Kbs wrote:

Many years ago, I was developing OBD systems and I cant think of a link (other than rotten loom) between these errors (gearbox, cranksensor, temp sender).

I'd be interested in a chat about the development of OBD systems but that can wait until another time after your questions on thread have been answered.

My Launch gear seems able to do quite a lot on Land/Rangerovers including suspension stuff, not a cheap option but the Launch will talk to most modules on most vehicles.

If not a collapsed flexi could it be a problem inside the ABS unit?

Gilbertd wrote:

V8 Developments do ported heads in 3 stages (http://www.v8developments.co.uk/headporting.htm) but I'm not aware of any 4 valve or OHC aftermarket ones. While checking out the Wildcat heads, I came across this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115732141242, a pre top hatted block for not that much more than the cost of getting top hats fitted to an existing block. A good mod if building an engine is to use the 4.6 crank and con rods with 4.0 litre pistons. As the 4.0 litre pistons have a smaller dish, that ups the compression ratio to around 10.3:1 (ish). Pre-ignition won't be a problem with the knock sensors to back off the ignition timing if it occurs or if running on LPG with the much higher octane rating.

I remember V8 Developments advertising in car mags I read in the early 90's.

Come to think of it, while there are plenty aftermarket heads (especially Chinese made) for SBC and SBF engines (with various chamber volumes so you can pick your compression ratio) there doesn't seem to be any 4 valve per cylinder OHC heads for them either... Again, given the popularity of the engines would've thought there'd be a few firms making them. I quite fancied some big flow heads for my SBF boat engine, just spent over £120 on one of my cast iron heads but I could've bought 2 new big flow aluminium heads for around £700 and gained around 100bhp... but then to use the boat on saltwater I would've needed to fit a closed cooling system with water to water heat exchanger setup. Strange that there are no 4 valve per cylinder OHC heads for SBC and SBF engines when there was at least one firm making 4 valve per cylinder heads for the 4 cylinder Pinto engine (and iIrc it was an American firm) well before Cosworth made their 4V per cylinder Pinto head... Begs the question why they didn't make 4V per cylinder SBF and SBC heads, would only need to fit a toothed cambelt drive (or 2) between the harmonic balancer and front pulley, remove the tappets and plug the tappet oil feeds.

Just finished the L322 LPG conversion, can't believe how long this one took me I've been working on it all week! when 10 years ago I used to rattle them off in a few days! For sure I've done things a bit differently on this conversion compared to those I did 10 years ago, had to relearn some stuff that I used to be extremely familiar with, in fact so familiar it seems I didn't even bother making notes. All good and running great but I haven't quite finished even now, I still have to refit some boot trim, the engine cover, couple of nuts on the heater air intake panel that goes over the engine and recheck calibration from a cold start in the morning. Checked my records, seems it's been 10 years since I last converted an L322 (the last one I did was a supercharged one, this is the 4.4 normally aspirated engine) but I've fixed the LPG system on a great many L322's and other model Land/Rangerovers during that 10 years and converted around 1000 vehicles since then.

I was expecting to get this L322 converted in 3 days leaving Thursday and Friday to work on my boat engine. I've already got all the short block re-assembled (more or less, still need to fit the brass core plugs), the last thing I did was to re-lap the valves on one of the heads. The next thing I'll be doing is to check the other head and re-lap the valves, then I'll be refitting the tappets and refitting the heads. Can't wait to get it all back together and refitted in the boat so I can try it at least on the river once or twice before winter.

I'm surprised there was never a bigger market for better flowing heads for the RV8. Also given it was in many ways ahead of it's time being an aluminium V8, with a long span of production, and used by sports car manufacturers, it's surprising there were never 4 valve per cylinder overhead cam heads made (which could use external cam belts).

I once bought 2 'grass track' spec RV8's, one with big cam and valves, the other with standard-ish cam but supposedly stronger bottom end, with the intention of fitting one of them in a Ford Sierra. I eventually bought a 'proper' Ford Sapphire (Sierra) Cosworth with the well known 2L Pinto derived but 16valve and turbo'd Cosworth engine but there were a few RV8 powered Sierra's around.

leolito wrote:

Make sure the owner read this and comes for his wheel lol

Hehe! After 10 years I doubt they'll be coming back for it :-)

Recently I got rid of a full car (Merc ML AMG55) that an owner left with me for over 7 years, I've had the wheel here years longer than that.

no10chris wrote:

I have a 19” with good tyre £25, it’s the type with dimples round the edge, don’t ask me to put a picture, I gave up trying that a long time ago 😂🤣

Reminds me...

I have a mint condition standard L322 alloy wheel here, it was the spare wheel on an L322 I converted to LPG years ago, both the wheel and the tyre on it look like new, completely unused, but the tyre will be old so will probably need replacing anyway (or may be OK as is to use just as a spare).

