Not really electrikery or even oily so I thought I'd post it in here even thought it isn't an introduction. But I thought you could all do with a laugh at my expense.

As I’ve mentioned my car has 5,000 miles or thereabouts to do in the next 3 weeks, but it hasn’t started too well. Checked all my documents on Tuesday evening to realise the MoT runs out on the 23rd. Managed to book it in for Wednesday afternoon but it failed. When Marty and I changed the front axle back around Christmas time, the one we fitted had split boots on both ends of the link rod that joins the two wheels together. I’d meant to change them but never got round to it, figured I’d leave it until they were worn and starting to slop. Not too much of a problem as I would be back from my first 2,000 mile round trip on the 22nd, so ordered the complete set so it would be at home waiting for me to bung it on as soon as I was home and could drop it in for retest.

Set off on Thursday morning towing a car transporter trailer loaded with a 1974, Series 3, V12 E Type Jag which needed to be delivered to my mates workshop in Antibes in the South of France and 120 kilos of cast iron fireplace that needed taking down too. When I’d called to book the hire trailer I’d said I needed the biggest they’d got and big means heavy. I was towing a good 3 tonnes. All was going well until somewhere near riddlemethis’s place at about 3am on Friday, the AC stopped working and it was getting a bit warm. Checked it with the Naonocom and it said it was working but I’d only got just over 9V arriving at the compressor clutch, not enough to pull it in. I could dab a wire from the battery onto it and the clutch would engage and stay in on the 9V but as soon as it released, it wouldn’t pull in again. Figured that at the next LPG and coffee stop, I’d upgrade it to the later system where the HEVAC pulls in a relay which would switch power directly from the battery. With a few lengths of wire, my crimp tool and a spare relay, that was done in about 10 minutes fitted and tried. Clutch clicked in and then immediately dropped out again. Nanocom showed that the HEVAC was getting offended. It had detected that the clutch wasn’t drawing as much current as it should so had logged a fault and stopped trying to engage it. Bugger, some things are just too clever for their own good. Looks like it was going to be a warm journey for the rest of the way so we carried on with the windows open..

Near Aix the car seemed to fill with orange dust. Couldn’t work out what it was to start with until I looked in the mirror. I’ve got the new material for the headlining but that is scheduled for next week when I’m back home. The turbulence of driving with the windows open had released the headlining at the back and the rotted remains of the foam was coming out and flying around inside the car. Stuck it back up when we next stopped but by then everything inside the car, including us, had turned orange.

Arrived at the workshop Friday morning and we unloaded the trailer. Loaded the return load, a 1967 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, and set off to my mate’s house. As I was slowing for the last toll point (St Isidore), about 10 miles from his house, it went Beep, Alternator Fault comes up on the dash with a red picture of a battery. Pulled up and opened the bonnet. All looked fine, alternator looked like an alternator, hadn’t burst into flames or melted and the serpentine belt was attached and turning nicely. Figured I should be able to make it to his house with the battery not being charged. The last part of the run to his house is 3km up a mountain track which rises almost 500m. It’s very narrow and bumpy with two hairpin bends and I’ve got to get up it in a car that may run out of electric at any time so the engine will stop while towing a trailer. Daren’t let the revs drop so went up there at about twice the speed I would do normally with the trailer dragging in the undergrowth on either side. Part way up the engine note seemed to change but I ignored that as it was still running and the dash hadn’t lit up with any more warnings. Got to the top, parked and opened the bonnet. Put my meter on the battery and it was showing 11.8V with the engine running. Definitely an alternator fault.

