Put the gear lever in Park then go to the lever on the side of the gearbox. You should be able to move the shaft the lever attaches to a little so make sure it is hard against the internal end stop, that will confirm it is fully into Park. Run though all the gears, or better still, get someone else to do it while you lay underneath and you can confirm the shaft the lever is attached to is clicking into each gear. Then check that the lights and dash correspond with the lever position. If they don't, you slacken off the nut and bolt that secure the XYZ switch and turn that one way or another until they do.

When you put it in park a lever moves into a slotted wheel on the output shaft and it sounds like it isn't fully moving into Park. You've got two adjustments there, the cable itself that changes the gears and the XYZ switch which shows what position the cable and lever are. It's on slots so you can adjust it to get them to match. If you have been adjusting the cable to match the XYZ switch, you are doing it the wrong way round. You adjust the cable so the gears engage fully when the interior gear lever is showing where it should be, then adjust the XYZ switch so the lights and dash match where the lever is.

ac6 wrote:

It's making me think about little extras to carry with me as well as basic tools, in case I'm far from home when something like this happens!

Been there, done it. Drove back from France in the middle of summer about 4 years ago with the drivers window stuck at a very funny angle due to the very same problem. I've drilled the holes out on mine and used M6 bolts and nyloc nuts instead of the rivets.

This gets even curiouser. Driving it yesterday the blowers were running at half speed but I went round a tight RH bend with a bump partway round and the blowers suddently went to full speed. This suggested a bad connection somewhere. Checked the readings from the assorted sensors and compared them with the Ascot, all virtually the same. Solar sensor was giving readings close to 100 but dropped if I put my hand over it yet the fan speeds didn't change. So, out with the HEVAC and have a good look at it. Spotted what might have been a dry solder joint on pin 2 of C245 which feeds the RH blower so re-soldered that. Gave all connectors a good dose of contact cleaner and put it back in. Now the blowers are running at half speed but if I manually turn the blower speed up, they go to full tilt as they did anyway but stay on full speed if I switch back to Auto. They will also slow down if I cover the solar sensor so seem to be working properly as long as I manually put them on full speed before switching to Auto. Very odd.

I can't swap the HEVAC between the two cars as I modified mine some years ago. I had an intermittent fault which was a bad connection on the main power feed plug into the HEVAC (C244). So I soldered flying leads to the connector pins and put an inline plug and socket on it. That has worked perfectly for at least 10 years but it means that I would need to do a similar modification on any replacement HEVAC.

As I said previously, no need for dye at all, just pressure with a gas, preferably Nitrogen but as long as you are going to be vaccing it all out immediately afterwards, even compressed air. That will leak out from wherever the leak is and you should be able to see it with soapy water.

The correct process when re-gassing a system is to recover any remaining refrigerant (which you won't have), pressurise with Nitrogen and leave for at least 15 minutes to check for any slow leaks (which you find by squirting the leak detecting spray or soapy water on all potential leak points), let the Nitrogen out then vac down to around 500 microns (760,000 microns or 760 Torr is atmospheric pressure at sea level), leave that for 15 minutes again to ensure it maintains it, before putting the R134a in.

You can skip step 1 as there's nothing in it, so go straight to step 2 rather than jumping to step 3.

It should be OK. I used the Screwfix stuff on my daughter's tarmac driveway after we'd changed the clutch on her Toyota without following the instructions in the manual to drain the gearbox oil so it all fell out of the hole the driveshaft should have been in. Didn't damage that but cleaned the pool of gear oil up well enough.

I don't think I have ever seen a P38 where those clips are still in one piece. The ends break off so there is just the centre part left. So getting them 3d printed might be a good idea as I doubt any breakers will have any that are still good (or they won't be once the pipes are unclipped from them). I know the purists will be horrified but mine are just held in place with a couple of tie wraps.

I checked the running temperature on mine yesterday out of interest. Driving back from Paris and the exterior temp display was showing 32 degrees C. Running on the motorway the coolant was at 91 degrees, slowing down in town traffic it rose to 93 so no need for the fans to come on at any time.

