the battery, the drag caused by turning the generator acts as the brake instead. The latest thing that has been pointed out is that with the particulates in exhaust emissions being reduced more and more they have realised that there are particulates being produced by the friction of the tyres on the road and from brake pads. So the next step is likely to be tyres that never wear out (and therefore won't be capable of giving any grip) and electronic braking (but that needs more electricity so you'd reduce the range not only when driving but when stopping too).

No, rubbing the battery in your TV remote just warms it up a bit to squeeze the last millivolt out of it. Which makes me wonder what will happen to an electric car in the dead of winter if you let the battery go completely flat. We had some kit at work where the battery pack consisted of a pair of Lithium cells. In the pack was also the charging circuit but that had to be powered so was connected to one of the batteries. If the batteries were both drained and the kit not used for a while, it wasn't possible to charge the battery as there wasn't enough power in the one to power the charging circuitry. We would have to open the pack up and swap the internal batteries over and hope the other one hadn't been drained completely and had enough in it to power it. If that one was also completely flat, we'd sit them on a radiator for an hour or so to squeeze a tiny bit of power out of them so that the charging circuit would work. For the same reason the battery in your laptop doesn't have just a positive and negative terminal, it has two or three other connections that go to the charging circuitry. So what will happen in the cold with a completely discharged Lithium battery in an electric car?

Incidentally, Gordon's comment earlier about pollution rising when the emissions crap was fitted may hold more than a little truth. We all know how bad a modern diesel stinks but I've currently got a series 1 Discovery here with the old 200 TDi engine. So no cats or particulate filters. While the exhaust fumes from that still smell like diesel exhaust, they don't burn your eyes or have the Hydrogen Sulphide smell like the stench that comes from a VAG TDi for example.

So all you have to do now is meet up with OB somewhere and get the SRS light turned off.

Hmm, I wonder if that is the original or one that has been replaced at some time in it's life? There's two part numbers for the very early one, the one that was fitted originally (AMR3375) and one that superseded it (AMR6405), although this is different again to the one for the post 97 cars (AMR6476). I've always assumed the change in part number signified a redesign (thicker tracks maybe?) but it may be a sort of interim. Does everything work? Does it still have a visible part number and if it does, which one is it?

Because nothing is 100% efficient so you would always need more power to turn the alternator than it is capable of generating. You could, in theory, use an electric motor to turn a generator which would produce the power to turn the motor so you'd have a perpetual motion machine, something that would continue spinning all day long. But it won't because to generate the amount of power needed to turn the motor the generator would need more power than the motor can supply. You never get anything for nothing.

It is, looks like new. Morat will be livid, someone that does more cleaning than him.......

That wasn't until the 99 Thor ones that had the extra relay, my late 97 SE and 98 ex-plod don't have that either. They both have the same fusebox but the Ascot will be the earlier one. I'll have a look in the morning and see if there's anything obvious.

Part number? Dunno but there can't be that many differences or there'd need to be different wiring diagrams for the early and later ones. Never compared them to see though (and no, I'm not going to take them off the pre 97 and one of my post 97 cars to compare).

There was a recent article in the Institute of Engineering and Technology magazine that said that if the takeup of electric cars goes at even 50% of the rate some people are predicting, the UK power infrastructure will collapse by 2022. That isn't all that far away either, only 5 years time.

davew wrote:

OB's comments made me think of something too: When ("in the near future......") we are ALL driving Electric cars cars perhaps we can play the sound of a nice V6/V8 etc through the car's Sound System (sychronised to the speed/acceleration etc). A "hum" just does not do it for me....

I know someone who normally drives big V8's (or, in one case, a W12) and he bought a BMW i8. When I said that if I had a car that produced 350 bhp, I'd want the soundtrack to go with it and apparently BMW have thought of that. The stereo system can be programmed to give engine noises and you can even choose what you want it to sound like. But, as he pointed out, only the driver can hear it so you can't open the windows and floor it through a tunnel just to listen to, and give everyone else, the benefit of the noise it makes. After a couple of weeks he decided he didn't like it so has gone back to using his de-catted, mapped to 720 bhp, Audi RS7 with it's adaptive exhaust that opens up to straight through pipes when given some welly (and sounds absolutely glorious).

I actually agree with the view (even more so as it allows everyone to have a good chuckle about the impracticability of electric cars). If they are going to let her charge her car at work then surely everyone else should be entitled to a contribution to their commuting costs too? Everyone else is paying for their own petrol or diesel to get to and from work so why shouldn't she? No idea how much electric these things use on a charge but I'd think it's a reasonable amount. We had a problem some years back about tax in kind for us engineers who have a company vehicle which we keep at home. They had to re-arrange everyone's work area so where you live is part of your work area otherwise the taxman wanted us to pay tax on the travel between home and work area. They were classing it as home to office mileage so a benefit in kind.

Dragging this discussion back from the dead following a conversation at work yesterday. One of the women at our place has a Nissan Leaf but lives at what she has now found is the limit of the range for a two way trip. When she got the car she was assured that it would do the round trip on a full charge easily. Not a problem she thought as we have charging points for some of the specialist vehicles with auxiliary batteries to keep them topped up when not being used so she figured she could plug her car in there during the day. First time she did it someone queried it and that caused all sorts of discussions. Upshot is that she has been told that under no circumstances can she plug in to charge it during the day. The argument being that nobody else gets their fuel costs for commuting to work and back reimbursed so why should she? There could well be a tax implication too. She has now found that if it is raining so she needs to have wipers and headlights on, unless she drives at 50mph or less, she doesn't have enough battery power to get home. Despite being a dyed in the wool tree hugger, she's considering changing the car as once winter arrives she is likely to need lights on for both legs of her commute and isn't sure the car will actually make it.

By the way, under the new tax rules introduced in April, even small engined diesels will now have to pay £140 road tax rather than the £20 or £30 that they would have done previously.

I actually met him many years ago and he's a really nice bloke. Into his cars too.