Found a pair of gloves so I didn’t have to wait for it to cool down. It was pretty warm having done just short of 1,000 miles in an ambient temperature of 31 degrees (almost as warm as the occupants of the car with no AC in 31 degrees!) but it was soon off. I had the vain hope that it was something simple like a stuck brush that could be sorted with a quick poke. No such luck. It seems that 316,600 miles is the finite life of a Marelli P38 alternator. The brushes were pretty worn but not as worn as the slip rings. That’s the black plastic under the ring that the brush is bearing against, not just a bit of blackened brass……

Just down the road from my mates place, well about 450m in the vertical plane and probably no more than 1km in the horizontal, but a 4 km drive away, is a place called Cassauto 06. A car breakers although I’ve driven past it no end of times and assumed it was no longer in business as where you used to see a pile of dead Renaults, now you could see nothing more than the sign. He assured me they were still there and phoned them. Alternator for a V8 petrol P38 Range Rover, no problem mate, got loads of them, he was told. I found that slightly hard to believe but clutching one very dead, and still very warm, alternator, we went down there. I was convinced we would get there to find a pile of assorted alternators, none of which would fit a P38. Seems that everything is hidden out of sight these days and there were at least 3 P38s and a Discovery in there amongst other stuff that used to be common but isn’t these days. When was the last time you saw a Renault 16 or a Peugeot 304 cabriolet? There’s at least one of each in this place, pretty much rust free too! The guy goes off and comes back with a very familiar looking alternator. Put it next to mine to make sure it was the same then went out the back. Came back a few minutes later with a pristine looking, fully tested, guaranteed for 30 days, 100A alternator with a Land Rover label showing it to be an AMR3021 (standard fit on an earlier P38 but then superseded to a different number). Cost me 150 Euros but probably a lot cheaper than if I’d used my ADAC European breakdown membership who would have got one for me but it would have been from a main dealer at main dealer price and probably not until Monday at the earliest.

Fitted it and was quite surprised to find that 11.8V was still enough to start the engine without any of the usual gearbox fault, etc that usually pop up if a battery is a bit iffy. Meter on the battery showed it was charging nicely but the engine note still sounded odd. A quick look underneath showed why.

Bouncing over the bumpy track at a stupid speed had caused the outlet pipe on the centre silencer box break off. It looked well rotted anyway and I’m surprised the MoT tested hadn’t at least commented on it. Interestingly, it’s only a couple of years old. The centre box started to leak at the seam so I ordered a new one which arrived with a Britpart sticker on it, but it was cheap. The one I took off had Land Rover on it and I’m fairly sure it, along with the downpipes and back end, are the original ones. The silencer itself is fine, it’s the rear pipe that had let go. Sounded quite throaty and figured that as long as the front pipe into the silencer wasn’t in the same state, it would get me home. Concerned that the front pipe would be taking the weight of the whole silencer, I used a bit of steel garden plant wire to at least take a bit of the weight and hoped it would last.

It did last and got me home although I must admit that after about 700 miles I remembered a post from someone on the other forum who had a blowing exhaust burn through an EAS pipe. With the exhaust gases coming out in front of the rear axle I then started imagining the axle oil solidifying from the heat and the diff seizing, the brake fluid boiling in the pipe running over the axle (even though there isn’t one) leaving me with no brakes or the rear air spring catching fire and dropping me onto the bumpstops. But none of the above happened and we got home.

We even had air con. I noticed that the feed from the HEVAC goes to the connector in the RH kick panel. I’d checked the one in the LH side but don’t think I’ve ever been inside the other one. It looked OK but I snipped the wires into the plug and bypassed it anyway. AC started to work but it didn’t last, so on a fuel stop I checked and found 11.2V at the compressor so ran a wire from the compressor to inside the car. As there were enough volts to hold it I once engaged, all that was needed was enough volts to pull it in in the first place. Every time it started to get a bit warm in the car, Dina would poke the bit of wire into the fag lighter socket, the clutch would engage and we’d get cold air. As soon as it started to get warm, she’d just give it full battery volts and it would all go cold again. No problem.

Just got to get it all sorted out before the weekend when we set of on a 3,000 mile round trip……

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!

Those of you that were at the Summer Camp will have met my other half, but we found a way of inadvertently worrying lots of people this weekend.. We were off to the South of France last Thursday, straight after work. I had a car that needed delivering and another that needed bringing back. Rather than the usual Classics that get stuck on a trailer behind the P38, these were both modern cars that were to be driven and Dina wanted to do some of the driving. So, as women do, she posted on Facebook that she was going to Nice for the weekend. Now we weren't actually going to Nice but if she'd posted that we were going to Tourette Levens, which is about 6 miles inland from Nice, nobody would have known where it was.

