Well damn me, I always thought the heads were the same for all versions right back to when they went from 14 bolt to 10 bolt. However, checking the part numbers it changed from the end of the WA series. So Thor heads have a different part number to GEMS heads and you've just found out the difference.
You're right, I thought there was one but just looked and there appears to be a gap. L322 from 2010-2013 but not for the earlier ones.
Probably, I usually use diesel.
The sex of a car can be a problem. I always referred to mine as a she but Dina has this habit of giving character to a car. When she first saw the Innocenti Mini I bought a few months ago in France she said it was a small boy. She said she could imagine it running around kicking a football and climbing trees. So I asked her what the ex-plod was and she said it's a big, strong dependable man and always refers to it as big white man. So what is it now?
OK, thrash the tits off it then......
Not sure about the Thor but on a GEMS there's a hose that comes off the front of the inlet manifold and then runs down to the thermostat. I had a mysterious coolant leak on my Classic which turned out to be that hose had a split in it. As the split was at the bottom it couldn't be seen but it dropped coolant onto the valley gasket which then ran down and dripped off the back. Spent ages checking everything at the back before I found where it was actually leaking from (and a lot harder on a Classic with a bloody great distributor in the way).
Marinade it, put it back together then thrash the goolies off it. That'll clear it out. Only pull it apart if it starts drinking oil.
He's darn sarf, it never gets that cold......
But only if the door isn't locked, if it was locked when the battery was disconnected then the lever doesn't do anything as the cam it bears on is moved by the locking mechanism. It's the one with the red clip on by the way, the one you have marked isn't a lever, it's the strange bit of metal that performs no useful function other than make getting it out of the door difficult and often gets cut off (I've got latch with duff microswitches sitting here waiting to be returned to Marty when he is back home so just had a look at that).
No, not normal. Usual cause of that is slop in the panhard rod bushes so the axle can move from side to side but as you've already replaced those it doesn't seem likely. In saying that, some brands of poly bushes have been found to wear out in a matter of weeks, so if you've fitted poly bushes there could still be movement where there shouldn't be.
Southbound M11 near Stansted at around 09:45 this morning, I was pleased to see that I'm not the only one that makes my P38 work for a living. A very tidy looking 4.6HSE towing a tri-axle trailer at a steady 70 mph. Is it anyone we know?
However, one of the most difficult cars to get into is the P38. Doing it without damaging anything is nigh on impossible.
Be wary of trying to use a second hand fusebox, there are at least 3 different ones depending on VIN and not interchangeable.
I'm surprised you didn't already have the bi-hex socket as even my 93 Classic had those same bolts on the rocker covers so I would have assumed you would have had one for your 95. I must admit, when I needed one I went into a local Toolstation and told the guy I was looking for a 12 point, 8mm socket, so he gave me a 13mm and said it should be close enough.
If they are the slightest bit hardened, it might be worth getting some 4mm gas hose from Tinley Tech and replacing the injector to manifold LPG hoses too while you are in there.
Mine has a tiny amount of play at centre (a couple of mm at the steering wheel) which I reduced to the present level with a tweak of the adjuster on the steering box. I could probably get it better but I've got used to it. Pulling to one side with the camber of the road is pretty normal too, let's face it, there's nearly two and a half tonnes of metal trying to fall down a slope so you need to hold the steering the opposite way to keep it straight. As Gordon says, it's a very old design and not like the rack and pinion steering used on more modern cars. You only need to worry if you start getting the shudders through the steering as that is a sign that something has some slop in it.
For a P38 all you need is the free RSW Solutions EASUnlock software and a suitable cable (around £15 on eBay or make one up yourself) but RSW don't list anything for the Disco so you are stuck with needing to use the LR dealer.
I've just finished my saga on the LPG system on the Etagas thread on the LPG forum if you fancy a chuckle.
If the lid is vibrating, check those washers are fitted correctly. The rubber bushings should stop any vibration getting as far as the box. His seemed to do the same when we first got it working, running for a while then stopping only to start up again shortly afterwards but seemed to run less and less the longer it was used.
I always have busmans holidays, even when I went to Latvia the first thing I had to do when I got there was fit a new set of discs and pads to Dina's father's car. I'd only get bored if I had nothing to play with and would end up taking my own car to bits for the hell of it.
I can hear the brake pump on mine but the EAS pump is virtually silent, there's no way I would be able to hear it with the engine running.
As well as shifting cars around Europe this weekend I took the opportunity to give my mate a hand in getting his EAS working. He's only just got the car and when he sent me a few pictures of it when he got it, I could easily spot why the EAS switch did nothing and the suspension didn't drop at speed despite the previous owner having spent a fortune on it. The biggest clue was in this picture
Errm, that's not original.....
