Hmm, a bit of a diversion (although I have driven to Bulgaria once in the past).

The cheap one I have is normally used to measure the size of a room when working out what size AC unit it needs (volume of room in cubic feet x 5 = Btu of the unit required, the same calculation is used for heating) so it doesn't need to be perfectly accurate. Same with checking the wheel alignment, you aren't looking for an absolute dimension, just the difference between the measurement at the front of the wheel rim and the back.

I suspect the tyre centre systems are as accurate as the man that attaches the sensors to the wheels. They gave me a printout of what it thought mine was. It showed 2.1mm of toe IN on the front, when my measurement showed it was toeing OUT but more interesting it showed my LH rear wheel having 8.1mm of toe in and the RH one having 2.9mm toe in. Quite how you can have a total of 11mm of toe in on a solid axle I've no idea and suspect the sensors weren't properly seated on the wheels. The phrase 'all the gear and no idea' springs to mind.

Whenever the tie rod or any ball joints are replaced, the alignment will need to be set and that is where you may need to throw yourself at the mercy of a professional.

The steering on the recently bought red car didn't feel right and I decided it felt like it had too much toe out. The self centring was vague and it wouldn't stay in a straight line with hands off the steering, it would pull to one side of the other. Took it into a place I've used before and told them they didn't need to worry about the steering wheel alignment as I could do that myself, it was purely the adjustment of the tie rod that needed doing. Unfortunately they have a newer alignment system than they previously had and a technician who wasn't familiar with the steering box type system on the P38. Firstly he wanted to adjust the alignment on on the rear which, as I pointed out, will be correct unless I have a bent axle. Both wheels are going to be pointing the same way obviously. Once he had got his head around how it worked, he realised what he needed to do. Only to find the adjuster was rusted solid. After struggling with it for almost an hour, he gave up and told me that if I could get it freed off, I could bring it back and he could adjust it.

But, as I was about to leave, an older member of staff suggested an alternative method. If I was to use a laser tape measure and measure the distance between the rear and fronts rims of the front wheels that would tell me how much toe in or out I had. As it happens, I've got one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Measurement-131ft-40M-Rechargeable-Pythagorean/dp/B0D7PYSRQT/ref=sr_1_22_sspa, so tried it. The front wheels should toe out by 0.6 - 1.8mm. Checked it and found they were toeing out by 4mm! Checked my car, which tracks perfectly, and found it appeared that the wheels had neither toe in or out, but the laser tape measure only goes down to a millimetre so I wasn't able to see if they really were parallel or slightly toeing out as they should but it gave me a target to aim for.

Freed off the adjuster (Plus Gas, heat and a 24" pair of Stilsons), took it right out, cleaned up and greased everything then started. By measuring the difference between the rear and front of the front wheels, I got it so the distance was the same, then gave the adjuster a 1/8th turn in to give it a bit of toe out. That gave me a difference of 1mm, smack in the middle of the setting.

A quick road test showed that the steering wheel wasn't central when going straight ahead. Checked the centre marks on the steering box and that wasn't centralised when steering straight ahead so adjusted the drag link. With the steering lock off and the wheel in the position where it was when going straight, as you adjust the drag link, the steering wheel will move so once it is straight, the job should be done. If the steering box is centralised but the wheel isn't, then it needs the steering wheel moving on the column so they are both central.

A proper road test showed that now the wheel is central when going straight ahead, it self centres properly when straightening up and drives in a straight line with hands off the wheel so that's another job ticked off the list.

Transport is likely to be interesting, Leo is in Bulgaria.....

Took it for MoT. 517,249 miles on the clock and a pass with no advisories. Not a bad result considering I've done 100,000 miles since August 2020.

Having done mine and had it re-gassed so the AC is now working perfectly, I suspect I have found the reason for the water dripping onto the passengers feet. I've just taken my car in for MoT and while it was on the ramp, water was dripping from the AC drains. But NOT from the passenger side but from the drivers side. I didn't notice if the bottom of the evaporator housing was sloped or not but my driver's side drain was clogged solid. I suspect if that is clogged, all the condensate has to get out of the passenger side and it can't get out fast enough. So while the passenger side drain may be clear, if the driver's side is clogged, the passenger one can't cope with the quantity it has to drain.

Except to fill up when you are near somewhere and keep your engine in better condition....

I was talking to Mark Skitt, the breaker with a field full of P38s and L322s in Wales, recently. When I told him my current mileage he immediately said I must be running on LPG. He was saying that when pulling a used engine apart if it has been run on petrol, the interior is black, if it has been run on LPG, it is still clean.

Tidy it up by all means but leave it working so you can run on LPG whenever you get the opportunity to fill up (or get a pump from Simon and fill from red bottles).