We left home straight from work, headed down to Eurotunnel and were happily cruising a Porsche Macan Turbo at a steady rate southwards. Dina's phone had decided it wasn't going to connect to any of the French networks at all and was showing no service all the time (turned out that when she'd changed her contract recently, 3 had decided to bar roaming on it). We'd got about as far as Riddlemethis's place around Dijon when I got a text from my daughter telling me to check the news as something had happened in Nice. At that time what information was coming out was still a bit sparse and we carried on, Nice was still another 500 miles away. Checking a couple of hours later we found the extent of the atrocities so I sent Dina's daughter a message telling her that we hadn't got there yet but her Mum had no service on her phone so not to worry.

However, most people had assumed she had done the sensible thing and had flown down to Nice and was there enjoying the firework display to celebrate Bastille Day so were sending her messages on Facebook checking that she was OK and getting no reply........

Until we got back Sunday night, she couldn't reply but her daughter spent most of the weekend getting messages from very worried people asking if she'd heard from her Mum as they'd tried and got no reply. She was, she was happily taking her turn driving back in what she described as an animal. The car we had to bring back is a 2014 Audi RS7. As standard the twin turbo'd V8 puts out 565 bhp but this one has been chipped to 720 bhp. It's the first time I've had a drag race away from an Autoroute toll against a Ferrari and won......

In anticipation of 5,000 miles in the next 2 months and the forthcoming respray and general tidy up of my car, I've decided to do the odd little niggly job that I've thought about for a long time. Things that work but had an outside chance of needing attention at the side of the road if I was unlucky. One of these was the hoses to and from the throttle body heater. On the GEMS, and I suspect the Thor is much the same, there's a short pipe that runs from the inlet manifold to the heater and another long one that goes from the heater back to the coolant reservoir. When I had it all in bits rebuilding the engine, these needed a bit of attention. The short pipe had split and been shortened at some point and was only just long enough and the long one is a hard plastic pipe with hose on each end so it could fit onto the heater and reservoir. The hard plastic had gone brittle so cracked when I moved it and the hoses on the ends were looking a bit dodgy too. Unable to find any 8mm inside diameter coolant hose, I'd used fuel hose and had a couple of joins in the hard plastic bit too. It worked but I recently found that fuel hose isn't ideal. From previous experience I knew that you can't put fuel through coolant hose as it dissolves it but figured the other way round would be OK. It isn't. It isn't intended for the sort of temperatures so goes very hard and inflexible. Originally I thought about replacing the hard plastic with 8mm copper microbore pipe but would still need some 8mm inside diameter coolant hose for the ends. So why not replace the lot with one run of hose and avoid any joins? Finding something suitable wasn't easy but I ended up buying a length of this stuff http://www.autosiliconehoses.com/silicone-hose-shop/performance-silicone-hoses/silicone-1-ply-radiator-heater-hose-up-to-30-metres.html. 8mm inside diameter silicon coolant hose.

The short run from the inlet manifold was no problem at all, it's nice and flexible and pushed over the flared ends of the metal stubs at both ends easily. Initially I ran the longer one by the same route as the hard plastic so it ran along the front of the engine under the big metal thing that holds the wiring loom away from the serpentine belt, but it is so flexible that there was a danger that it could move forward and touch the back of the belt. So I re-routed it to run under the back of the alternator. A nice straight run and not in danger of being caught in any moving parts. 10mm I/D hose could also be used to replace the breather pipe from the top of the radiator, the one that seemed to be different on every car we checked at the summer camp. It's not cheap but seems to be good stuff and was delivered next day.

Next job is the headlining followed by the respray.......

