A couple of observations that shouldn't be taken as criticism, merely observations. On the valley gasket I use RTV on the end rubbers but a thin smear of Hylomar on the intake and waterways. RTV is OK when you need to fill a big gap but doesn't work as well as Hylomar on machined surfaces. I can see the attraction of painting everything but isn't it all going to look at bit, errm, black? Might have looked better with a bit of contrast, some bits in black and others in sliver to match the shiny alloy bits? Although I can't say anything as everything under my bonnet is currently a dusty grey from when the bodywork was sanded down before painting. I could pressure wash it I suppose but maybe not......

Although he doesn't know one end of a soldering iron from the other, his son does and he's talking about doing the line in mod but connecting something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/KRC-86B-Bluetooth-4-0-Stereo-Audio-Receiver-Module-Mini-Sound-Board-DIY-TE634-/162275183045 in the hole where the cassette mech lives (after all, does anyone have any cassettes these days). That way he'll have an original looking stereo but with Bluetooth conectivity and no need for a cable to connect to a phone or tablet. Cheaper than a Grom too......

You have email.......

I need a PRC7618, which is the Clarion PU9836A, to go in the P38 my mate in France recently acquired. It's a '98 HSE with the amps in the doors so he needs the correct stereo to feed these. They can be recognised by looking on the back and it has two DIN style rectangular sockets, an 8 way and a 10 way. Ideally it needs to be a worker and with the security code if at all possible but not absolutely necessary. When he got the car it had a dead aftermarket head unit in it and he's trying to return it to standard. I know a few people have fitted tablets and I thought Marty might have one he's taken out but he hasn't and the only ones on eBay are listed as spares or repair (which usually means they are completely dead and no use to anyone).

I'm flying down next Friday (13th, yes I know, booking a flight for Friday the 13th may not be such a good idea) so am trying to get one before then so I can bung it in my hand luggage.

Maxis are the half dozen really big fuses.

Over on the other site they'll blame just about every type of radio transmitter known to man to cause the receiver to wake up but they use a different frequency to us civilised people in Europe. The fob operates on 433.9MHz but so do numerous other 'momentarily operated short range devices' to give them their correct title. That means wireless doorbells, weather station transmitters, wireless burglar alarms, oil tank level senders, video senders (the return for the remote),etc. All of these should only wake up when needed but unlike most things that stop working when they go faulty, most seem to go on permanent transmit when they go faulty. In saying that, if there is something that transmits every 10 minutes (like a very keen weather station transmitter), every time it transmits the alarm receiver wakes the BeCM up so it sits there drawing 3A for 2 minutes until it goes back to sleep.

I gave Rutland Rover a copy and he failed to get it running under Win 10 too. I suspect it isn't that it's Win 10 but that it's 64 rather than 32 bit as some of the more specialist stuff we use at work will run under Win7 32 bit but not Win7 64 bit.

When you switch the car off it goes out but not completely, it will still be glowing very dimly. It does need to be dark and you may need to let your eyes acclimatise before you can see it. If the BeCM is still awake, it'll be drawing about 3A, once it is sleeping, it should be down to about 20mA (0.02A). The reason why a source of RF will cause the battery to go flat is because the receiver is seeing a signal so keeps the BeCM awake waiting for the correct code (which it never gets) so you've got the 3A drain there all the time.

With everything switched off and the doors all closed (but bonnet open), set your meter on the 10A scale (usually means using different sockets on most cheaper meters). Connect one lead to the battery negative terminal and the other to the battery negative post. Then carefully lift the negative terminal off the post so the connection to the battery is still there but via the meter. The reading you get on the meter will be how much current is being drawn. If around 3A, it should drop as soon as the BeCM goes to sleep, if around 20mA, it already has. If anywhere between these two, something is drawing current.

But that will only kick in every 4 hours or so and if the car is parked on the flat it'll turn off almost immediately. If it's on lumpy ground so it has to try to level (or there's a leak) it'll kill a poorly battery fairly quickly but a decent one won't go flat that quickly.

Are there any other, seemingly unconnected, faults that might cause the BeCM to stay awake? Assuming the gearbox is still in there you can check that the BeCM sleeps by sitting in the car in the dark. With everything switched off, the gear position LED will be glowing dimly next to whatever gear it thinks it is in. After 2 minutes of sitting very still with everything switched off, it should go out. That tells you the BeCM has gone to sleep. If it doesn't, something is keeping it active. Do you have a meter so you can check the actual battery drain?

dazer2000 wrote:

Exactly mate, the 4.6 wins on 4.0 on toque when shes there, I also have the added bonus of a new lower crank seal, new rad,new thermostat and water pump all of which I had to do when I first bought her !!! yes I have spent on this car since september when I bought her, 4 new bags and just about to do all 4 discs and pads of which I have, she is my family car so has to be tip top, I wonder how many people have changed to coils only to find out the reason that they were fitted with air in the first place !

