Depends on what you buy. I assume heat pumps are much the same but with AC systems some, usually cheapo Chinese ones, can't provide heat if the external temperature drops below -5C, so a bit pointless. Better quality ones, like the Fujitsu units I use, will still provide the normal amount of heat down to -15C. I installed a Panasonic branded system that the customer had sourced himself and the manual said that the difference between ambient and output should be greater than 8 degrees C, pretty poor by anyone's standards.

That's where they always leak. A combination of the rubber foam holding moisture so it can rot through the thin aluminium and vibration chafing though.

But it also says Out f Stock. But the one thing with JLR is that if you click the Notify me button, they will get stock in as you are showing there is demand.

I may well do that when I get the time. I'm in Spain next week and nothing bores me more than sitting in the sun doing nothing so it would be a good opportunity.

Try here https://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/c-329-cloth-covered-edge-trim, they may well have something that will do the job.

My phone was going bonkers last week with enquiries. The problem with new houses is they are so well insulated to keep the warm air in and not contribute to global warming, that as soon as we get a few days of warm weather bedrooms get ridiculously hot. I fitted a system in a new build, 3 storey, town house last week, one unit in the ground floor living room and one in each of the top floor bedrooms. Even when it was only 20 degrees outside it was up to 26 in the two bedrooms. The householder said it had got up to over 40 degrees in the bedrooms during the heatwave that they'd slept in the living room. Bugger of a job to do though as I had to hire a cherry picker as it was way too high to be able to work from a ladder or small scaffold tower.

During the winter I was installing systems for people so they could turn their radiators off and use the AC for heating instead as it is far cheaper to run, free if you have PV solar to supply the power. 2.5kW of heating for around 600W of electrical input, that's what you call efficient.

Chrisp38 wrote:

Thanks Richard, would ground be on another wire or does it get that through the frame?

No, it's power to one and ground to the other to go one way, then just reverse them to go the other way.

But it has been working fine (I assume), so it isn't going to be a wiring fault. Doubtful it had a singlepoint on it in the past, not on a Thor.

Don't forget that different modules use different pins in the OBD socket, so just because diagnostics won't connect to one system doesn't mean it won't connect to others. I know it's a D2 but if it was a P38 it could be a water leak meaning half the pins have rotted away.

Grey/Green and Grey/White. I have a feeling they are thicker than the others too.

Exactly like an air source heat pump except rather than generating 55-60 degrees C and trying to use that to heat water to be pumped around radiators, it blows that out as hot air the same as a fan heater so has a much greater affect on room temperature. That is when it is heating of course, when cooling that hot air is blown outside and the cold side is in the house. I've just got in from installing one now. When doing the commissioning you run it first flat out cooling and check the interior and exterior temperatures, then do the same with it on maximum heating. When cooling I was getting air at 2.1 degrees being blown into the room and the outside unit was running at 26.8, only marginally above ambient. When on flat out heating the indoor unit was blowing air out at 61.3 degrees while the outdoor unit was down to 16.1. Not bad when you consider it was only drawing 550W of power to do that.

The other difference between AC and an air source heat pump is the Government will give you a grant and reduced VAT on an air source heat pump but bugger all on AC as the cooling aspect means you are getting a further benefit and not just replacing a perfectly adequate (and cheap) gas boiler with something horrendously expensive and not as good.

Not when it is £60 for insufficient refrigerant for a P38 and you still need to buy the hose on top https://www.halfords.com/motoring/engine-oils-and-fluids/air-con/ac-pro-auto-air-conditioning-recharge---gas-r134a-264627.html.

I've got a couple of mates that both do mobile AC servicing at £55 a time. With the weather we've been having they've both been flat out and booked up solid for the next couple of weeks.

I don't think anyone without the kit will have done the job when you can take the car in and get it tested for leaks and refilled for £50 or thereabouts. It isn't something that many people here will attempt.

No, it doesn't go through the multiway connectors that suffer from water ingress, so you can rule that out. If it has been intermittent, I would suspect the brushes in the motor itself.

Yes, you can. There's two wires, power one way round makes it go up, reverse them and it goes down. The reason I asked about the locks and mirrors is that the BeCM sends a data signal to the door outstation and tells it to send power to wherever it is needed. if it was a problem with the outstation, then nothing would work on that door.

