Not bothered about it being in vogue, just that if I keep it the original Chawton White there'll be no need to do the inner bits that always get missed on a colour change. I'm even going to refit the huge Spraybuster mudflaps. It's an ex-plod motor so I want to keep it as one, just make it look a bit more presentable. It's a shame one of the reflective strips down the A posts has started to come off as I'd have liked to have kept them too. I'll be taking the mudflaps, inner wheelarch liners and door rubbing strips off before it goes it to make life easier for them too. I'll probably attack the wheels with a wire brush too and see if they'll give them a squirt of silver paint while they are at it (although I could probably do that myself). All I need do now is find a dark grey satin finish paint suitable for plastic to make the grille and bumpers all the same colour. Satin black will be too dark but if I can find something that is the same colour as the bumpers, I'll only need to do the grille and the strips under the headlights that have faded with the UV in sunlight (presumably when I've been in France as there's not a lot of chance of that here.....).

In anticipation of 5,000 miles in the next 2 months and the forthcoming respray and general tidy up of my car, I've decided to do the odd little niggly job that I've thought about for a long time. Things that work but had an outside chance of needing attention at the side of the road if I was unlucky. One of these was the hoses to and from the throttle body heater. On the GEMS, and I suspect the Thor is much the same, there's a short pipe that runs from the inlet manifold to the heater and another long one that goes from the heater back to the coolant reservoir. When I had it all in bits rebuilding the engine, these needed a bit of attention. The short pipe had split and been shortened at some point and was only just long enough and the long one is a hard plastic pipe with hose on each end so it could fit onto the heater and reservoir. The hard plastic had gone brittle so cracked when I moved it and the hoses on the ends were looking a bit dodgy too. Unable to find any 8mm inside diameter coolant hose, I'd used fuel hose and had a couple of joins in the hard plastic bit too. It worked but I recently found that fuel hose isn't ideal. From previous experience I knew that you can't put fuel through coolant hose as it dissolves it but figured the other way round would be OK. It isn't. It isn't intended for the sort of temperatures so goes very hard and inflexible. Originally I thought about replacing the hard plastic with 8mm copper microbore pipe but would still need some 8mm inside diameter coolant hose for the ends. So why not replace the lot with one run of hose and avoid any joins? Finding something suitable wasn't easy but I ended up buying a length of this stuff http://www.autosiliconehoses.com/silicone-hose-shop/performance-silicone-hoses/silicone-1-ply-radiator-heater-hose-up-to-30-metres.html. 8mm inside diameter silicon coolant hose.

The short run from the inlet manifold was no problem at all, it's nice and flexible and pushed over the flared ends of the metal stubs at both ends easily. Initially I ran the longer one by the same route as the hard plastic so it ran along the front of the engine under the big metal thing that holds the wiring loom away from the serpentine belt, but it is so flexible that there was a danger that it could move forward and touch the back of the belt. So I re-routed it to run under the back of the alternator. A nice straight run and not in danger of being caught in any moving parts. 10mm I/D hose could also be used to replace the breather pipe from the top of the radiator, the one that seemed to be different on every car we checked at the summer camp. It's not cheap but seems to be good stuff and was delivered next day.

Next job is the headlining followed by the respray.......

That would cause a wobble. Was it on the rear? Rear wheel out of true or balance is often the cause of a shudder between 60 and 70 mph.

Not sure if it would be a failure even if he had spotted it. The actual wording of the reason for failure is " a wheel badly damaged, distorted or cracked, or with a badly distorted bead rim" and it would depend on whether he thought it was badly damaged or merely damaged (or if he also sells alloy wheels).

Hmm, I've got mod status and can edit the post, delete the whole thread, lock the whole thread or highlight the whole thread but it doesn't look like I can split it unless I copied, deleted and then pasted the text into a new thread. But if I did that it would appear to have been posted by me.

Just leave it as it is, it'll wander back on topic, or not, at some point. It is still relevant as it's a cause of using too much LPG if anyone else has a similar problem.

I could have bought mine with me. But nobody needed them then. Or at least they didn't realise they needed them then.......

I'm afraid I have an admission to make. The Summer Camp has inspired me. Last night I attacked my drivers seat with foam cleaner to get it the same colour as the others and I've ordered a headlining kit to do something about the flapping curtains that are currently dangling above my head. You never know, I might even get around to washing the mud off it soon too.......

You WILL need a crowsfoot spanner like this https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/clarke-crows-foot-imperial-wrench-set-10-piece/ (although you'll only need one size and I can't remember which size it is) or you will never get the top union on the little short pipes undone.

This thread has gone awfully quiet. You've got it apart, we've seen the pictures to prove it, but has it gone back together again?

Now there's a little re-programming job for you......

Martyuk wrote:

I think it might be running a touch lean still under load as 50-70mph acceleration is a bit gutless, but I think it is also doing it in top gear with the torque converter locked up unless I really poke the throttle.

