Could be the evaporative thingy that lurks on that side with the pipe connected to the inlet manifold. Very, very occasionally, and it hasn't done it for over a year now, mine would start and idle fine but do nothing when I pressed on the throttle. This was accompanied by a sort of moaning sound. If I switched off and restarted it would fire up fine and the noise would be gone. I has assumed that was coming from the EVAPs bits.

Having had the mis-shapen relay sitting on my coffee table looking at me since yesterday, a few minutes ago I decided to prise the cover off. The relay contacts, despite looking like they should be up to passing the 30A they are rated at, I just measured 1.1 Ohms across the closed contacts.

If it was a bit warmer outside, I'd do some tests but I went outside this morning to do a couple of little jobs, stepped out of the door, turned round and came back in again. It was bloody freezing!

It is, it's the one for the LH blower. It's one of the ones that people have said can burn out if your pollen filters are clogged making the fan work harder which has always seemed complete bollocks to me. The fan might be drawing slightly more current but there shouldn't be any resistance in the relay to cause it to get hot anyway, although it obviously did..... No sign of any damage to the fusebox though.

My wife works away for a week at a time and he car doesn't get used during the week. Last week she came to come home and the battery was flat so the AA had to be called out. So I treated her car to a new battery and found the old one was dated 11/04 so it hadn't done bad. I also decided to treat mine to a new one too. It hasn't given any problems but it is 5 years old and as the one on the SE was completely knackered I figured I could put the old one on that.

Went out today to swap the battery but didn't want to disconnect the power. I don't mind setting the windows but retuning the radio with allk the FM and DAB stations as well as setting the 9 band graphic for each input takes forever. So a couple of bits of wire with croc clips and the battery I'd just taken off the missus's car could power it while I changed the main battery. I connected the positive to the big stud inside the fusebox so had the lid off. While there I noticed something that didn't look quite right. At some time someone (probably me actually) had fitted a cheap generic relay in the RL7 position.

I think it had got a bit warm......

Mine and Gordon's are both GEMS (and both running single point systems) but Marty's is a multipoint on a Thor

Only because I'm PM'ing them as they pop up on the other one......

You're welcome. That's what a forum is for.

You mean you've got a cover? Neither of mine have.....

Hi Tom and welcome. Your electrical expertise, along with that of Marty, should be a definite bonus on here. Gordon and I have done just about every job on a P38 that is likely to come up so we've got a fair but of experience.

Yes, got heartily pissed off with the pain in the arse admin on the other site (see, we can say things like that on here without every other word turning into **) who seemed to have it in for Gordon, me and most others from the home of the Range Rover. When he's running a site that was originally started by a New Zealander, now owned by a Canadian company and dedicated to a British car I'm not sure how he can refer to it as an NAS site.

Richard

Welcome along, you'll notice quite a difference here. You can talk about your car being an R reg, post all sorts of random bollocks and not have your posts deleted if a thread goes off topic.

Now it seems to have a few more features and is running a bit better (I mean, I haven't been able to break it for at least 3 days now), is it about time we started spreading the word and getting a few more people on here?

Hmm, shame you posted it today when I'm back at work tomorrow rather than sitting around with nowt to do all day. I'll probably get a new set, regap them and whack them in.

Not now as it's back on the car holding my bonnet shut, I just have no indication if it isn't at the moment. Not sure how easy it would be to mount, I'll have to have another look. It seems to be a really complex arrangement (would we expect anything else from Land Rover?). The plastic bit that sticks out into the hole where the pin/plunger thingy goes is part of a flat nylon spring loaded plate with the microswitch mounted on it with the actual switch button facing away from the latch. As the bonnet is closed, it causes this whole assembly to move and the button on the switch to press against the standing up bit of metal that I broke off. If the temperature rises a few degrees and it stops raining in the next couple of days, I'll pull it off and have another look and see what I can achieve (and get a pic or two)..

The text on the signature, it's the same size as the message text. I'm using Firefox if that makes a difference.

Sorted! Now how do I make the text smaller?

You're doing well Marty, I haven't found the Profile bit yet, hence no info or signature. Where is it?

Well you did say to have a play and see if I could break it.

Didn't expect it to be that easy though......

Wasn't sure if this went here or in the oily bits section but as it uses 'lectric and doesn't contain anything that can leak, this seemed most appropriate. For a while now my every time I hit a bump while turning left, I would get a beep, beep, beep and Bonnet Open would come up on the dash. The RH bonnet catch, the one with the switch in it, would sometimes stick too. After a bit of bouncing around on some lumpy stuff, it got worse and it was beeping at me whenever I turned a corner or hit a bump. Adjusted it so it opened and closed perfectly. Only problem now was that it was telling me the bonnet was open all the time. So I had a look at it.

Just under the slidey bit that latches under the pin, there's a bit of plastic. I poked it with a screwdriver and found it slides in and out and with it pushed in I could hear a microswitch switching. So I pulled the latch out to have a look. The bit of plastic is the end of a nylon carrier with a microswitch fitted to it. As it is pushed back by the pin the switch plunger hits a bit of metal sticking up from the latch body (or so it appeared). No problem, just put a bit of heatshrink sleeving over it to make it fatter and take up the wear. No, that's going to involve gong into the garage, finding a bit of heatshrink of the correct size, trying to shrink it with a fag lighter in a howling gale and it's just starting to rain. No, bend the bit of metal so it's closer to the switch so it doesn't have to move as far and it will all be good. Try to bend it with pliers but it won't move, it is a couple of mm thick after all. Get a pair of small Mole grips on it, give it a heave and it snaps off. It's not bent mild steel as it looked by the light of an LED torch, it's bloody Mazac! So, I've left it disconnected at the moment so it thinks the bonnet is always shut but at over 50 quid a go for a new one, I think the replacement is going to come from a breaker.

and for anyone wanting to improve the headlights without spending a fortune or risking burning out the wiring (or worse still, blowing the MOSFET in the BeCM), upgrade to Osram Nightbreaker Ultimate bulbs, they make a noticeable difference.

There is nothing on a P38 that can't be mended in one way or another but you do need some instruction and there's a lot of it about. You may have heard of RAVE which was the Land Rover workshop manual but it hasn't been updated since 2005. But, as the P38 ceased production in 2002, who cares.

RAVE can be downloaded from https://rangerovers.pub/downloads/rave.zip but it might take a while as it's a pretty big file. To run it, simply double click the rave-lr.pdf file and you're in.

There's also an online version that can be found at http://workshop-manuals.com/landrover/p38/range_rover_workshop_manual_volume_1/

The full parts manual can be found at http://new.lrcat.com/

and if you can't figure out exactly what the problem is, there's quite a few decent guides to the common faults that can be found at http://www.rangerovers.net/newrremedies.html although it is a little out of date now with some of the advice as it hasn't been updated since the original site was taken over by a Canadian company who allow it to be run by the main reason this forum has been created.

There's also a few archived articles of use that SpiggyTopes (Peter) has uploaded to Google drive that can be found here https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4azhgT5UI-QWW9TQlhUWE9FWUE&usp=sharing