One thing I did notice was that my blowers aren't adjusting with sunlight. In the past I've noticed if I get in the car when it has been parked in the sun, the blowers start up then after a few seconds speed up to get the interior temperature down. Once the interior is getting comfortable the fans slow down but will speed up when the sun hits the sensor on top of the dash and slow down again if in shade. At the moment it isn't doing that so there's a problem with either the interior sensor or the sun sensor. Fortunately, the Ascot works as it should so I'll get the Nano out and compare the readings on both cars. I think the interior sensor is working as it should but no idea if the solar sensor is and as the Nano reads it out in w/sqm, I've no idea what is correct and what isn't.

It'll draw some in but probably not enough to do anything useful.

Not half as impressed as his mother was apparently, he wrote her car off!

I install domestic AC systems these days (I know, I retired over 2 years ago but sort of fell into it) and a mate does mobile car AC. When we both did our respective training courses we were told that before vaccing a system, you pressure test it with Oxygen free Nitrogen. On an automotive system it is tested to 10 bar (43 bar on a domestic system) and left for at least 15 minutes during which time you can squirt your leak detecting fluid (or washing up liquid and water) over the system to look for any leaks. As long as you vac it out immediately you've done the test, you won't do any harm using compressed air as long as it is dry. Much easier to find something squirting out than sucking in......

Not mine but one belonging to another forum member who lives just outside Paris. The car was parked, completely off the road, when a young lad who had only just passed his driving test, driving his mother's car and showing off to his two female passengers, lost it on a bend and did this......

But you know what they say, nothing that a bit of T Cut won't sort.......

OK, there was a few other steps in between. First of all, off with what was left of the front bumper which required the club hammer to come out as the sliding nylon fixing was jammed as the bumper was at an odd angle.

Then out with the light unit which, as they don't put salt on the roads in France, just unscrewed making the battery powered De Walt angle grinder in the boot of my car surplus to requirements.

Closer examination showed that the transmission cooler (as it is a diesel) wasn't damaged at all but the outrigger was bent back about 4 inches. Unbolted that and the cooler sprang back to where it should have been. Good job I had a replacement outrigger with me then.....

Then it was just a case of putting it back together with a few new bits. Replacement outrigger bolted on, new headlight unit fitted (apparently the only LH headlight for a LHD car left in Europe and was the last one they had at a supplier in Portugal, nobody else could supply one), both indicators replaced with 2000-on units, The front corner of the wing, while looking OK, had actually bent inwards slightly so with the strip under the headlight in place the grille was about 10mm wider than the gap it should fit in.... Headlight out again and with careful use of a pipe wrench wrapped in cloth and a soft faced mallet, the wing was persuaded back to shape. Headlight in, grille back on and it was time to offer up the bumper. With assistance from the owner's husband and me laying underneath to guide it in, it slotted into place nicely. The ends lined up with the ends of the wings perfectly although it was maybe 5mm lower in the centre than it could have been but by then (10am this morning) the sun was on us and it was getting a bit warm (up to 24 degrees even at that time of the morning), so fitted the blank on one side, the grille on the other and the number plate and we declared it fixed.

All she has to do now is wash and polish the rest of the car so it matches the newly painted front bumper.....

Oh yes, and find a blanking plug that covers the hole where the headlamp wiper would stick through if it had headlamp wipers. She thought she had collected all of the broken bits from around the car but not that unfortunately.

The viscous goes between the front and rear output shafts so under normal circumstances you won't be able to turn one without the other turning. However, if you lock one so it can't turn, then put a socket on a long breaker bar on the other end, you will be able to turn it very slowly against the resistance of the viscous unit. That is its function in life, to allow the front and rear propshafts to turn at a slightly different speed when cornering. Under extreme off road conditions it will also allow one end to turn while the other end isn't, so works instead of a locking centre diff with the advantage that it can't 'wind up' like a locked diff can.

