Might expect it to start from cold even with the evap pipe pulled off but run poorly and maybe sputter to a stall as it warmed up.

Easiest fix for an evap system that's gone wrong on a simple setup is just to disable it by blanking the manifold and evap solenoid pipe connectors, you can do that on most cars but not on relatively advanced Ford V8 stuff like Ford/Jag engine'd L322's because the ECU is so fussy it can detect if the engine is getting the bit of extra air (with petrol fumes) when the purge valve is pulsing and will throw a code if it gets just a tint bit too much or too little extra air or if the solenoid is unplugged.

Disturbed the air flow meter?

Don't want to seem pedantic, yes palladio's are usually supplied with an external filter solenoid (Valtek type 37 or similar the same as Dream HP filter solenoids). The outlet of type 37 filter solenoids feeds gas to a central post with a nut at one end and either screw thread fitting (to attach directly to a reducer) or an M12 fitting to take 8mm copper pipe at the other end. The posts used on palladio's is supplied with the palladio, it has quite a unique thread, which means it would be difficult to connect anything other than that design post... which means a type 37 or similar is almost always used with palladios.. which means suppliers usually ship palladios with type 37's. But strictly speaking integrated would mean it was built into the reducer.

When using a palladio it's almost necessary to use a type 37 filter solenoid fitted directly to the reducer, which can be a disadvantage on some installs where space is tight. With the other reducers I mentioned you have the option of directly attaching a filter solenoid to the reducer (and wouldn't have to be a type 37) by using a common thread male to male adaptor, or fitting a filter solenoid discrete from the reducer with a length of pipe between them.

Adaptors exist. Particularly if your feed pipe is copper an inline adaptor/coupler with a metre or new pipe might be a good idea (even if you didn't want to step up/down pipe diameters)... you might need to extend piping when adjusting routing to get the gas feed to a different design reducer. You wouldn't need to step up pipe diameter for the Romano or MagicJet Extra reducer, they do have 8mm inlets but if you needed to feed them from a 6mm pipe you'd have the option of 6mm or 8mm filter solenoid regardless of whether you fitted the solenoid directly to the reducer... To fit a 6mm solenoid directly to the reducer you'd need to use an M12 to M10 male male connector with an inline 6mm to 8mm pipe connector / to fit an 8mm solenoid directly to the reducer you'd use an M12 to M12 male male connector and wouldn't have to use an inline 8mm to 8mm pipe connector unless you needed to extend the pipe. Similar story if you were fitting the solenoid remotely from the reducer, just that instead of the male male connector if you used copper pipe you'd need an inline adaptor to get from 6mm to 8mm between the solenoid and reducer if you used a 6mm solenoid or between existing feed pipe and the solenoid if you used an 8mm solenoid. Using Faro pipe between a remote solenoid and reducer can be a good idea particularly if you need to step up.down pipe size, both 6mm and 8mm end fittings are available for 8mm Faro pipe (as are end fittings to screw direct to M10 and M12 threads) along with the further advantage of Faro being flexible. You can't get 8mm end fittings for 6mm Faro pipe but can get 6mm end fittings for 8mm Faro pipe. M12 and M10 threaded fittings are available for both 6mm and 8mm Faro pipe but you might struggle to get an M12 6mm fitting. Use 8mm Faro if you intend on using Faro as a means of stepping up/down diameter.

A wide range of reducers suit P38s given the moderate power demand and lots of available under bonnet space... I've probably seen just about every type of sequential system reducer (and pairs of reducers in case of lower powered reducers) on P38s.

But I'd steer clear of reducers which don't have much range of pressure adjustment. Some otherwise decent reducers such as Zavoli Zeta S can be a problem if the narrow range of pressure adjustment doesn't suit the combination of engine and injectors... E.g. the Zavoli Zeta S really only likes to work at 1.5 bar, the older design of OMVL Dream reducers used to be widely pressure adjustable (between 0.8 bar and 1.8 bar) but with some messing about swapping out springs etc and some of the newer OMVL Dream reducers don't seem to like different pressure even if you swap internal springs. So even though a wide range or reducers can work on a P38 it's best to talk about those I'd advise given your injectors etc rather than just say anything goes... Magic3 high power, Romano HD, Emer Palladio should all fit the bill but they all have 8mm inlets, need external filter solenoids, use 16mm water hose and 12mm gas outlet.

