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The only place for a coil spring is up Zebedee's arse
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Didn't get chance to get online yesterday, came home in the hire car and had all the packing to do before setting off.

Thanks for replies and for even contemplating this, especially to Gilbert for 'If I get stuck'.

Been suggested that I join Green Flag, go back to Newquay in another car (maybe the ML), tell them my Elgrand just broke and I'd like the Elgrand and caravan shifting to South Elmsall please! Thoughts on this or the same with AA? Bit naughty though....

Not a P38 but there may be P38 owners who could profit out of this at my expense!

While using my Nissan Elgrand to tow my large caravan from near Doncaster Yorkshire to Newquay Cornwall I felt a drop in engine power coming up a hill on the A30 20 miles from Newquay. I immediately suspected the very common (to Elgrand) blocked cat problem - there are 4 cats in total, two at each side of the V6, the front cats break up and clog the entrance to the rear cats, the usual preventative measure is to decore the rear cats which I've done for plenty of customers but not on my own Elgrand!. I pulled into a layby and checked things over... oil clean, had a few codes pointing to cam sensors, pulled the cam sensors and cleaned them up, phoned the 'Elgrand guru' who still reckoned it'd only be a cam sensor (which I doubted). Connected LPG software and found bank 1 was running with 30% less fuelling than bank 2 so I suspected the problem would mostly be affecting bank 1 (since both lambda's flicked and since bank 1 therefore was pulling 30% less air than bank 2). Tried driving again but the problem remained. Stopped in another layby and called the RAC out, like the guru the RAC man also doubted it'd be blocked cats, he also advised me that only my car was covered so if I wanted recovering they'd have to call in one of their subcontractors who would shift the caravan to Newquay for me for £500! I insisted we did something about the cats so he loaned me a hammer and chissel and I knocked a hole in the downpipe on bank 1 before the rear cats... found it full of cat debris. Knocked another large hole further up the exhaust. Set off again and the car pulled much better, RAC man (who had been following) left me to it but another 2 miles down the road and the problem recurred only this time with overheating and the oil was black. Called RAC man again, another bloke came out, this bloke gave me the number to his mates garage who recovered the car and caravan to Newquay for £150+VAT and got me onto the camp site. Next day I borrowed step son-in-laws car to go into town and buy some tools and oil from Halfrauds, I disconnected bank 2's second cat and tried driving the car very noisily up a steep hill away from the campsite. Made it 100 yards and the engine seized! Reverse rolled all the way back to the camp site.

Hired a Zafira which I can drop off in Doncaster so this will get us home but not the caravan (no towbar) and not the Elgrand. Plan now is that I'll have to hire a car trailer to come back for the Elgrand with my Merc ML and then come back again in the ML for the caravan. I can store both the caravan and car here for £20 per week and may try to arrange things so we get a few days 'holiday' each trip, but that's 2 x 700 mile round trips and potential time out from work I haven't arranged things around.

I wonder if any capable vehicle (i.e. P38) owners would like to make a few bob by shifting my Elgrand from Newquay to South Elmsall W.Yorks? Timescale - Well, plan A is that I come back for the Elgrand first leaving the caravan here the longest so I can get 2 extra 'holidays' out of it rather than just the 1 if I pick the caravan up first. This may change if I arrange for someone else to shift the Elgrand (could maybe get both at the same time). I can leave both here until November but don't want to leave either here that long and would suit me better if I get the Elgrand back first so I can drop another engine in it if only I wasn't so busy at work. I'm fairly tied up at work until September and it may take me that long to source another engine anyway.

While on the subject, if you need to drill through deeply lacquered wood it pays to be careful, the lacquer can crack.

Varnish = lacquer?

I wouldn't want LPGforum's continued existence to be a negative for this forum but don't see how it would.
A wide range of vehicles and LPG systems are discussed on LPGforum, it's probably unlikely that someone with a different make vehicle would Google 'LPG problem' and click on a link that contained 'RangeRover / P38' wording. It would be good to bring LPGforum clicks/posts back up to old levels - before it became very difficult for people to become members.

Only kidding mate... The moment you realise the 'engine problem' sound is coming from the speakers lol.

I'll be up for getting involved and taking it on if possible, I'm in Cornwall on holiday at the moment but will look into it on my return. If I did, who'd be up for being a moderator?

Hello Police I just heard gunshots. Ahh no it's OK my mate said it was just on the telly lol...

Watched the vid but speakers on this laptop are crap and my hearing isn't great these days (DJing ear abuse now taking it's toll!).. Couldn't hear much at all so nothing to add except does it still do it running on petrol? I think I mentioned LPG reducers can hum earlier on thread.