It's been here over 10 years. I don't remember whether it's one I forgot to put back in a car after converting it to LPG or if the owner asked if they could leave it here to come back and collect it later, I do remember the owner phoned me about it a few weeks after I'd converted their car asking me to hold on to it for a bit longer and they'd come and collect it but that was over 10 years ago.

If anyone wants to come and collect it they can have it.

I don't know the dimensions of a P38 petrol tank so can't advise what LPG tank(s) you could replace the petrol tank with if you wanted to run monofuel LPG.

For the old Discovery's it was common practice to remove the original petrol tank, fit a smaller petrol tank and LPG tank in it's place.

The design of the Classic lent itself well to fitting a very unusual design of LPG tank underneath... a trapezoidal design tank. But that design was almost uniquely used on Classics, high cost and unusual to fit even on Classics. As has been said, most Classics had other tank options fitted, mostly cylinder tank in the luggage area or vertical toroidal tank in the spare wheel location.

On a P38 the biggest size tank that will fit flush in the spare wheel well is 720mm x 270mm. Such size tank will be rated at between 84 and 95 litres, the lower figures for 30 degree hollow centred designs, the higher figures for zero degree or 4 hole designs. It is possible to remove the bottom of the spare wheel well to fit a deeper tank (more than 270mm and 720mm wide tanks are made up to 350mm deep) but the P38 design has a rear antiroll bar close to the spare wheel well which cannot be fouled by the fitting of any deeper tank, hence most tanks in P38 spare wheel wells will be 720x270.

On P38's a second tank can be fitted in the luggage area. Such tank can be made removable using (e.g.) hanson fittings. I don't own a P38 but my Elgrand has a 720x270mm 95L 4 hole fitted to the external spare wheel position and a couple of hanson fittings that extend into the rear luggage area - currently I have an 80L cylinder tank hooked up to those hanson fittings and I refuelled with 175 litres of LPG today. When I no longer want the additional cylinder in the boot fitted I will very easily remove it just by disconnecting the 2 hanson fittings. My 720x270 95L 4 hole has working capacity of 95L because I modified it to fill to 100% instead of the usual 80%. My 90L rated cylinder fills to 80L.

When you have the ability to add a 2nd tank inside using quick release gas connectors you're not just limited to adding that single extra tank,. I could add any number of extra tanks and carry them inside, switching tanks as easily as switching between quick release connectors. The permanently fitted 720x270 external tank gives me 300+ mile range, the 80 net litre cylinder gives me around 300 miles on top, I could easily add a 3rd / 4th tank. Just with 2 tanks fitted I can tow my large caravan 500 miles without needing to refuel. I have thought about removing the petrol tank to permanently fit an LPG tank in it's place - which might (combined with just the 720x270) give range on LPg of 600 miles or 900 miles with 1 additional tank.. With that kind of range on LPG you don't need the facility to be able to run on petrol.

Aragorn wrote:

I'm guessing the reluctance to crank was due to water in the cylinder(s)...?

I'd think so, my boat's SBF V8 did the same when it had water in cylinder(s) from a failed marine (water cooled) exhaust manifold... And it had a knock so I did wonder if hydrolock had bent a rod, but as it turned out at least it hadn't bent a rod.

I won't go into much detail about what I've done to the engine so far to fix it but had to modify my engine crane just to lift it out, found scratches in at least one of the cylinders as though the rings were binding, on removing the piston from that cylinder found it was scored / burned and rings had lost springiness. Took ages honing it (especially cylinder 2), put 8 new pistons in (pita pressing old pistons on and heating little ends to fit rods to new pistons). The only part of rebuilding the engine I haven't personally done is skimming the heads, I took them to a machine shop yesterday to be skimmed. They heads might've been OK but had a bit of pitting around the fire ring area and I didn't want to risk it.

Post crossed with Gilbert's

Great if it works but at over £30 a bottle it's a bit of a gamble. Adding additional bottles might sort my V6's problem but it's knowing where to draw the line, I 'bottled out' (heh pun) after trying one bottle. If only we could buy bottled nanobots lol.

I tried Steel Seal in my V6 which will have a liner because it's an all aluminium engine but it still has the same symptoms. Not sure if I followed the instructions exactly though, the car hasn't been on the road since but I have fully warmed it up and left it running for quite some time.

I own a vehicle with a V6 engine that has a blown head gasket, it pressurises the cooling system when running and even if I let it cool down then leave it cool for a few days before opening the rad cap there's still pressure in the cooling system.

I strongly suspected it had a hg problem but confirmed it using a sniff test.

I have cooling system pressure test equipment which I intend (when I finally get around to it) to use to try to identify which hg is leaking by pressurising the system when it's cool and see if I can see any coolant weeping into cylinders using a borescope through spark plug holes. Not sure if this will work though, because it obviously leaks whilst running (when there's a lot of pressure in the cylinders) but seals against the smaller pressure in the cooling system with the engine off and/or cool... So maybe this won't work because even if I pressurise the cooling system to (say) 5 bar pressure that still won't be enough pressure to cause coolant to leak into cylinder(s), and such pressure could be enough to ruin the hg that currently isn't leaking.

