Bit of an anti-climax really. There seemed to be a lot more there last year than this. Not so many stands selling secondhand bits and those that were there seemed to be selling mainly Defender and Discovery bits, very little P38 stuff at all. In fact, the P38 seemed conspicuous by it's absence. There were probably more Range Rover Classics than P38s. The car park was full of Defenders and Discos with hardly a P38 to be seen.

What colour is it? If it's the blue or green stuff, it'll be Ethylene Glycol so should be fine. I've noticed that you can only buy pre-mixed coolant in France whereas here we can buy a concentrate that you add water to. Obviously some sort of safety ruling but it seems odd to me that you can't buy coolant concentrate yet you can buy a bottle of Hydrochloric Acid in Carrefour.......

What Christmas tree have you got lit?

I thought the brake pipe run looked very odd but then realised it was only the early cars that had a pipe running along the axle, they are laid out differently on later ones. Here's a pic of how they should run (later layout is shown in the box).

To be honest, I though that insecure parts would be an MoT fail but I've just checked the testers manual and there's no mention of a failure for pipes flapping around in the breeze (even though there is if it were a fuel line rather than a brake line).

Hi Adam, been following your rebuild on the dark side (in fact, I think I contributed until they banned me?), sounds like you've done a decent job too. I've heard of a few different ways of cleaning cooling systems out but a dishwasher tablet is a new one on me. However, I can't see it doing any harm and if it works on a K series, it should work OK on an engine designed many years previously. Not sure about OAT personally. There's certain things it isn't compatible with so I've always stuck with good old blue Ethylene Glycol like what RAVE says to use but I know a few people have the red coolant and not had any leaks appear yet.

My drivers one seems to latch properly but a couple of times just recently it's come undone on it's own if I've leant forward to poke the satnav or get my fags off the top of the dash. I'll be going to the LRO show later today, but it seems they aren't all the same otherwise I would have had a look to see if I can pick up a couple.

The other advantage with a stud is that you then have something for the manifold to hang on while you get the bolts started.

Getting the lower inlet manifold in with the rocker covers in place isn't easy either. But it does stop you dropping more bits down into the holes......

Not had the respray as they weren't able to fit it in at a time when I didn't need to use it. As it was going to be being driven most of the way across Europe with a GB sticker and Union Flag on the back (Dina's idea), I figured it ought to look vaguely respectable. So I reminded myself why I usually leave body and paintwork to the pro's and had a crack at it myself. With an aerosol of paint mixed to match, a bit of grey primer, a dollop or two of filler (on the rear arches) and a big roll of masking tape, I got stuck in. From 20 feet away it looks perfect, from 10 feet away it looks pretty good but up close it's not that pretty, you can see every mark and run. Painting the front grille and bumper so they are black and not a sort of faded grey made a big difference, as did painting the bottom strip of the grille in body colour and the wheels in silver instead of bubbly aluminium oxide.

The full respray will be happening in a couple of weeks.......

If you want to draw 40A, then a battery with a trickle charger permanently attached. A 230V AC to 12V DC power supply capable of supplying that kind of current would be rather large.......

You sure you need 40A?

You get a much better class of sarcasm, in fact, you get sarcasm without it being edited out by a moderator......

Because when he first popped up on the other forum, RRTH, our favourite know-it-all, told him he hadn't got a P38 because they weren't available in 1994. It is a very early UK car, first registered in December 1994. I admit, it's been updated with a few later bits, but the basic car is a very early one.

The only P38 with post cat sensors was the ones made for the US market, all the rest of world models only had pre cat sensors. It could well be that someone has tried adding additional 0-1V sensors to run a single point LPG system although Chris's car now has a multipoint so slaves off the petrol system.

I gutted the cats on mine (as they aren't needed when running on LPG) thinking it would make it sound throatier and maybe allow it to breathe better but it seemed to make no difference at all.

There's a number of different DSP amps but they are just that, different. The one fitted to a Disco looks the same as a P38 one but only drives the front door speakers, not the rears or sub, the L322 one is completely different again.