As well, there were signs that somebody had been in there from the fact that the valve block appeared to be complete but there was a reason why the pump wouldn't run, it was disconnected
Although the pump looked OK, I suspect it had been replaced as the lid of the EAS box suggested that it had got a little bit warm at some time in the past
I pointed him in the right direction and he got a rebuild kit for the pump and a set of O rings to rebuild the valve block and did those. So, in theory, all I had to do when I got there was connect everything up and maybe clear the odd fault or two with the Nanocom or the RSW EASUnlock software (as the cable and an old laptop live in the car anyway). The dash was showing EAS Manual when he first started it up so that said the jumpers had been fitted in the EAS ECU plug.
Fairly simple you might think but in anticipation of any possible problems I removed the valve block and compressor from my SE and bunged them in the boot just in case. We started off by getting rid of the Schrader valves and putting the pipes back where they belonged in the valve block. We then turned our attention to the electrical side of the system. Fitted the delay relay which he'd found in the glovebox, removed about 3 feet of insulating tape from the plug for the EAS ECU, checked to see if it had any jumpers in there (which it hadn't) and plugged it back into the ECU. Then removed the EAS bypass harness fitted to the BeCM (the expensive alternative to a pair of jumpers at the EAS ECU plug), refitted relay 20 which had been removed and figured that it might work. Started the engine and nothing. No lights on the display, pump not running, zilch. Pulled the display and rocker switch out of the dash and found that had also been disconnected, so plugged that in. At least that now lit up but the pump still didn't run. Use the Nanocom to force it to run and it did. Checked and found that not only had the pump needed a new piston and sleeve, a replacement reed valve he'd had to make from an old feeler gauge fitting (as the original one was split) but it seemed the thermal switch was open circuit too. Fitted the pump from the boot of my car.
Now it ran, it sounded a bit noisy but it was generating air, so much air that after a couple of minutes there was a pop and the sound of air hissing out. The collet on the large pipe just beneath the exhaust silencer had obviously fallen out so the pipe had popped out. Pulled the collet from the valve block in the boot of my car. Left it running with doors open for about 10 minutes then closed the doors to see if it would lift. It all appeared to be doing the right things, no fault messages, bottom light on with the standard height light flashing. That's about all it did though, the suspension was still doing nothing. Seems that although the pump was running, it wasn't filling the tank for some reason. Maybe a problem inside the valve block, maybe he'd mucked something up when fitting the O ring kit, we didn't know, but it didn't work. So, pull it out and fit the one from my boot. So now it has my pump and valve block in it. Fired it up again, pump runs, left it for a while and slowly it started to lift up off it's knees. It bloody works! A squirt of the soapy water showed leaks from just about every one of the multiple connectors in the air lines but I keep some of those (along with a length of pipe and a set of Schrader valves) in my emergency get me home if something goes horribly wrong kit in the boot. Swapped the cheapo pipe connectors for decent quality ones and no more leaks, or at least none of any immediate concern, those that were left were at the valve block where a couple of the pipes went in and they were cured by trimming a couple of mm off the end of the pipe so the O rings sat at a different place and not in a groove in the pipe. It was all working although appeared to be sitting a bit high. Admittedly it wasn't on flat ground so we took it down the road to a nice new, flat car park to put it next to mine and measure the heights at each setting. Spot on, no tweaking of heights needed. The only thing we hadn't checked was if it lowered to motorway height at 50 mph but that would need a run down to the Autoroute, even 50 kph is pushing it on the mountain roads around where he lives.
The pump still seemed noisy though. It could be heard easily inside the car whereas on mine the only way I can tell if it is running is by opening the bonnet and putting my hand on the box lid. I've also heard other people say they can hear their pump running too. We had another look at it and compared it with mine. The pump sits on 3 rubber mountings with a washer above and below them. These washers are dished and they were on upside down. The bottom ones need to go with the concave side downwards and the top ones with the concave side upwards. With them like that the engine was fired up and to see if the pump was running I had to put my hand on it to feel the vibration, it was completely silent.
A pretty good half days work in all, even if we did end up having to use the valve block and compressor from my SE which I now have to replace. All that was left was to get it running properly on LPG but that is a whole different story.......
Having got home a couple of hours ago from a trip that started at 4pm yesterday and during which the outside temperature varied between 18 degrees and -1, my heater kept the car at the required 20 degrees all the time. The air temperature from the face vents was the same as that from the footwell vents. I could open a window and let the warm air out, the output from the heater would get hotter to get it back up to temperature but no matter what I did (it helps to have something to play with on a drive like that), I couldn't manage to get air at a different temperature from the face and footwell vents. The heater box may be simple but you must have something wrong.
I understood that the longer inlet tract on the Thor compared with the GEMS trumpets gave more bottom end grunt. The tuners are usually dealing with engines fitted into TVRs and the like so don't want more grunt, they want more top end so shorten the trumpets. If an extra 1cm does have an effect, it will be to increase bottom end power, just what you want in a P38.