Pulling fuse 27 (or relay RL2) will take power off the ABS ECU. Looking at the diagram it will still allow the pump to operate so you should still have brakes, but best to check it before driving any distance. Where is near you? Clacton or home?

Difficult to diagnose without seeing it but I'll try and give a few pointers. The lack of connection to a Stag LPG controller may well be that he is trying to use the wrong cable. The AEB cable will fit but the data pins are reversed so have to be swapped over to use an AEB cable on a Stag controller. Even thought it sounds like the trims are out, that would just cause rough running, not an intermittent misfire. I suspect the clonk is an engine or gearbox mount that is allowing everything to move when it misses. Alternatively, it could be that your ABS/TC is intermittently applying a brake. That would cause it to lurch a bit, try tapping the ABS sensors further in with a small hammer or mallet, you should be able to get to them with the wheels on. There's not a lot that goes wrong with the transfer box, the viscous coupling either works or it doesn't and the only other fault is a stretched chain which gives a passable impersonation of a machine gun under the floor under hard acceleration.

Knowing that most modern auto boxes are sealed for life I was quite surprised when someone (I think it was Ferryman) pointed out that the service schedule shows that a fluid and filter change should be done every 24,000 miles. I suspect it is something that has been neglected on just about every P38 on the road, I know I've only done mine once in 135,000 and even then I only changed the fluid and not the filter. However, in my defence that was because I dropped the pan and found the filter held in place with Torx screws and, after spending nearly 2 hours searching for my Torx bit set, gave up and put the pan back on. Only to find the Torx bit set when putting the rest of my tools away...... The filter is still in it's box on a shelf in the garage.

The intermittent adjust slidery thingy often needs a good squirt of switch cleaner as it is usually left in the same position for years and fills up with crud. Never had a problem with the actual switch but again, switch cleaner may well be all that's needed. There's 3 individual switches in it and it uses one or a combination of them to tell the BeCM what you want the wipers to do. The switches all switch a ground signal so switch 1 made puts a ground on the white/green wire which should give a flick wipe, switch 2 puts a ground on the red/light green wire and enables intermittent wipe, while a ground from switch 3 on the blue/light green wire enables fast wipe. What doesn't make sense is that for normal wipe you need to have switch 2 and 3 making contact and putting a ground out on two of the wires. As they both work individually then logic says they should work together. It sounds like neither are making when the stalk is in the mid position but you'll only know that once you take it apart.
Simple enough to take it out as it unplugs once the surround is off. I'll admit I've not had one apart (only the intermittent slider) so can't tell you if it's a nail bomb waiting to be detonated but I'd only take it apart on a large white cloth so you stand a chance of finding all the bits if that happens. Relays 1 and 8 are also involved in the front wipers so it might be worth checking those. They should both be 5 pin (green) relays.

The rear wipe is controlled by another switch in the stalk (putting a ground on the Orange/Black wire) and should give two wipes when you switch it on, followed by a single wipe every few seconds. If it's hit and miss, it may be that there is another switch only making contact sometimes.

Unfortunately, as it's German designed ZF box, the Yanks would consider it a black art too. They understand the simple GM boxes and Land Rover tried a GM box in the early diesel L322, you're very lucky if it isn't worn out after 80,000 miles, a barely run in mileage on a ZF.

You know why they like autos in the States don't you? The concept of two feet and three pedals just doesn't compute........

Yeah but a Bentley, an 135i or a Golf R32 can't tow a 3.5 tonne trailer. The ability to cruise up some of the hills on the way down to the south of France while towing a trailer without having to sit in the crawler lane with the trucks would be nice. Admittedly, mine's much better since the engine went to see Ray as the compression was down to 100-110 psi per pot before then so it was a bit on the gutless side,

It's not where you put the spare (assuming the boot on a RRS is big enough to bung the spare in there), it's the way the space for the spare is on the tilt. An LPG tank ideally needs to be sat flat.

Anyway Mark, how flat is the block face? I've never heard of a block warping, I think there's enough stiffening webs cast into it to keep it flat. I've always just given it a light going over with some very fine wet and dry on a sanding block. Even less critical with the top hats as they do the work, not the block face.

Orangebean wrote:

If I paid £7.3k for that engine, I'd at least expect the old gasket goo to be scraped off the manifold faces and the cr@p to be removed from the exhaust ports :)
Perils of throwing bits together for a photo shoot I think .....

As it's the same photo for all of the long engines, I think you're right. But the differences are going to be inside so they may as well use a stock photo.

