Gilbertd wrote:

Simon, you're brave, clicking on an obviously spammy link, there's no telling what's been uploaded to your computer now.....

OK, hands up, do I delete it and forever send it to oblivion?
Yeh, aware of the risks but have some free level of 'protection' installed, just a link to a website, haven't suffered a blue screen of death for years, self taught programmer circa 1980-2000 who's sold own produced software and taught IT... But the first to admit I'm decidedly behind the times compared to the likes of my son who's doing a degree in programming. I'd love to be up to date and get into microcontrollers but having said that I'm not impressed by a lot of modern day programmers reliance on an operating system which distances them from programming the actual machine, makes modern programming more a means of pushing buttons in the OS. I'd like to think I'd still get to grips with microocontrollers quicker than a generic modern day programmer, at least if the MC didn't run an OS. Written too much here I know and apologise but I'm not going mad or completely pissed, it's an interest. I occasionally read up on microcontroller spec, look at example code, see if I can find what controllers are used in vehicle ECUs and wonder about aspects such as if injector pulse duration is handled by a pwm generator or achieved solely in programming that compares open/close time to built in timers.

Gilbertd wrote:

Odd thing is, he joined in July but this is the first post he's made (unless he made another spam one and that's already been deleted).

I wondered if they have some new type of software that could do that type of thing, kind of advanced spamming, maybe even do confidence tricks.

People remember the same words on another forum, great memory? Or what's going on... Some guy who speaks English maybe in China or very advanced auto spamming?

I was going to say I wonder how the spammer manages to get a fake post so in context, as if there's a real person copying a post from another forum and adding the spam link, but I opened the spam link and it seems it's probably self explanatory... the spam website seems to offer spamware that can do that kind of thing for sale, unless there really is some fella in China making it relevant. Hmm that kind of facility could automatically copy LPG threads I made on say LPG forum to other forums and include a link to my website at the bottom without me writing another word lol.

Ah I remembered the Bobcat name then...
The one that was here was on high suspension and bigger than Rangerover wheels/tyres, had an LPG tank fitted but most of the LPG system had been removed or was broken and it wouldn't run on petrol either, was trailered here before the new engine had run more than maybe 2 minutes and before the owner had seen it running. There was a dispute between the engine builder (one of my customers) and the owner (yet to become my customer) who accused him of building an engine that wouldn't run, they agreed that if I could show the engine running nicely the owner would foot the bill for trailering or if I couldn't get it running the engine builder would remove the engine and refund, a deal I suppose the owner couldn't lose on. I found the petrol system was damaged due to bits of silicone someone had used to seal the petrol pump to the tank had entered the tank, fouled up the injectors and pressure regulator, none of which was the engine builders fault. I got the engine running nicely on LPG supplied by gas from an R90 fitted on a Jeep parked alongside it (Jeep idling on petrol to keep the R90 hot).. Took a video of that and sent it to both with a write up, which meant the engine builder was relieved of any blame and led to the owner deciding to get me to make it run LPG only, fitting some new and reconnecting some old LPG bits.

Maybe someone should have advised the cab owner he could just have cut the roof off the P38 and had a boat canopy maker make a roof for wet weather! I suppose you could mount a shed on the chassis, maybe not very unique as there are shed to vehicle conversions out there, though none I've seen on a Rangerover chassis. How about anything that might be considered an officially made model along the lines of the old forward control Landrovers?

Is there a Rangerover with a Volvo derived diesel?

As a kid I went to a few 4x4 rallies with my dad who went through a stage of being Landrover mad and had a couple. There was usually some sort of off-road course, I remember one had a small river crossing which was attempted by many owners in various vehicles, Land/Rangerovers, G Wagons, Lada Nivas British and foreign Army type stuff, most succeeded to get around the course except the brand new bull-barred Subaru brought by a Subaru dealer which got it's bull bars pulled off by a Landrover trying to pull it up the river banking lol.

Anyway, used to see all sorts of 4x4s and various takes on Landrovers such as forward control models. Recently I saw an unusual looking Transit van filling with petrol at a garage in Mexborough (near me), suspension seemed raised and could see it was 4wd, got talking to the owner who reckoned he'd had it built like that by brand new as a one-off by a specialist firm. I haven't seen much else in the way of special model Rangerovers (e.g. no forward control models), although have seen unusual Classics with extra long wheelbase, big Yank diesel / petrol engines years ago and a few years ago I fixed a (I think the owner called it) Bobcat(?), very short cutdown wheel base Rangerover. Out of interest, what strange models are out there?

Simon

Wind up partially worked ;-)

My nearest garage with LPG is a services on the A1 2 miles away, there are another 5 or so within about 7 miles all cheaper than the A1 (and especially cheap at the Calor depot) but for convenience I tend to fill new conversions on the A1 and I'll top up my car there if desperate. The permanently fixed tank on my car will hold about 65L but I usually have a second tank in the boot holding another 80L (not much bother to remove it if I need the space). If I need anything like the 145litres the combined tanks will hold I'd rather make a special trip to Calor or another of the cheap garages, saving maybe £15 of the price I'd pay at the A1, £13 if I factor in the extra driving.