Chrisp38 wrote:

Lpgc wrote:

Wonder if some cars won't turn the heated screen on if ambient temperature is high?

Is there no way to connect an Ammeter or just listen for alternator whine?

I did wonder about ambient temperature but I'm getting voltage on/off with the switch at 28 degrees.

Ahh yes of course

Yes I meant connect the ammeter to just the hw wiring not at the battery

Wonder if some cars won't turn the heated screen on if ambient temperature is high?

Is there no way to connect an Ammeter or just listen for alternator whine?

Maybe consider just buying a set of second hand injectors? I know cleaning products can work to fix lesser injector issues such as duff spray pattern but if they're bad enough to cause a misfire I wouldn't fancy the chances of a cleaning product fixing them.

I recently bought a set of 6 second hand injectors (for a V6 vehicle I was tasked with fixing for the firm I worked for) for around £60 including shipping.

The firm runs mostly large vans and flatbacks that were originally diesel powered but they remove the diesel engines, fit LS3 petrol engines and convert them to LPG. But the V6 vehicle I mentioned above was the company owner's brother's own car, it had been parked in the works yard for 18months and had a constant misfire on at least 2 cylinders. Before I worked there they'd dropped the engine and fitted a new valve, the ECU had been left unplugged and had got full of water so they sent that off to have it fixed. Still the misfires remained. They blamed the ECU and had another ECU cloned to match the one they thought hadn't been fixed properly. Then it refused to start at all. I diagnosed and fixed it... The reason it wouldn't start at all was because the immobiliser had kicked in after the ECU didn't recognise the key after 5 attempts at starting, so I coded the keys to the ECU. Then it started but only ran on 4. Then it wouldn't crank... Both due to 2 cylinders being hydraulic locked with petrol due to stuck open injectors (no doubt due to dirt ingress because the guy who removed and refitted the engine didn't flush the fuel line or injector rails before reconnecting). Then it still only ran on 4, due to 2 failed coil packs. I was thrown a curveball on that because one of the mechanics there said he'd already ruled coil packs out by swapping the positions around... I expect either a coincidence or the coil packs failed due to something related with the fuel locks but the mechanic reckoned 2 failed coil packs had caused ECU failures, I doubt there was a problem with the first or second ECU after they came back from the ECU firm first time but they mistook stuck open injectors, failed coil packs and need to recode keys for an ECU problem.

It could be a petrol injector problem or could be the failed lambda sensor / learned fuel trims / less likely learned position for the IAV that's the problem?

Or even something (Pitagora?) that's not connecting all the petrol injectors when it's running on petrol?

I've forgotten what brand(s) of petrol injector cleaning fluids I've used in the past, Wynn's rings a bell. Maybe ask Dai Brace (ClassicSwede), I had a chat with him last night (first chat in maybe a year), I know he highly rates certain brands of injector cleaning fluids but I forget which. I've just sent him a txt so he might see this thread.

Recently I've been working for another firm a few days a week, they have a very well equipped workshop including petrol injector testing / ultrasonic cleaning equipment (which I've used while I've been there). If you'd asked me last week or the week before you could have maybe sent me your injectors and I'd have put them on the machine for you but I got a message from the firm's boss this week to say they don't need me this week... and I doubt they'll be needing me again soon.

Edit - Dai txted me back and sent me this link https://www.forteuk.co.uk/product/petrol-specialist-injector-cleaner/

I reckon whether series or parallel plumbing is best depends on all the factors mentioned above (flow rate of reducer, flow rate of heater core, etc). But the height of the reducer is also important... The heater core is always going to be low but some reducers are mounted higher than the expansion tank (are the highest part of the cooling system). If the reducer is the highest part of the cooling system then if it's plumbed in parallel it won't see any flow at idle because all the heater water flow will go through the matrix, if it's plumbed in series it's forced to flow through both. But if we think of the heater circuit as a whole (the matrix plumbing and the reducer plumbing) we can be pretty sure that parallel will flow more through the whole than series could... It's just that as a whole we don't want 95% to go through one unit (matrix or reducer) leaving only 5% to go through the other.

I reckon a 10mm feed is a bit small for an LPG reducer on a V8, fine at low engine loads but may not flow enough for sufficient reducer heating at higher engine loads when the reducer is losing a lot of heat due to evaporating a lot of liquid gas to vapour inside. You could try it but it would be worth monitoring reducer and gas vapour temperatures at high engine loads. Most LPG reducers (with the exception of a few well knowns such as Bigas which have 10mm water feeds).

PC38 wrote:

My LPG diagnostics shows both lambda sensors (one brand new) sitting resolutely at 5 volts (GEMS engine).

I don't know who fitted your LPG system but is the LPG ECU even wired to the lambdas? If they're not connected you might get a reading of 5V from LPG software anyway.