Marty, get a dishwasher with a big cutlery tray. Leanne will be well chuffed and you'll get loads of bits of door latches in there (but don't try putting the motors in, I suspect they wouldn't take kindly to it).

I also discovered something to clean the black strips along the tops of the doors. The ones that go grey and grotty. Before doing anything I took the car to my local Polish car wash as it hadn't been cleaned since Summer Camp and still had Marty's mud on it. The pressure washer started to lift the reflective strips on the A pillars, a relic from it's previous life. I decided they were beginning to look a little tatty so could come off. But that left the glue so, having found that brake cleaner wouldn't shift it, had a ferret around in the garage and found a bottle of meths (there are times when we all need a drink after all). That took the glue off but also cleaned up the black so I had a go at the strips on the top of the doors. It works, a bit of meths on a cloth and they are black again. In the past I've tried WD40, looks good for a day or so, back to black lasts slightly longer but this looks like it should last.

Yes, I considered doing the bumper too but couldn't be arsed to mask off the rest of the car and take the number plate off. Not sure if there's enough left in the aerosol can to do the whole bumper though and it would look pretty stupid with only half of it done. If I do it though, I'll do the bumper and the spoiler extension at the bottom but leave the bit in the middle. Also noticed that Nick (Sloth) has the bottom of the grille in body colour which looks good to me. Might be worth getting the painter to paint the bottom strip when he does the rest of the car.

Checked the cables and plug. Cables are fine but the plug wasn't. Tweaked the contacts and now bank 1 is staying closed loop and switching nicely. The same can't be said for bank 2 though as that is now going OPEN (but not Open Fault?). Looks like I'm going to be grovelling under it again.

In anticipation of 5,000 miles in the next 3 weeks and the respray (which isn't going to happen until after the 5,000 miles now), I've been doing the odd little job on the car this weekend. As well as the obvious service things, I've been doing something I normally never do, cosmetics. I've painted the front grille so it's no longer a milky grey from the UV exposure. In fact, I've painted it twice as the first time I bought dark grey bumper paint but it looked more like a shitty brown to me so I've done it black. Did the strips under the headlights too and I must admit it looks damn good.

As those that were at the summer camp will have noticed, one of my front foglights was doing a passable impersonation of a goldfish bowl. So I took it out. Now one piece of advice. If you have a front foglight full of water, do not open the back of it while laying under the car. It makes your Tee shirt very wet and your head hurts from hitting it on the front anti roll bar as you try to leap out of the way. Found out why it was filling with water as it had a big crack on the top so any water thrown up from the front wheel would lay on top of it and drip into the lamp. Anyway, after emptying the water out, I had a bit of a problem. There were multiple tide marks showing the different levels the water had got to at various times on the inside of the lens. It appears that they install the bulb holder and reflector before fitting the glass and that is bonded in place so didn't look like it was going to come off. Or not in one piece anyway.

Dina had gone shopping and a quick check in the kitchen revealed that the dishwasher was half full. So the foglight went in there positioned so the jets of water and cleaning stuff would go into the opening on the back. Switched it on and went back outside to continue my tinkering. Dina came home from shopping and thanked me for putting the dishwasher on even though it wasn't full.

After about an hour a voice from the from door was heard to say, "Richard, what was this doing in the dish washer?" The dishwasher had beeped to say it had finished so she'd opened it to empty it...... I told her that Orangebean, Mark, the guy in the dodgy shorts with no seats in his car at the Summer Camp, had suggested a dishwasher was ideal for washing engine parts and I figured it should be pretty good for foglights too. It was, it did a damn good job too. Sealed the crack with a dollop of silicon and the jobs a good un as they say.

Bugger, I can edit a post but not the typo in the title, Doh!

My drains have only clogged up once (or only once since I've owned it) but the LR rubber mats over the carpets have a ridge around the outside. All you get then is a puddle on the mat. Quite a big puddle it was at the time too.....

The hoses may be 19mm ID but by the time they get down to the O rings and heater matrix, they are down to 15mm or thereabouts anyway so it doesn't make any difference to the flow (or doesn't seem to on mine). Mine was in parallel when I first got it and in the middle of winter while idling waiting to get into a car park (Christmas shopping), the heater went very lukewarm as most of the coolant was going through the reducer. On a Classic I owned previously, that was also in parallel and, being a single point so would run on gas from stone cold, the reducer would ice up within 400m of setting off as it was all going through the heater. Series plumbing on both cured both problems.

I've got the original 19mm hose going to a 19-15mm pipe connector to feed the reducer and then the same in the return hose to go to the heater matrix.

Not quite as easy as it could be as your reducer has both coolant connections on the same side rather, than as most, one on each side. If I was doing it, I'd run a straight hose from the inlet manifold (no 21 below) to the reducer and then the outlet from the reducer to the heater matrix.