Sorry not got the diagram for the Stag system but it was the preferred option for the cheapo 'done in a day' bodgers so not surprised the wiring has just been chucked in.

It'll have an intercept on each injector feed cutting into the pulse wire on each one, it will also have permanent live, ignition switched live, TPS and it may also have a connection into one of the lambda sensors (may be connected, may not) and an RPM sense from one of the ignition coil feeds although some systems use the injector pulses for RPM.

What system is it?

After a lot of head scratching and a call to Rick at Callrova, it seems you can't adjust the brightness of the display unless the lights are on. I was always under the impression that you could have a different setting for day and night but you can't. With the lights off the message centre brightness is fixed at its brightest but can be dimmed down when the lights are on at nightime. So that was a lot of wasted time trying to fix a fault that didn't exist....

However, used the car at night on Friday and the clock, EAS disable switch and front foglight switch didn't light up. They did before so I figured that it must be that the contacts needed cleaning as they had been disturbed. Out came the centre console (again) and checked them, all 3 bulbs blown. Whether they had blown over a period and I hadn't noticed, but I doubt it, or if they had chosen to blow when disturbed I have no idea. On the shelf I had a couple of spare orange switch bulbs, but only a blown green one. I was going to order some but at £12.50 each (whereas the orange ones are half that for some reason) decided I would confirm if they had actually blown first. They had but when I looked in the bag of assorted bulbs I keep in the glovebox for one for the clock, found 2 brand new green switch bulbs still in their unopened packets. So fitted those and now have a full set of dash lights.

Had a look at the blown ones and realised they are only wire ended miniature bulbs available from CPC Farnell at £3.77 for a pack of 5 (order code SC00339)! So, with 3 blown green switch bulbs and one blown orange one, I'll be able to fit new bulbs into those and still have one spare left over.

The only bodywork areas that can rust (or corrode in the case of the alloy panels), are the bottom of the lower tailgate (alloy) which will probably benefit from something squirting inside it, the front lip on the bonnet and the rear wheelarches behind the rear doors. To treat the rear arches you'd need to take the wheelarch liner out to get at it from the inside. Theoretically the bottom of the doors could corrode if moisture got trapped in them but they do have drain holes so that shouldn't happen and they have a rubbing strip trim along the bottom anyway so it wouldn't be visible.

A friend who restored a Classic had that treated with Lanoguard but a Classic needs something as they do rot away nicely. The P38 doesn't really suffer from rust, the only ones I have seen that have been rusty are ones that have lived by the sea and almost certainly been used for launching a boat into sea water. When launching my boat I reverse down a slipway until I hear the exhausts are under water and know I've gone far enough for it to float off easily. That is in fresh water though so not a problem.

Put it all back together, or at least I did on Saturday but it was finished off today when the AC was gassed. Everything went back in better than when it came out. I've got leak free heater ducts, leak free AC and a dashboard that is held in with a full set of bolts, not just one bolt in place, one down behind the heater box and two just not there at all! I'm surprised it didn't rattle and bounce around all the time. However, it isn't perfect, the message centre display (and HEVAC) is dim and the rocker on the stalk doesn't adjust the brightness, neither up or down. But that's a job for tomorrow.....

Certainly will, it's bad enough driving around with no AC at the moment but got a fortnight in Europe next month.

Took it to bits......

Lots of bits to change the AC evaporator. It's a well known fact that a car manufacturer has to start somewhere and it would appear that LR started with the AC evaporator and built the rest of the car around it. This is how my interior looked just after lunchtime today.....

But it's always nice when you start a job and find the cause of the problem you are trying to fix is obvious. I'm not sure how much green dye has been put in the AC system over the years but I found quite a lot of it. When I pulled the evaporator out, the inside of the passenger drain was full of green dye, although the drivers side was clogged solid. Once I split the evaporator housing the source of my AC leak was pretty obvious.

Cleaned out the housing, fitted the replacement evaporator and put it back together. Fitted it in place and connected the pipes under the bonnet and filled the system with 12 bar of Nitrogen to do a leak test before putting everything else back in. Having got this far I've no desire in taking it all out again so jumped into the red one and went to B&Q for some sticky foam draught excluder to use on the inside of the ducts and on the top of the heater box. With a bit of luck, the output of the heater will enter the car and not lose half of it trough multiple gaps in the ducting.

However, then I did something really stupid. In my haste to get back and carry on, rather than wait for the car parked opposite to finish loading their stuff into their car and move the trolley, I turned too sharply out of the parking space and scraped the barrier around the trolley parking area. Anyone know where I can get a passenger front door in Rioja Red as the one I have is now a bit misshaped.....