I bought the Classic to tow with but it was a LWB one that had originally been on air but had been converted to springs. Unfortunately the springs used had been for a standard Classic so the rears were too soft for the extra 8" of body on the back. As soon as I hitched a trailer up I was looking at the sky. Fitted stiffer springs on the back which made a bit of a difference but not much and made the ride harsh when not towing. I had heard all the horror stories about the P38 but bought it purely for the EAS. Because of the mis-information from places like RPi about how weak the 4.6 was and how it would slip a liner if the wind happened to be blowing in the wrong direction, I deliberately went for the 4.0 litre. Only to later find that it is the longer stroke, rather than bigger bore, that gives the extra capacity and most of the commonly found information is complete bollocks from people trying to sell you a new engine. If the revs drop below 2,000 rpm when slogging up a hill with a lot of weight behind it, then it does start to lose interest, so I just drop it down from D to 3 to get the revs back up and it will accelerate back up.

The ARP studs I approve of but the plugs look well knackered.......

Doh, copy and paste fail....... Now edited so the correct link is in there.

It belongs to Robert who is a bit bonkers. He started off by sticking a turbo and single point LPG system on an old Astra and managed some stupid amount of power out of it and then got stuck in to building Medusa. An old taxi chassis with a pair of 4.0 litre Jaguar AJ16 engines mounted one in front of the other, also with no petrol system and running solely LPG. A thread of his build is here http://www.rodsnsods.co.uk/forum/garage/medusa-206057 (but it's a long read at currently up to 129 pages) but there's also a couple of videos of it MEDUSA FIRST START UP..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euFDZmGUUCQ and MEDUSA FIRST REV UP .....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQO53pQUIXI

That's the reason I bought a P38 in the first place (after a Classic), to tow a trailer between Peterborough and Nice in the south of France (see post 272 in this thread https://rangerovers.pub/topic/233-autobiography-reasons-to-buy-one?page=14). They just do it like no other car can and running on LPG makes them cheap to run too. What else can sit at 70 mph with over 2.5 tonnes hanging off the back in perfect comfort? With the cost of LPG being that much cheaper still in Europe, I drove mine the 1520 miles to Latvia on under £200 in fuel.

Is it facelifted? The later ones have the front bumper that steps up at the ends below the headlights while the early ones have a flat top like Matt's. It just looks very clean and shiny to me.

Digress away. The Merc 1800 and 2 litre petrol, 4 pots suffer from what is referred to as the £8 pipe. It's a breather between the inlet manifold and crankcase which, being made of rubber, turns into a squidgy, sticky lump of gloop with holes in it. Upshot of that is that the idle goes lumpy and the MIL is permanently on with lean mixture errors. Problem is that the inlet manifold is underneath the throttle body and MAF which is bolted to the intake of the supercharger. At least the replacement, which costs just £8, is made of silicon so you only need to do the job once but it's a 5 hour job to change it so you don't want to have to do it that often. The only other job I've had to do on it was fit a new sidelight bulb, even that needed a degree in gynaecology......

Ahh, so it's just the Germans then. That would explain why all the Rohde and Schwarz equipment we have at work has black and white mains leads. Doesn't explain why Dina's C180K Coupe has brown live wires though.....

According to the diagram above, the white/brown wires (WN) go back to the radio head unit along with the two white/blue and white/red so they are probably the matching grounds for the two audio channels (although even if it is a balanced system I would have expected them to be twisted with the matching audio wire). So that has identified what they all do now we need to identify why the fuse blows when you plug the CD unit in. Assuming the socket on the unit matches the plug, connecting the red/green should power it up and not blow the fuse. If you put a meter set on the Ohms range, what do you measure between the pin that the red/green connects to and the chassis? What do you measure between the red/green pin and either of the pins the brown wires go to? I suppose it's always possible that the unit needs to be insulated from ground?

I'm confused as to why the browns are ground but I suppose there must have been a change. Under the old Lucas standard colour code, brown was always unswitched live, on the P38, all main live feeds are brown (or brown with a tracer colour) and my partners 2004 Merc also uses brown for live. Maybe the EU have produced a standard and dictated that ground should be brown these days (although with mains wiring, brown is live, even curiouser still)........

Weird? Looking at the plugs you've got and the diagram, all the wires seem to be there just not quite how I would expect them to be. Brown wires are power, not ground, ground wires are black on modern wiring. The 3 pin plug you've got would appear to be what is shown as C0941 on the diagram, a red/green from fuse 40, the white/grey with yellow band appears to be the iBus connection but why the brown doesn't continue to where it should I've no idea. On the larger plug, you've got the colour codes that match the diagram but where the extra wires come from or what they do, appears to me to be a bit of a mystery. The diagram shows three wires, a white/blue, a white/red and a white/brown at the plug marked C1353 but you've got two of each. Then you've also got the red/green and the white/grey/yellow that should be on a separate plug as well as a pair of spurious brown wires. Unfortunately, unlike the diagrams for the P38, the ones for the L322 don't show a face view of every connector, just some of them so I can't see what C0941 and C1353 should look like. What year is your car as the diagram I'm using is for models up to 2005 so if it is later it may well be different.

I'm wondering if there should be another cable that attaches to what you have and goes between that larger plug and the CD changer unit. What connections are on the changer, the same as you have plugs for?

This is one reason why, if I ever do decide to risk an L322, I'll avoid a Vogue like the plague. I'd rather have a standard sized hole I can fit my own DAB radio into and use a separate satnav that doesn't need a CD that costs more than the average Tom Tom when it gets out of date. But I have been accused of being a Philistine..............