As for the lambda sensors, I'd leave them connected if you have the software and cable to look at what the system is doing. If you don't, there's no point as the only reason for connecting them is so they display on the screen. Without them connected you need an OBD reader (or a Nanocom of course) to see what they are doing when running on gas.

You've got A/C at home? Flash bugger.......

Oi, where did my post go? Brilliant job Tony, much better than a lot of professional installs I've seen. One thing that I maybe should have mentioned before is the coolant plumbing. On something like a P38 where the heater is full flow, it's better to plumb the reducer in series rather than parallel. On mine I've gone from the heater feed to the reducer first and then on to the heater. Only one pipe to cut into so less chance of leaks and there's full flow through both. With them in parallel the coolant will take the path of least resistance so you can get a reducer that is slow to heat up or a heater that never gets above lukewarm.

I'm fairly certain the most testing they do with used parts is clean them. I've used Emmots a few times and only had one bad experience. I thought my starter motor was dying, or the solenoid at the very least, as every so often all I would get was a clunk from the solenoid but no rotation of the motor. Emmots had one listed on eBay so I bought it. When it arrived it was a Marelli not a Bosch as I had but the fittings were the same so I just assumed LR had fitted either. Before fitting it, I tested it and found it didn't work. Solenoid didn't go clunk but the motor would spin with volts applied to it. As it was different to the one I had, I couldn't strip them and make one good one out of two so got on to Emmots and explained the problem. They immediately sent me a replacement, a Bosch this time, and told me they didn't want the Marelli back as if it was faulty it was no good to them. So they couldn't have tested it before sending it out.

Turned out there was nothing wrong with the starter though. The connection at the battery terminal had worked itself loose so I had a very poor connection between the battery and the starter and alternator. I found that out when the battery went flat while driving......

Not that impressed with Adrian Flux these days. I used them many years ago when they were just a small broker working out of a tiny office in the backstreets of Kings Lynn specialising in oddball stuff rather than a general broker working from a huge converted mansion that they have now. They used to be very good but not these days it appears. My daughter used them when she had a Mk1 MR2. 4 years ago she got her renewal and the premium had almost doubled so she phoned them. She pointed out that she had now reached the age of 25 so should no longer be loaded for being a young driver and had another years no claims so had expected it to go down. She was told that as the weather had been very bad that winter, lots of people had made claims so premiums had to go up to cover them. She asked if she'd made a claim and they confirmed she hadn't so she wanted to know why she was having to pay extra to cover the dickheads that couldn't drive in a bit of snow and ice. She went elsewhere.

More recently, last week in fact, I realised that if the paintsprayer gets his finger out and calls me to tell me when he can fit my P38 in for it's long overdue new coat, I'd find myself with no wheels. So, I dragged one of my other toys out from under it's cover. It's a 1991 Maserati Biturbo Spider that has been sitting under cover for the last 4 years but has been fired up every so often to make sure it still worked. Put a new battery on it and she fired up first time. Pulled all 4 brake calipers off and made sure they were moving freely and took it for an MoT. It passed with only a couple of slightly rusty rear brake pipes on advice. Figured insurance would be a good idea (my trade policy covers performance cars for trade purposes only) so did an online quote with Footman James for a 3,000 mile Classic Car policy with Dina as a named driver. £166 a year from them. Decided to give Adrian Flux a go but their website says that 75% of customers get a better deal by phoning rather than online so I phoned them. Gave them all the same details and they came back at £631!! The explanation was that although Dina has 24 years of accident, claim and conviction free driving and now has a UK driving licence too, she has only lived in the UK for 3 years. Without her as a named driver, just me on the policy, they still came out at £191. So I've got it covered for both of us, with exactly the same details and level of cover, with Footman James.

Quite right. You've paid for a pair of heads that are advertised as ready to fit which that one clearly isn't. If you were a garage there's a big difference in labour involved in bolting a ready to go head on and either drilling out and tapping or, more likely, as modern 'mechanics' are no more than parts fitters, sending it out to somewhere else to do the job (and charging it all to the customer).

That's the very same set I bought to put mine back together. You'll end up with a bag of assorted copper washers and O rings as, other than the head gaskets, it's the same set for older motors. So don't worry about having bits left over......

I don't know of any engine with an alloy head and a composite gasket that needs the head torquing down to any more than 65-70 ft/lbs, that's the norm for just about everything. That's what I did mine to when I put the rebuilt heads back on the rebuilt block and that was 30,000 miles ago. Just make sure you use Elring gaskets and you won't have a problem.

They will be as long as you reconnect the aerial. While it won't suffer from any other problems, it'll not work as it should without it. Having worked with RF, and dealing with interference to it, for the last 33 years, I wouldn't recommend anyone disconnecting the aerial. Replace it with an inch of wire maybe but not disconnect it completely. But with the third generation receiver, you can just connect it as was originally intended.