I like the performance of the Bigas double reducer but it is bulky, heavy and is a pain regards plumbing. It really is just 2 reducers just stuck back to back sharing a common coolant channel so it has 2 pressure adjusters (1 for each reducer) and balancing their pressure output can be tricky.
The 2 gas outlets must be merged before feeding injectors to ensure both sets of injectors get the same pressure under all conditions...there'd be little chance of each set of injectors getting the same pressure over the engine's full load range if each of the reducers fed a separate set of injectors even if the reducers pressure was balanced properly at some points in the load range, the only condition where you get chance to balance reducer pressure is at idle unless on a rolling road. If you find your outlets are not merged (old installs would use a couple of Y connectors, one to merge, one to split back to separate feeds for the 2 sets of injectors) these days instead of using a couple of Y's you could just fit a H filter (2 inlets 2 outlets)
https://www.lpgshop.co.uk/h-2-inlets-2-outlets-filters/
Even when the outputs are merged, if one of the reducers is set to say 0.9 bar and the other is set to say 1.5 bar the one set at 1.5bar will do almost all the work until it's flow limit is reached at which point pressure will quickly fall to 0.9 bar before the other reducer even starts to do any work, so in this situation you'd effectively have a reducer rated at only 190bhp instead of 380bhp because a system set to work at 1.5bar will probably be approaching the point of switching back to petrol due to low pressure at 0.9 bar. OK if you get the pressure settings near enough balanced, say within 20%, they really are good for 380bhp probably more like 430bhp. To balance pressure first make sure outlets are merged, engine running, watch pressure in LPG software, turn one of the reducer's anticlockwise (increasing pressure) a bit and see if it made any difference to pressure reading, if not try turning the other reducer's pressure up a bit... you're trying to find the one with already highest pressure.. then if you turn the other reducer's pressure up until it just changes the reading on screen the pressure outputs will be balanced.. but confirm the results a few times by turning the pressure screws both ways on both while watching readings. You can perform the balancing the other way around (looking for lowest pressure) but it doesn't work exactly in the opposite way because the pressure reading at idle will obviously always reflect the higher pressure, so you'd be turning down pressure on the one with highest pressure until when you lower pressure a bit more the pressure reading on screen doesn't drop any lower and then pressure should be matched... provided you didn't turn the pressure down on the one you just adjusted too much lol.
Dunno how bad your water leak is. If your reducer just has a stain of coolant on the outside, water doesn't leak into the gas outlets and gas doesn't pressurise your cooling system it might not be bad enough to change or rebuild, though a different model reducer might make for neater plumbing.

AEB ECU's such as your Bigas ECU flash the yellow light on the switch and temporarily switch back to petrol (without any beeps) if they've determined that 1. The necessary gas injector pulse length (given the calibration settings and any compensation for pressure and temperature) is longer than the available window for gas injector pulse length, while at the same time 2. Pressure reading isn't low enough that it would seem you've run out of gas.
If the switch beeps it's because the system has detected low enough pressure that it thinks you've run out of gas, then the switch back to petrol remains unless you press the switch to manually switch back to gas (obviously if you really have run out of gas it will very soon beep and switch back to petrol again).

V30 injectors come in a couple of flavours, some have internal holes only 2.5mm diameter, some have internal holes 3mm diameter. The nozzles they come with also have 2 flavours, some can be drilled out to 3mm, some not quite to 3mm. There would't be much point in drilling nozzles to wider than 2.5mm if internals are only 2.5mm because it would be the internals not the nozzles that would be the limiting factor in terms of flow, but it wouldn't be a problem because 3mm nozzles on injectors with 2.5mm internals would just flow as much as 2.5mm anyway. For 2.5mm nozzles I'd initially set the reducer output to around 1.2 bar, for 3mm nozzles 0.9 bar. The reducers I advised early in this post are all adjustable for that range of pressures while not compromising bhp capability but so too is your Bigas twin reducer.