Simon

I don't know much about what diesel engines were fitted in Rangerovers other than Smiler's DSE probably doesn't have the 2.5td 4 cylinder VM engine (6 cylinder BMW engine?). Did some Rangerovers have the VM engine (I was under the impression they did)? I had the VM engine in a Ford Scorpio (ugly bug eyed model), it did the business but I had to helicoil it's rocker bolts and had to fit another alternator when the vac pump (rear of alternator) oil seal went and dumped oil into the alternator. The alternator was the same as a Transit diesel's except the pulley had a greater number of grooves for the wider fanbelt. Transit alternators cheap and aplenty, Scorpio diesel alternators expensive and few/far-between. Can't remember if I fixed the original alternator (rear bearing) or fitted a Scorpio pulley onto a Transit alternator. Bought the car cheap because it'd already done high mileage and the drivers electric seat would lean back but wouldn't lean back forwards, the switch itself had broken... a 30 minute fix using another switch and a relay that switched polarity to the seat motor when the original switch was operated to lean back if the new switch was in the on position. . I added another 100000 miles on that car and sold it when a manual gearbox bearing went at 260000 miles, mostly on red stuff / veg oil. The 2.9 petrol would have been as cheap to run if converted to LPG and if I'd paid for normal diesel. I once did 1000 miles in a 1.7 diesel Astra for £18 of fuel but these days LPG is the cheapest way to go, could say you get the nicer engine note, power and drive-ability as a bonus ;-)

Oops, my thread but I wasn't watching it...

Gilbertd wrote:

Any idea who did the original install? Usually the only time anyone says they don't like LPG is when the system doesn't work properly so they assume all LPG converted cars don't run right. I've had people comment about mine and ask how I put up with all the hassle and they don't believe me when I tell them it never gives any hassle, runs just as well, if not better, on gas than petrol and costs me less to run than a diesel. No brainer in my opinion and if it were my car I'd tell Guy Salmon where to stuff it (not that I'd be seen dead taking a car to a main dealers anyway).

I don't know who fitted it, owner said it ran OK on LPG he just didn't want it.
Obviously I agree with all the pro LPG sentiments on this thread! It was either I remove it or he'd get someone else to remove it, the owner didn't want the conversation about why, had already decided.

I meant to reply, sorry.

Map depends on at least brand of injectors selected / fitted, pressure (setting and actual) and to a lesser extent brand of ECU...
Since the laptop I'm using is relatively new and my old laptops died there's a smaller chance I'll have a relevant file now than might have been a few years ago when I used the same laptop long term, but if you tell/remind me your make of system I'll have a look.

Simon

I know my way around Cornwall pretty well really, been most years. I did get into Padstow this year before Boardmasters, St Ives too although got caught out by the sunny weather instantly changing to torrential rain... caught the bus back up the hill to the car park (lol) and went on to LandsEnd. Been thinking about taking the boat to Gorran Haven. Bought my first GrandVoyager from a guy near Padstow, brought it back on a trailer pulled by my 4L GrandCherokee with homemade baked beans can mixer.

I'm back home now. Passed through St Austell loads of times while in Cornwall... with the SRS light glowing in my ML all the while!
The last time I passed through St Austell was enroute to Mevagissey from Padstow. Went to Padstow from Newquay but couldn't find a parking slot around Padstow due mostly to all those kids that were around for Boardmasters...

super4 wrote:

Hi folks - LPGc in particular ! have taken good note of all advice but when it comes to Autocal - starting on petrol - I see it is necessary to run at a particular RPM and not make any change on the accelerator as the ECU carries out its calibration - the question is - what starting RPM should one begin with ?

The software will tell you the rpm range, aim for an rpm in the middle of that range. Different AEB systems use slightly different rpm ranges.

Morat wrote:

Hehhe. I guess if they could demonstrate that the alternator was taking X% of the engine output to generate Hyrdrogen which boosted the engine by >X% at the same load they'd have a case.

Bet they didn't though :)

Some of them are conspiracy theorists and reckon it's been possible to run cars on 100% hydrogen generated by a big enough alternator on the engine for many years, except oil companies suppressed the technology! There's no telling most of them - Point out that the little bubbles of hydrogen their systems make wouldn't be 1/10000th of enough hydrogen to run the engine on and they talk about up-scaling their systems. Point out that their systems currently draw maybe an amp (by their own reckoning) and 10000amps at 12v would be 120000 watts (or 161hp), from a system that even on this scale is only capable of providing enough gas for a 100bhp engine and they reckon you're part of the conspiracy or that you must be missing something! One 'firm' told me it works the same way as power from a hydrogen bomb and nobody understands how an H bomb works!,So I explained how a H bomb works lol. Very loose figures provided by me here but I did go to the length of doing the sums properly at the time.