I think the reason for the security being as complex as it is, is down to when it was designed. At the time any 10 year old could steal a Vauxhall Astra, any Ford could be broken into by poking a pozidrive screwdriver in the keyhole and bending the door panel and the door skins on a VW Golf were so flimsy the approved security measure was a damn great lump of steel plate that you fitted around the door handle. A very expensive, luxury car like the P38 needed something to stop it disappearing within minutes of you leaving it parked anywhere. That's the reason for things like the Key Code Lockout if you get the EKA wrong 3 times, to stop someone just trying random codes until they get the right one. Modern cars are no different, just the available technology has improved.

I also lock the car with the fob while paying unless there's someone else in the car with me, it seems a bit rude to lock them in..... I can't remember off the top of my head how long it is between unlocking and starting the car for the immobiliser to kick in but it's either 30 seconds or a minute, and I've had to press the fob button if I've unlocked it and not started it immediately. Usually if I've got something to put in the boot or I'm faffing around with the sat nav when I first get in the car. Mine always needs the fob button pressing before I can start it if it has been left unlocked for any length of time which it often is if I'm working on another car as my toolbox lives in the boot.

There is a lot of wideband electrical noise on a filing station forecourt from the processors in the pumps and the display units (bank cashpoints also kick out a lot of crud too) but I've never known it to be a problem. Even with the first generation receivers, with the antenna connected, a signal that will affect the fob operation needs to be very strong and close(ish) to 433 MHz.

As an aside, prior to 433 MHz becoming a European standard, there were about 7 different frequencies used in different countries so manufacturers had to fit different central locking systems for different markets. One of the first cars to use it was the new (then) 7 series BMW. I got called in with my professional hat on by the local BMW agent. They had sold a top of the range 7 series to the MD of a well known chemical plant that claims to produce an alcoholic beverage that they laughingly refer to as lager with the advertising line of 'if C**g made....' Anyway, said MD had taken his daughter and a friend to the swimming pool in the centre of Northampton and parked in the car park next door. Also next to this car park was the fire station and as well as the Fire Service radio system on 70-85 MHz was an amateur radio repeater on 433.075 MHz. The receiver in the BMW, on 433.920 MHz, flatly refused to acknowledge the 10 mW from the keyfob when the 25W transmitter was in operation (despite it being much further away and on the wrong frequency). Doing some tests with the dealers demonstrator, we found that if the car was moved about 100 yards further away to the opposite side of the carpark, it would work. I wrote a report that basically said, in a very nice way, that the receiver was crap. This went to the dealer who forwarded it to BMW UK, who forwarded it to BMW in Germany who forwarded it to the subcontractor that supplied the receivers (the same company who's name appears on a lot of the relays used in a P38). The reply that came back was, "if you only pay 9p each for a receiver, what do you expect?" An upgraded receiver was offered as an option to be fitted to any cars where the owner complained and then became standard fit on all models a couple of years later. I suspect the receiver module in the first generation P38 unit is the very same unit that became standard in the later BM's as they still suffered just nothing like as badly as the original ones. Big difference is the receive aerial on a BM is in the front screen pillar so a driver is likely to be standing much closer to it than on a P38. They also don't have a BeCM that keeps getting woken up so the battery doesn't go flat either.

riddlemethis wrote:

I really dont want to spend £140

But you're not. You're only spending an additional £75 over what you would have paid for bolts. The same as you had to spend on sockets to get the old ones out.......

It depends who made them. My worry is that even genuine Land Rover ones may not be made to the same spec as the 15 year originals. I've used stretch bolts on other things in the past and you can feel when they start to stretch as they suddenly become easier to turn (and if they were never intended to stretch, that's just before they break). The only time I've used the stretch bolts on a V8 head, that didn't happen, I was just hanging on a long bar to manage the second 90 degrees. When the thread is going into the aluminium block, I was concerned I was going to pull the thread out. I was also advised against getting the cheap ones as they were described as being made of chocolate and would snap off half the time. That suggests that the cheap ones are too soft and stretch (or break) too easily and the decent ones I got are too hard and don't stretch enough.

Mine was much the same, maintained the inside of the car at a comfortable 20 degrees even when it was 38 degrees outside. It's not often people complain that it's getting too hot when I open the window for a fag......

They ain't Titanium, they're steel. They have the course UNC thread on one end to go into the block and a much finer thread and a hex hole on the other end so you can screw them into the block. The finer thread means there's much more control on the tension. That and the fact you only need to torque them down to 65-70 ft/lbs means you don't need a scaffold pole on the end of the socket to do them up!. For ease of use alone, I wouldn't use stretch bolts ever again.