FIxed a P38 this morning and advised the owner to become a member of this forum... He intends to and I'm sure he'll have plenty to chat about with you all (he has a leaky matrix and other problems)! On the phone he said he had an OMVL Dream system but it turned out he had a Dream reducer and injectors but Stag ECU. His car hadn't run properly on LPG since he'd had the reducer changed at another LPG firm. Don't know what spec Dream reducer he had before but this one was the HP (high pressure 1.7 bar) version. The combination of 1.7 bar and his OMVL injectors with 2.5mm outlets flowed too much gas for good calibration to be possible, for proper fuelling at idle the gas injectors would only need to be pulsed for 2.5ms which is less than the minimum pulse length for these injectors for accurate metering. He'd got a few OBD errors for no lambda signal on one bank and duff probe on the other but I got it set up great after adjusting pressure to 1.2 bar and doing a full recalibration while the lambda probes were working and it was running closed loop (perhaps temporary lambdas working - I advised him to fit new probes but the LPG system is calibrated great now). I was a bit surprised to be able to turn pressure down to 1.2 bar (from 1.7) on this newish Dream reducer without having to remove a spring and without rendering the reducer incapable of flowing enough gas for flat out, an old Dream reducer would have handled it no problem, this is why Dream reducers are not on the list of those I'd advise.

Sorry I haven't been around for a few days.

RutlandRover wrote:

Not sure what's going on with the photos but both links take me to a photo of this chap:

I see pics of wood trim.. Isn't that you supping the coffee?

Seems P38s BCMs are better than Vauxhall ones.
My son was setting off to work the other morning, got in his Astra, turned the dipped beam on, both bulbs lit but went out after a second and wouldn't come back on again. Side lights and main beam worked as normal. No fuses or relays to check.
They were broke for a few days, fixed now but all he did was change the bulbs without testing them. Says the bulbs look fine and it would be a hell of a coincidence for both bulbs to blow at exactly the same time and not look blown.
Having done a bit of research it seems it isn't unknown for this to happen on Vauxhalls and simply removing bulbs for a while and refitting effects a cure.

Which reminds me, I once bought my dad a gas discharge bulb mod for his Vectra. Wired it all in but it caused the lights to flicker dimly at about 10hz and the bulb warning on the dash to come on. I ended up wiring some sidelight bulbs in parallel with the bulbs high voltage conversion units to get around all the problems. At least on the Vectra bulbs are changed from inside the engine bay, as opposed to the Astra method of accessing bulbs blind from a removed section of the wheel arch liner using a torx bit.

Merry Boxing Day...

Agreed icing is much more likely on a carb engine because the throttle plate has a mist of petrol flowing over it, some evaporates as it shifts from the atmospheric pressure to the low pressure side (with velocity increasing etc), as the petrol evaporates it has a high cooling effect that is in addition to the cooling effect of air pressure and velocity changes. An AC system filled with just pressurised air would still work but only very slightly not to the extent you'd notice but filled with a substance that changes phase from liquid to gas it works a lot better.

Besides the dowel, does the AC compressor have any collared bolt holes... so as you tighten the bolt the collar in the bolt hole pulls into a recess in the compressor (same as often seen on alternator mountings)? Some vehicle models do.

Gilbertd wrote:

Yes there is if you don't want it icing in cold, damp weather. The air intake is under the inner wing so the air being drawn in is at ambient temperature so will ice on the throttle butterfly in the right conditions. Of course it falls under oily bits, as it says, if it leaks, it's in here and the hose for the throttle body heater is known for leaking, which is why it gets replaced with silicone hose.

I know the theory but wondered if they really do suffer icing in the wrong UK conditions if unheated, plenty injected vehicle models don't have tb heating (I don't remember if L322 BMW V8 tb's are heated), the iav isn't heated..
Second line was meant in jest..

Wonder if there are any real world benefits from keeping the throttle body heating on a P38?
Bit ironic that the subject should fall under 'oily bits' section lol - you wouldn't want oil in the water.

While on the subject of coolant and leaks, I wonder if any P38 buyers have fallen foul of sellers who have replaced coolant with 'waterless coolant'... the stuff that doesn't pressurise much when hot because there's no water in it to turn into steam. I once converted a Jag , I think an F type, for a new owner who's car had this stuff in it and reckoned the previous owner had stuck the special coolant in it to mask HG problems and a heater matrix leak.