Alternately, buy a RRS :)

But they're ugly........ (and have the spare dangling at a funny angle underneath making fitting an LPG tank difficult)

Nah, go for one of these......

http://www.v8developments.co.uk/products/engines/long_engines/5.4_litre/dominator/index.shtml

Engine ECU sends engine speed, torque and TPS directly to the gearbox ECU and that in turn sends a timing retard signal back to the engine ECU to give smooth gearchanges. Then there are the other bits that need to know the engine speed (or that it is even running), a signal from the HEVAC tells the engine when the AC compressor clutch is engaged so the revs stay steady too, even the heated windscreen will only switch on if the engine is running. There's so much interaction between the different bits that fitting the engine is the easy bit, making everything else work is where you run into problems. That's why I say fitting a Motronic controlled L322 engine into a car that had a Motronic controlled 4.6 engine could be possible. Fitting a modern engine, such as a Lexus unit, into something very basic, like a Capri, is dead easy, you just need to use the engine ECU that came with the Lexus engine engine to deal with ignition and fuel injection. The car isn't fussed what is making it move as long as something is.

However, as OB says, as long as the original engine is looked after, then there's no need to think about changing it. I suspect most of the projects that have been started have been because someone has blown up their engine and have something laying around gathering dust so they decide to try to fit that rather than spend the money repairing the one that will work.

Overfinch used to put a Chevy motor into the Classic but that was simple enough as the immobiliser was the simple cut various circuits job and could easily be bypassed (if you knew what you were doing). You can't easily bypass the immobiliser on a P38 as it's an integral part of the BeCM. The BeCM receives the code from the receiver and sends a rolling code to the engine ECU to turn it on. Hence mention of them getting out of sync so the code received by the ECU isn't what it is expecting to see so stays shut down. If you have immobiliser problems, you fix them.....

Overfinch also did the same with the P38 but no idea how they did it although I suspect they used a Chevy engine but retained the GEMS (as they never did it on a Thor) ECU and just used that to control the engine. There's a guy in the States who has fitted a Chevy LSx engine but he's had to use both the Chevy and GEMS ECUs and tied them together to make it all work. Took him over 2 years to get it all working though. I've thought that in theory it would be possible to fit the BMW 4.4 motor from an L322 into a Thor as they both use the Bosch Motronic ECU so I would have thought you could still use the original one on the later engine. But why would you want to? The BMW gives 295 bhp compared with 225 for a 4.6 Thor. With a bit of fairly mild tuning you could get pretty damn close to that anyway.

Dunno about you but I always find there's something actually satisfying about pulling an engine apart and seeing the cause of whatever caused you to pull it apart in the first place. There's nothing worse than pulling it apart and finding everything looks perfect.

You won't, cars built after 1999 don't have one. The fluid level has to be checked using the level plug but with the engine running. I must admit that auto boxes are a bit of a black art as far as I'm concerned so can't offer any advice on the reverse problem. If nobody else pops up, you could try giving Ashcrofts a call and seeing what they can tell you (http://www.ashcroft-transmissions.co.uk/index.php).

Sounds decidedly tappetty to me. That sounds very similar to the one my mate in France has and his was down to two rockers with the loose inserts. His is slap in the middle of the affected VIN numbers too. Mine is a deeper sound, almost a clunk rather than a tapping noise. Never thought about the purge valve though, I thought that just opened for a while as it felt necessary rather than clacking open and closed.

Don't see why not as long as all 4 connections are link internally. The idea of the two Y pieces is to balance the pressures from the two sides of the reducer. Effectively it is two in one housing and if they were kept so one outlet fed one injector bank and the other fed the other, any difference in pressure would cause one or other bank to be out.

Sorry I mis-read that it was doing it before the oil change. Yours is a 98 so could be in the range that suffers from the loose steel insert in the rockers but that makes more of a tappety noise than a clack. Mine also has a clack when warm and that's always been there. It was there before the engine went to V8 Dev for the whole block to be refurbed and was still there afterwards. The only moving parts that weren't new was the rocker gear so I've put it down to something there. Mine is also intermittent and most noticeable at idle but at the last summer camp we checked and a number of them were all making the same noise to a greater or lesser degree.

It shouldn't be, not with top hats in there. Even if it is, it isn't important as the fire ring bears against the top of the liner.

(this is where he pulls the head to find the invoice from Turner was for a different car and there aren't any top hat liners in there.......)

You can also see where carbon is starting to build up on the pushrod. When I pulled mine apart it had been run for so long with the blow that there was a big lump of carbon on the pushrod. Mine had gone on the other bank so you can't see the pushrod in my pic but the bit of gasket had been blasted across to the opposite side.

I've got the same connectors on mine, I just wiggle them from side to side while pulling on them. Wiggling them causes the spring on one side to release and pulling causes the other side to let go.

At a rough guess, I'd go for number 5......

What oil did you put in?