The clunking you can hear will be the chain in the transfer box slopping about. If badly worn, it will jump a tooth under hard acceleration or if you are in low range going up a very steep incline or towing something very heavy. When that happens you get what is often described as a machine gun sound from under the car. Carry on using it like that and you will destroy one of the clutches in the gearbox so it's new gearbox time. If you can't make it skip when putting maximum torque through the transfer case, ignore it, if you can you need to replace the transfer box or rebuild it with a new chain. I could make mine skip last year so took it off and fitted a new chain, bearings and oil seals but that was after around 400,000 miles with a lot of that mileage towing. Chain isn't cheap though, https://ashcroft-transmissions.co.uk/product/borg-warner-chain-p38/ and a further £93 for the bearing a seal kit. Problem with fitting a used transfer case is you don't know how worn the chain in that is. If it has come from a car that has been used primarily on the road it should be fine but if the car was used for a lot of towing or off road it may be as bad as what you already have.

They are all identical though, 4.0 litre or 4.6 petrol and the diesel all use the same transfer box, the only ones that are different are those fitted to cars with a manual gearbox. Word has it that the ones on a diesel wear out faster due to more torque being put through them, so try to find one from a 4.0 litre petrol as that will have had the least torque put through it.

My original gearbox always seemed to change up at lower revs than I expected and was reluctant to drop down a gear when climbing a hill for instance, I had to give it plenty of throttle to make it change down. The Ascot, a 4.6 GEMS, changed up at slightly higher revs (around 2,000 rpm compared with 1,700 on my original box) and would drop down a gear far more readily when needed. My car now drives much the same as the 4.6 (if not better) although I don't know if this is a difference between the two gearboxes and torque converters, my original box had been on its last legs since I've owned the car or if the fact I am now running a 4.6 gearbox ECU and the original one had been re-programmed to meet the requirements of the original owners (Greater Manchester Police) I have no idea. The larger torque converter means I now have effectively a heavier flywheel so I thought that might make it feel different, but it doesn't seem to have done.

The gearbox supplier has fitted the 4.6 gearbox to over 30 4.0 litre cars over the years and has always left the original 4.0 litre ECU in place. I suspect the only difference is the range over which adjustments to suit driving conditions can move. I will admit that mine is now so smooth when accelerating with the rev counter just hopping between 2,000 and 2,200 rpm as it goes up through the gears but the changes can't be felt at all.

Going back to the original subject, I'm about to go out in mine and it is already up to over 26 degrees outside, so I'm going to monitor the engine temperature and see what it is running at now.

I have a feeling I've seen this question before.....

They will do it on a GEMS too but only if the engine temperature is high. My car runs fairly cool, rarely, if ever, getting over 95 degrees C and I've only ever heard the fans kick in once while it was idling when I was calibrating the EAS. However, with the current heatwave affecting most of Europe at the moment, I don't know about the electric fans but my viscous has been locking up regularly, I can hear the jet engine noise it makes when pulling away if I have been stationary for more than a couple of minutes. It would be interesting if you used diagnostics to check the engine temperature on your car and the Thor to see what the running temperature is.

Klarius is Eurocarparts own brand so unless bought from them, it won't be.

The No Nonsense Degreaser actually smells the same as the bubble liquid in kids bubble blowing kits. I put it in the bottle on the pressure washer and use it on the underside of cars with a oil leak before taking them for MoT. Considering the block on the V8 is alloy and the engine mounts and various hoses are rubber, it hasn't done any damage to them, It also got bicycle chain grease stains out of the hem of a white dress belonging to my step daughter.....

It might work but not very well as it's intended for cleaning the exterior of the car and not the greasy bits underneath.

You should be able to do a click and collect service where you get the option to choose which branch you want to collect from. That's how it works over here anyway, you put your postcode in, it shows the nearest branches and if they have it in stock or will be there the following day.

Best to replace the pair. Not only will the joint be rusted solid but you can almost guarantee that if you have different makes side to side you won't be able to get them to hang evenly.