I did the Corsa's other side front wheel bearing in the same way as above but having read up on special tools being necessary to do the ML wheel bearing and still not having bough a press I let my mate's garage change the ML wheel bearing while I worked on an LPG conversion.

If it's cranking fast enough it wouldn't seem that the battery or charging is the problem but low voltage diagnostic codes don't agree with that.. It's possible to get used to slow cranking (if it slows gradually enough over time) and think it's cranking OK until you put a new battery on and see the difference. Could be down on compression and have a duff battery / alternator (lol - not!).

Agreed with other people, ignition seems likely.
Also is there the chance of some module / immobiliser getting low voltage..
Dodgy crank sensor
Dodgy petrol pump can cause missing on some cylinders when starting if slow to keep up with pressure when ignition is first turned on, as can dodgy pressure regulator.

BrianH wrote:

Lpgc wrote:

Smug mode ;-) I've developed the habit of never leaving keys in a vehicle unless at least a window is down, I won't even do it with my own cars. P38s are among vehicles I'd worry most about breaking the habit with.

With you on that one - Fords being particually bad, I've only ever locked myself out of the car once, by locking the keys inside the boot (including the house keys) when putting stuff into it. Though i've known the locks on a few of mine to be heard trying to lock or unlock when driving along for no apparant reason, so I just don't trust them.

Ford bonnets that need the key to open them.. so it's possible to lock keys under the bonnet even if the car is unlocked, never done it myself but know of a few people that have. Also make it necessary to turn the engine off to open the bonnet.

Meant to say this earlier - Nice when the water pump isn't driven by the cam belt as on some more modern engines. Makes changing them on some cars a lot more work than iy should be, like the pump I changed on a Zafira. BMW V12 water pumps I've changed have protrusions that are almost an interference fit in the block that might have made them very difficult to extract if it wasn't for the pump having purpose machined tapped holes around it's perimeter to allow screwing bolts in to push against the block, almost self extracting..

Clive603 wrote:

So far as mass production factory "off the machine" quality is concerned a visit to the BMW motorcycle factory in Berlin a couple or three years before the wall came down was illuminating. In a not particularly good way. In particular a pile of imperfect K series heads on the floor awaiting re-work all looked well beyond saving!

Yeh, they mixed up the good and bad piles of heads so good heads were melted down and production vehicles got the dodgy heads thus explaining K series hg problems lol.

Can imagine finished pumps freshly off a machine just being lobbed into a finished product container before getting packaged up for sale, marks etc due to them hitting each other in parts bin.

Sloth wrote:

http://p38webshop.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=84&product_id=97

I didn't know about Marty's webshop... I'll start to point P38 owners I see there, have already pointed quite a few to this forum.

Never done a tv fan on a P38 but have on plenty other vehicles... and in younger days have been infuriated by the job lol. Last one I did was on a V12 BMW that had probbaly been on the car from new (so 18 years) with a water pump leak for dunno how long corroding it on, I ended up with a scaf bar on the pump spanner on that one, no way was it shifting without bracing the pulley and a wrap around grip on the pulley wasn't going to cut it.
Usually start out trying the quick blow method. If that doesn't work try holding the pulley with something like an oil filter chain / strap with an old belt round the pulley to prevent damaging it. If that doesn't work you can sometimes get on pulley bolts with a spanner braced against the shaft but they're often tight especially if corroded from pump leaks. Since Gilbert's said you can get on bolts with a bar with a hole in instead of a spanner on a P38 it seems a good plan to me.
If it's been off recently though would think it'd come off again with a tap.

Heater core on a series Landrover is just a bit easier to access...
Last heater matrix I did was on a Zafira, relatively easy but still not piece of piss, never any fun working on stuff buried under dashboards. I ran Chrysler Grand Voyagers for years, matrix access on the early ones was a dash out job but on post 2000 models can be easily accessed from passenger footwell. I think it was the same story with heater resistor packs (well, transistor drive pack on post 2000 ones) and same with blend motors (which I've done on later ones).

Sell it to a seat sniffer for a decent markup? If buying I probably wouldn't pay more than usual... but the thought occurs some people would, and as I'm also ginner the thought occurs I could contribute a few short curly's.... Her ex car and a few short curly's, some buyers might pay silly prices lol. But don't sniff the seat when I've been there.