Got home, admitted to my error and carried on. Heater box back in and bolted up, new heater core O rings fitted (something I always keep a few spares of), drain tubes connected and stuck a couple of layers of sticky foam on the inside mating faces of the ducts and fitted those. So that is the state it is in now. Hopefully it won't rain in the night as the dash is outside next to the car and the rest of the stuff is on the back seat but it everything goes smoothly, I should have it all back together by lunchtime tomorrow.

If you are talking about the fat ones either side of the HEVAC, they feed heater output to the vents under the front seats. The AC evaporator drains are much closer to the bulkhead and are about 1/2" diameter.

But to Nigel's problem. The evaporator sits in a plastic box with a gutter along the bottom and the two stubs that go onto the drain tubes.

This is the two tubes sticking up from through the floor

Now the gutter is going to sit horizontally so why is it always the passenger (driver's side for those with the steering wheel on the wrong side) that dribbles into the footwell? In my case it was because the drivers side drain tube was blocked solid so all of the condensation would have to go out the other side. On a humid day, there's a lot of condensation to drain and I suspect the one tube simply isn't big enough. If it can't drain away it fills the gutter until it overflows into the duct from the blower. If you look at this picture you can just see a tidemark where the water level has got up to.

It looks like water has even got up to the join in the casing at some point. As the foam in the joints of the ducts rotted away years ago, they don't seal so what water can't get out of the drain will run into the duct and dribble out of the joint onto your passengers feet. Icy cold water dripping on their tootsies isn't going to go down well (as Nigel has found out).

Now we know the cause, how can it be sorted without going to the lengths I've had to go to today? First step would be to clean out the drivers side drain tube as I suspect it will be as clogged as mine was. I suppose it would be possible to put a small hose up through the driver's side drain and dribble some water slowly (enough to flush the gutter but not to fill the duct) through to flush any debris that may be blocking it out through the passenger side drain. The duct from the blower on the driver's side is higher up so that one won't fill up with water.

I'll be replacing my AC evaporator this weekend so the dash will be coming out. That will give me a chance to see the anatomy of what is in there and hopefully work out where the leak comes from. When I took the red one in for MoT, water was dripping at a pretty good rate out of the drains yet when we used it last weekend, there was still water dripping onto the passenger carpet inside as well, so I think that one must be partially blocked.

Back onto the topic of what I have done to my Range Rover. Spent Sunday removing the little 70 litre LPG tank from the red one and fitting the nice big 95 litre full toroidal that I picked up from Romanrob last weekend. Had to extend the fill pipe which was in 8mm copper so replaced it with 8mm Faro polypipe as it is so much easier to work with. Got it all in, bolted into place and the pipework and electrical connections done. Just got to fill it with gas now......

However, after dealing with the petrol leak on the red one I seem to be surrounded by incontinent P38s at the moment. The AC on mine has had a tiny leak for a couple of years but with some stop leak in it and a regas it would last for 5 or 6 months but recently it has got worse and only lasted a couple of months last time it was done. Regassed it again and it lasted a week. Pressure tested it with Nitrogen, put 10 bar into the system but that was down to just under 2 bar by the following day so the leak has definitely got worse. Couldn't find any source of the leak under the bonnet, not even from the 6 year old Britpart condenser, so I started to fear the worst. Got my tame AC man to use his leak tester where a trace gas is put into the system and an electronic sniffer then checks for that. He checked everywhere under the bonnet, including the condenser, and found nothing. As soon as he put the sniffer into one of the dash vents it gave a very high reading so it is the evaporator.

As the evaporator lives right up against the bulkhead in front of the heater box, to change it involves completely removing the dash. Because of that, most breakers don't go that far and leave it in the shell and a new one is over £800! Found one from a breaker in Germany at £150 including postage but then there would almost certainly be duty to pay on import which would increase the price and also delay getting it. However, a call to Mark Skitt, the man in Wales with a field full of P38s and L322s, revealed that he does go that far and is sending me one for £80. It should be here tomorrow or Friday so guess how I will be spending the weekend.

Quite how anyone can drive a P38 without working AC I have no idea. There's so much glass they are like a greenhouse in the sun and, having done a 160 mile round trip on Monday when the HEVAC told me it was 29 degrees outside, was not pleasant.

No idea, a UK car wouldn't bring on the service light for a misfire (or for most other things either) whereas US spec cars seem to bring it on for the slightest reason. Maybe you are just lucky (or a previous owner has fitted a UK spec ECU).

Somebody probably dropped it when fitting it and closed the gap up. A too small gap will cause a misfire too, the gap on the NGKs is 1.1mm (hence the 11 on the end of the type number). For a piston to hit a spark plug you'd need ridiculously high compression pistons and heads that have been skimmed far too much.