Been outside playing with the car this evening, mainly giving the LPG system a tweak. Decided to take it for a quick blast down the road with the laptop on the passenger seat so I could see what the LPG system was doing. It had been idling for a while so was up to temperature and I dropped it into reverse still at idle. Slowly reversed about 2 feet and the engine cut out. Tried to restart it and nothing. Then noticed the check engine light wasn't coming on and the LPG switch wasn't lighting up. Tried the EKA code, no different. Tried the Nanocom and it said everything was fine. Started using a bit of logic and figured that the LPG switch would be getting an ignition switched supply so no check engine light and no starter either could be down to a lack of ignition switched electric somewhere. Fuse 26 was blown. Put in a new 20A fuse, check engine light came on, LPG switch lit up, starter turned and the engine fired up. Into reverse, managed about 10 feet this time and it cut out again. Fuse 26 blown. Another 20A fuse put in, reversed out of the driveway, into drive and set off for test drive (with a box of spare fuses on the passenger seat). Drove about a mile and a half to my local test road (a bit that used to be the southbound carriageway of the A1 but now doesn't go anywhere). Tried it in normal, floored it in Sport and confirmed that the LPG system was working spot on and keeping the mixture correct no matter how much I tried to make it work (foot to the floor in Sport and it didn't change up into top until I hit 85mph!). Got to the end of the road, went to turn round and managed no more than 10 feet in reverse and it cut out again. Fuse 26 had blown.

Now Fuse 26 supplies ignition switched volts to the engine ECU (which would explain the lack of a check engine light), the ignition coils and the lambda sensor heaters. As far as I can see from the diagram, putting it into reverse would have no affect on the current draw on fuse 26. So why the hell does it blow when I put it into reverse and not when It's idling or going forwards? When reversing out of the driveway, I don't even give it any throttle, just let it creep back at idle so it isn't likely to be a torque reaction when reversing causing something to short out, so what the hell is it?

A couple of months ago my car developed what sounded like a whining diff. As I had replaced the rear not that many months previously it couldn't be that so I assumed it was from the front. There was a bit of up and down slop on the input and oil that did resemble metalflake paint so I figured that had to be it. Marty fitted new top and bottom ball joints to a spare front axle he had, I went to his workshop and we fitted that. On the way home it did seem to be much better and the front end felt much more precise so the ball joints had done the job. Over the last few weeks though, the whine still seemed to be there. I wasn't sure if it was me being hyper sensitive to it and do remember my missus once saying that it sounded like a bus and had almost come to the conclusion that it had always been there. The noise always seemed to be coming from the centre of the car. I'd changed the transfer case anyway and that hadn't made any difference so I was starting to suspect something in the gearbox. But dropping it into neutral didn't cause the noise to change and running it through the gears with the transfer box in neutral and it wasn't there.

Yesterday I decided to convince myself once and for all so crawled underneath and dropped the rear propshaft off. Took it for a run down the road and realised that it is most definitely the rear diff. What a difference with no drive through it, near silent just as I remember it! No noticale slop in it at all but something definitely isn't right inside. However, I did come very close to a major disaster. I got home, went to refit the propshaft and found the parking brake drum had almost fallen off. The countersunk screw that holds it in was on the last turn of it's thread and another half mile or so and the drum would have fallen off and shot out from under the car doing who knows what damage on it's way out to freedom. So if you are going to try running with no rear propshaft, make sure you put at least one of the nuts onto a stud to hold it in place.

A visit to Avenger 4x4 to pick up a replacement rear diff would seem to be my first call tomorrow. Unlike the front, the rear is a piece of piss to change......

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......

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?

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.

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

Having also got fed up with some interfering, self centred, redneck moderator with nothing better to do, I'm on here as well. Richard Gilbert although known at work as Dick (hence Gilbertd), I've currently got an ex-police (so with a very odd spec) R reg (98 model but built in October 97) 4.0 P38 on LPG and have no intention of selling it ever. Currently showing 307,000 miles, but with a nice new engine from V8 Developments (highly recommended) 20,000 miles ago. Just got to keep replacing the other bits that are wearing out. Also got a 97 4.0SE that I bought with the intention of sorting the odd little problems and flogging it on for a profit. But like all great plans, the thing had been so neglected that as fast as I sorted one problem, two more appeared so it's currently getting the better bits swapped onto the ex-plod before it goes to a local Indie who breaks them for spares. Oh yes, and I previously had a 93 Classic LSE, also on LPG, so know a bit about them too.