On a standard car audio system, the three (or two on the really basic low line system) speakers in each front door, are paralleled up so whatever is feeding them will feed all of them. On a basic, conventional, system you'd have 4 outputs from a head unit, going to front left, front right, rear left and rear right. Each of these outputs will feed all speakers in the four doors. So there will be a pair of wires from each door that go up to the head unit.

The original high line system had a head unit that delivers a lower level (not high enough to feed the speakers directly) output to the amps in the doors which then feed the speakers. I suspect this was because the high power levels the system runs would have made the head unit too big and run too hot if the output amps had been in the head unit itself. Modern amps are much smaller and run much cooler so modern systems can run 50+Watts without melting the dashboard.

The DSP system only has left and right channels, and a data signal from the head unit which go to the DSP amp in the boot. The data signal deals with splitting the signals between the front and rear speaker and the bass, treble, etc which is all done in the DSP amp. So instead of the cables form the speakers in each door going to the head unit, they all go to the DSP amp.

This means that, unlike the earlier systems, you can't just slap a modern head unit in the dash and expect it to work because they will have 4 (or five if you include a sub) outputs that are expecting to go directly to loudspeakers. Some modern units can have the output switched between speaker level or line level so can be used with the earlier system with external amps. If they can't, then that is when you need the attenuators to drop the speaker level down to something that the amps can handle.

Door amps are all the same. There were 4 different levels of audio system fitted to the P38, low and mid line that only had speakers in the doors fed directly from the head unit, early HK high line with amps in each door and later HK high line with just the DSP amp in the boot. The DSP amps die and cost an arm and both legs, which is why Marty looked into replacing it with four door amps (as this system was fitted to the majority of cars). The kit he's proposing to produce, (when he gets the plugs) will be as plug and play as possible. The only wiring that will need adding will be a feed for the rear speakers from the head unit to the amp in the boot. Wait until he's back in the country and if you ask him nicely he'll probably install it for you.....

Not only are they a different plug, they are different sensors. GEMS uses 5-0V Titania sensors but Thor uses 0-1V ones. There's two types fitted to GEMS, early and late (late 97 to 99), he'll need the early ones. Easiest way to tell is that the late GEMS ones have grey plugs on them, early have black plugs.

General consensus seems to be that 80ft/lbs on an alloy head and block with a composite gasket is probably a touch on the high side with 65-70 being nearer the mark. As you should have done them up a bit at a time (I did something like 35-50-65) then a quick tweak won't do any harm (as long as you haven't bolted too many other bits on so you can't easily get to them all....).

I suspect he means the propshaft sliding joints which would make sense if they were a bit sticky. My front prop had a bit of slop in the sliding joint which meant I got a bit of vibration which was worse when in normal height than at motorway height as it was extended more.

Running on 6 would cause it to be a bit gutless. Number 7 plug not connected will cause that bank to run very rich. The lambda sensors measure Oxygen in the exhaust but not fuel, so with one cylinder not firing, it will see a huge quantity of Oxygen (from the cylinder that isn't firing) so assume it is running very lean and pump extra fuel in to try to burn all of the Oxygen rather than just some of it. With all 4 on that bank firing, it should clean things up although it may need a bit of running to let the fuel trims adjust and settle.

Number 6 not firing may be simply down to a dodgy plug or lead. NGK BPR6ES are the best for the GEMS engine, and HT leads that are more than a couple of years old should be regarded with suspicion too.

I found the same, the hex hole in the end of the ARP studs is an Imperial size and I spent hours searching for my Imperial hex key set (that probably hasn't been used in at least 15 years) before finding that a random star bit would fit. 80NM is 60ft/lbs so probably a bit on the low side, I torqued mine to 65ft/lbs so 85-90NM would probably be closer to where you want to be.

Yup, magnetic tool for fishing dropped nuts and washers out from the valley is definitely a must have.

Early oil pressure switches do leak on occasions but a leak from the oil filter area could be one of the oil cooler hoses leaking, they do perish and start throwing oil around the place. Or someone has taken them off and lost the O ring. I had to get a centre silencer for mine recently and found that Euro Car Parts do a Klarius system which seems to be very good quality, far better than a Britpart (if you want things to last, avoid Britpart like the plague), and very cheap with one of their very regular discount deals.

Rich running is probably down to a lambda sensor (or both), unfortunately not cheap for ones that will last.