Changed the front diff. Coming back from Paris last week I noticed a strange noise and what can best be described as a tingling through the steering wheel at 80 mph on a neutral throttle. It wasn't there under power or on the over run, only when cruising. Figured I should really do something about it as I'm driving to southern Spain at the end of the week. So, last Monday, I phoned Ashcrofts to be told there was a 3 week lead time so went for the second option of secondhand and called in at my local source of used bits, Avenger 4x4. They didn't have any as they sell all their diffs to a company in Halifax call Beaumont 4x4 gearboxes so called them. Yes they could have a rebuilt front diff built up for me by Wednesday at £35 cheaper than Ashcroft. They called me on Wednesday to say it was all ready and they wanted paying before they would ship it. I mentioned that I've been involved with P38s for 12 years and had never heard of them. Apparently they haven't advertised to end users but supply a lot of the specialist trade.

Anyway, Thursday morning a man staggers up my driveway with a very heavy cardboard box containing a spotlessly clean, shrinkwrapped front diff. As most of you will know, since retiring from the day job I've been installing domestic air conditioning systems and for some unknown reason, I have been particularly in demand just recently so today was the first day I've had free.

We all know that RAVE has extra steps that aren't really necessary but when something hasn't been taken apart for quite a few years, the shortcuts wouldn't work so followed the book. Took almost 5 hours to get both front driveshafts out,although surprisingly both ABS sensors came out easily enough (I was half expecting to have to drive to Avenger with the ABS light showing to pick up at least one replacement sensor) and be ready to drop the old diff out. Old one out and with Dina driving the jack while I guided the new one into place, it went in. Bolted it up and started putting everything else back together. As I was no longer fighting bolts that were last touched 23 years ago and hubs that hadn't moved in the same length of time, putting it back together only took an hour or so. Did the same mod on the front of the propshaft as I'd done on the back end and replaced the hex head bolts with Allen bolts, filled the axle with fresh oil and took it out for a quick blast up the A1(M). No noise, no vibration, just perfectly smooth all the way up to 90 mph. I think I can call that a success. Just got to give it a service now before Friday.

Before putting anything in, you need to vac the system to get rid of the remaining Nitrogen and any air. That will draw the refrigerant in. To add the oil separately, you need the proper kit, so if you can buy R134a with the oil added, then use that.

Switchpack talks to the BeCM which in turn talks to the door outstation which supplies power to the window motor. Your best bet is going to be to follow the diagram in the ETM. Does everything else on the same door work, locks and mirrors?

There isn't an option to tell the BeCM whether they are fitted or not, but you should be able to control them from it under the Outputs menu. This assumes you have a high line BeCM which will have the relevant bits in it to drive them, if the car is an early, low spec, one it might have a low line BeCM which won't have the required circuitry to supply them with power. I'd start by seeing if you have power to the seats.

Not sure if the wire colours will be the same but on the P38 you've got a White/Orange on pin 1 which is a power feed straight from the fuel pump relay and a White/Blue which goes to the fuel pump through the contact in the inertia switch on pin 3. The contact is a changeover so under normal operation these two pins are connected together so power from the fuel pump relay goes directly to the fuel pump. The third wire on pin 2 (a White/Purple) goes to the BeCM to tell it if the switch has operated. Under normal circumstances, this is open circuit but on impact, the changeover contact connects it to the fuel pump. So it disconnects the power and supplies the BeCM with a ground via the fuel pump.

davew wrote:

(The 'high pressure' side originates from the compressor (as gas) which reduces through the Condenser/fan as it cools (to liquid) but if there is a "divide" per se that could be considered the Expansion Valve... and it is then the Liquid/Gas transition in the Evaporator that produces the cooling - if that helps..).

Wrong way round. The compressor sucks in gas and it turns to liquid under pressure and gets hot in the condenser, which is why the condenser has cooling fans. The liquid then goes through the expansion valve where it boils, turns into a vapour and draws heat (to use the correct term) and gets cold. Same as using a lot out of a Calor gas cylinder when the liquid turns to a vapour and the cylinder gets cold, sometimes cold enough for condensation, if not ice, to form on the outside. The vapour passes through the evaporator (not strictly correct terminology as it evaporates at the expansion valve) drawing more heat from the surrounding air giving the the cold. That vapour then goes through the compressor and the cycle starts again. The low pressure side is where the refrigerant is a vapour and the high pressure side is where it is a liquid.

As to why one side will hold a vacuum and the other side won't, I've no idea as it is a closed circuit. If doing a pressure or vacuum test, it shouldn't matter which port you use because of that. The only time you can have problems is if there has been a leak in the past which someone has tried to fix with a leak sealer and it has sealed something that shouldn't be sealed. But if everything is new, that is pretty unlikely. The domestic systems I am installing only have one port which on the low side but as they are reversible to heat as well as cool (the compressor can reverse so the condenser becomes the evaporator and vice versa), when heating that port becomes the high side.