Almost certainly. Mine is locked up in top at that kind of speed and if the revs are below 2,000 it doesn't have a lot of interest in the throttle unless it is given a good prod. However, I did discover on the way back from the Summer Camp that if, when travelling behind a truck at 40 mph, the Sport button is poked and the throttle floored, it drops down at least two gears, takes off like a scalded cat, revs up to 5,000 rpm before shifting up and sounds bloody wonderful!

Gordon, your problem is almost certainly due to the lack of lumps and the size of your right foot, I've been in your passenger seat remember.

Morat, if you did reset the adaptives and have still had out of range errors, the gas system definitely needs a recal. If it was calibrated with a dodgy O2 sensor, then it will be wrong.

Not a completely fair comparison as I filled up at a Texaco station near me before setting off for the Summer Camp and the next fill was at a Shell station on the way back. But after a combination of cruising at 75-80mph, running around the lanes to the hotel and back and a lot of mucking around in low ratio with a dead Disco on a bit of string I took 60.8 litres after a combined 191 miles, so 3.1415 (almost Pi, is this significant?) miles per litre or 14.26 mpg. As my tank takes 67 litres to full, that would give me a range of 210.5 miles to a tankful. I've seen a bit better than that but I've also seen a lot worse so reasonably happy with it. If I can do better than 200 miles on a tankful, I'm not complaining. I also think the LPG is still running slightly rich so it could be bettered a touch.

That's a 4.0 litre on a singlepoint LPG system. But as you say, ideally you need to average it over multiple fills from the same pump although even that isn't completely repeatable as the ambient temperature and the temperature of the tanks at the filling station will make a difference too.

I can only add one word - plonker. Although I must admit, I've done it a couple of times and turning the key and nothing happening does make you fear the worse rather than looking at what the dash is telling you. There's a D shown there to give you a clue.

Actually Mark, I was going to propose you for the Ideal Home Interior Design award for converting the interior of your car from something almost as doggy looking as mine to something approaching a Miles standard of cleanliness.

I have actually promised Dina that before we go on holiday in it at the end of August, it'll have the interior cleaned, the headlining stuck back on (she'll probably do that for me) and a respray. Then nobody will recognise it......

We also seem to have worked out the essential toolkit for a P38 owner. Going on what seemed to be used most, it was Marty's big club hammer (for hitting anything that should move but wouldn't), my nylon faced mallet (for knocking ABS sensors back into their housing) and my Stanley knife (for opening burger packages, cutting strings of sausages into individual sausages, for cutting the ends off split cruise control hoses and cutting out bits of Mark's carpet). So it seems that a Stanley knife is the most essential tool followed closely by two big hammers........

Miles, in case you haven't noticed, I've sent you a PM.

I'm home, well I've been home a while but been watching the Austrian GP. I must admit that I completely forgot about picking up Chris's tools that he left behind which would have been ideal as I spend at least 3 days a week running up and down the M11 between Peterborough and East London. I could have chucked them into the shrubbery at the Harlow roundabout on my way by if nothing else.

A good fun weekend where we had rather a lot of P38's in varying states of dismantling at times and also spent a lot of time shifting a 3 wheeled Discovery around the place. At least it gave my ex-plod the chance to relive it's previous life by dragging heavy lumps of immobile vehicle around the place on the end of a bit of string. Miles (Morat), the cook Meister, ensured we didn't go hungry with his skills on the barbecue while Marty taught us all a few new words while trying the get the steering arm off the steering box. Eventually brute force and a very large hammer did the trick. Mark (Orangebean) still had no drivers seat when I left and Nick (Sloth) proved just how many bits of a P38 you can cram into another one.

One thing we didn't do was line all the cars up for a photo, but hopefully someone will have taken some even if I didn't......

I've just got back from Tesco with a load of burgers, buns for burgers, sausages, and other assorted bits of dead animal. I was running short on charcoal and noticed they had the one use barbies, so I've got a couple of those. Saves having to clean the one outside so it can go in the car.

I'm about to go on the LPG and food run in a few minutes having spent the evening putting back in, then taking out again (because I'd forgotten to re-connect a fibre optic loom) and then putting it back together again, the dash on a Porsche Macan Turbo. In between finding things in the garage and bunging them in the boot. I've got my Windows 2000 laptop with a serial port that lives in the car, an EAS cable, an AEB LPG cable, a Launch C Reader VI OBD scanner and the Nanocom. I'll also have my everyday laptop with me which has RAVE and the software for just about every LPG system ever made.

I'll bung in a pair of Stillsons......

It's losing gas pressure so is acting as though you've run out of gas. Most likely culprit will be a bad connection to a solenoid coil, one of the solenoid coils breaking down or the solenoid plunger sticking. I don't have any spares or you could have come along and we'd have sorted it. Tinley Tech will supply you with a new coil if that's the problem.

You could always arrive running on petrol though.......