Enjoyed reading this, it almost puts a James Bond slant on diagnostics! Always been interested in radio but never been into it at anything like your level. I usually expect to see spectrum analysers in cars right next to the graphic equaliser ;-)

I believe that boilers that use a wireless link to thermostat usually have a wired thermostat option too. But then whether you chose to fit a wired stat or work on the car instead would depend on whether a wired stat would disable the bursts, necessary wiring route, cost of stat and wiring, whether you'd rather work on the car or boiler, if you think it better to upgrade the car's electronics so the same won't happen outside other houses.

Wireless stat here too but never had a problem with P38s in the yard - different frequency?

Good result in the end and an interesting thread.
This thread is on subject.

MOT emissions procedures give LPG users extra leeway which is to our advantage but, as Morat implied, we still want DVSA to expect vehicles running on LPG to have cleaner emissions than petrol vehicles because if DVSA strongly enough suspects LPG emissions to be dirtier than petrol we may eventually not only lose that advantage but also have to jump through more hoops than unconverted vehicle users and/or duty on LPG may be increased.

If DVSA ran emissions tests on a number of LPG vehicles selected at random it's likely that a fair proportion of them wouldn't pass a petrol spec test. They might then think up a number of ways of addressing the fact that for so long they had presumed LPG emissions to be better than petrol emissions but had now found this not to be so for a fair proportion of LPG vehicles. Out of all ways they could think up the best outcome for us would be if they evened the playing field between MOT petrol and LPG emissions tests and considered this all that they had to do. Most of us would find this preferable to DVSA and government saying 'This is what we've found, this is where we're at, you can keep the carb MOT test limits but we found LPG isn't as clean as we thought and therefore we will increase duty by 15p per litre gradually over the next 3 years'.

I'm watching this thread but nothing to add so far, I think Gilbert knows more about MOTs than I do.

Whenever I read the words 'Summer camp' it reminds me of 'Summercamp' walky-talkies my dad bought from Exhchange & Mart when I was a kid before CB radios were around.

super4 wrote:

Yes - very smart - P38 isn't bad either............

They call me the wanderer, yeah the wanderer... lol ;-)

Sloth wrote:

If you replace any fuel line, get some decent Codan R9 stuff or something, not the generic crap available on eBay/Halfords etc...

Or LPG stuff suppliers whom I've warned many times about supplying 'fuel injection spec petrol hose' that bellows like a balloon if subjected to more than about 1 bar pressure. Which they've done nothing about.

ECU would be fine tbh, for it to cause a problem in an emergency the bonnet would probably have to come off first and at that point a flying ECU is probably the least of your problems. But sure it's easy to make a hole through the plastic box and stick a bolt in, easier if you've got small hands or use a bit of grease/wire/elastic band to hold the nut in position. Live wire to battery as you'll have connected the injector live (ignition live) up at same time as wiring the injector breaks? I don't remember what injectors / nozzles / pressure you went for?

Now most aspects have been discussed... I don't much like the type of heated screen that has micro-elements between lamination that can obscure vision under certain conditions, for the few days per year we get where these are a definite advantage I prefer not to more often suffer the drawbacks. If heated screen means a couple of elements running over the wiper area that seems a better idea. Best setup I had on a car was the wiper area of screen heated coupled with heated water jets (and a large dose of antifreeze in the washer fluid) on a Vauxhall Senator, but got to worry about warm water jets hitting cold windscreens.

Sort of thing that winds my key too.
I suspect he'll have thought sod it, you won't be testing the heated windscreen for a good few months and by that time may think the heated aspect has failed but no big loss and not do anything about it. Windscreen fitter but hates messing with 'lectrics.

That's good to know Miles, I'd forgotten I'd done you a further advice bit.

Wouldn't want anyone else who's car I've converted to think there's a problem with their fan. Tried to be helpful with the fan thing, I know I did notice a noise on a P38, had it in my head that it was a fan, maybe I remember wrong and thought it was the idler pulley at the time. Checked to see if I made any notes on this (I sometimes make notes on cars I convert, either tech aspects of how I fitted/setup the LPG install that might speed up conversion of the same model next time or if I find an issue with the car itself) but didn't make any notes. Sometimes I'll put a 'further advice' section on the receipt (only if I think the customer would want me to do that, some wouldn't for obvious reasons) but I didn't put an advice section on the receipt either.. So can only go on memory which seems to have failed me this time!

My last edit crossed with Marty's post.. which seems to rule out the vac line scenario.
I've posted my suspicions etc about a TV fan on a P38 I converted recently and talked in general terms about things like LPG reducer and alternator noise, to prevent confusion and aid readability it's time for me to step aside and let P38 experts talk now :-)