On Porth Beach Newquay campsite as I write, surrounded by VW campervans, half of which are actually just VW vans with sleeping bags chucked in the back. I don't get the following VW enjoy... Maybe at one time if someone wanted a German engineered vehicle they might be the first/only choice, but these days? Maybe given the emissions scandal there might one day be a callback on VW's - bring in your TDI smogmotion and we'll swap out the engine for an electric motor lol! Maybe they have such a great following because people still admire the bloke who inspired the marque... then again maybe not.

Not P38 related but I had a problem with the alternator on my Chrysler people carrier the other week...
The charge light would come on with the engine running. At first I suspected a slipping belt but as the time between starting the engine and the light coming on seemed to be getting shorter and it turning out that the belt wasn't slipping, I came to suspect the brushes (an easy enough and cheap fix, just have to order the brushes from a local alternator specialist). I didn't want to wait for the alternator specialist and as I have a spare (for scrap) same model vehicle I thought I'd just swap that one's alternator in for the time being. I went as far as removing the alternator from the spare car before I realised that with the engine running I could see the alternator internals spinning slower than the alternator drive hub - It has one of those clutch/freewheel drive hubs and it turned out that was slipping. To prevent the same thing happening again I simply removed the air filter to access the front of the alternator and mig-welded the alternator drive without even removing it, so it's not the clutch type anymore! Took care to first tack the mig's earth wire to the pulley itself so as (hopefully) not to damage the regulator and kept the hub cool with water between brief welding so as not to damage the bearings. Better than new in my opinion, less to go wrong and can't tell any difference for lack of the clutch.

I'm in Kernow at the moment, not seen much to hint at the call for independence yet but I expect to see the black Kernow flag and something about independence still painted on a bridge over the Northbound A30 on my way home, been there since about 1989.

Gilbertd wrote:

Because nothing is 100% efficient so you would always need more power to turn the alternator than it is capable of generating. You could, in theory, use an electric motor to turn a generator which would produce the power to turn the motor so you'd have a perpetual motion machine, something that would continue spinning all day long. But it won't because to generate the amount of power needed to turn the motor the generator would need more power than the motor can supply. You never get anything for nothing.

Almost the same with those hydrogen generation systems you can buy to fit to your car. They run on electric,generated by the alternator to turn water into hydrogen which, they reckon, in turn makes the engine more powerful and economical when it is fed as fuel to the engine. But there's no way that can work, except on a really inefficient old diesel where the addition of a bit of hydrogen increases the efficiency at which the engine burns the diesel. Over the years I have been approached by many firms who wanted to work in partnership with me on this type of hydrogen supplementation system (me doing all the fitting and, apparently, most of the tech sales talk too). I turned them all down except to tell them that I would fit them if they found an owner who was dead set on having such system fitted, but even then I wouldn't recommend such a gimmick or plug it's 'merits' even to their already convinced customer. They all missed the point that it takes more power from the alternator to make the hydrogen than could be gained by burning it even if the engine was 100% efficient.

The concept of charging a different rate for electricity depending on time of day has been fairly mainstream since 'Economy7'. I'm probably a bit young at 47 to have been directly affected but over the years governments and various energy firms have tried to push some implausible schemes on the public including Economy7, 'Come home to a real coal fire', 'Heat electric', 'Save it', etc. But I was under the belief smart meters were a necessity of the solar panel electric sell back to grid scheme, and solar panels partly due to the Kyoto Agreement. Another one of those types of agreements UK governments sign up to and then stick to when other country governments sign up but don't stick to the agreement unless it works in their countries interests. I remember when coke (from coal) was seen as the way forward - It did improve air quality in a lot of areas but too bad for those living near coking plants lol.. 7 Miles from me there was a coking plant and when the wind was in the wrong direction, the plant working in a certain way, it stunk from that distance. When I first started driving and went anywhere near it I'd put my car heater on recirc (Cortina, no aircon). All this leccy has to be made somewhere and (as Gilbert mentioned) it has to be shifted via better electrical infrastructure than we currently have...

Simon

Gilbertd wrote:

Not a problem she thought as we have charging points for some of the specialist vehicles with auxiliary batteries to keep them topped up when not being used so she figured she could plug her car in there during the day. First time she did it someone queried it and that caused all sorts of discussions. Upshot is that she has been told that under no circumstances can she plug in to charge it during the day. The argument being that nobody else gets their fuel costs for commuting to work and back reimbursed so why should she?

I'm definitely not pro electric vehicles but couldn't the firm just charge her a quid a day?

Orangebean wrote:

The joys of working in the public sector- true equality gone slightly mad. I used to work for a government agency and their rabid adherence to "benefits" rules, on-site employee car parking as a benefit and thus declarable, and their opinion that if they provided charging points for some employees they'd have to provide fuel pumps for the others (Union would have got cross otherwise), meant that even though they'd considered charging points as part of their environmental responsibility, they couldn't.

And ensure common sense prevails?

Different point - If I were forced to go full electric next month I'd make sure I had unlimited range anyway (in a fashion).. I fixed my mates 5kw genny ages ago and he hasn't collected it yet. I'd carry that in the boot with suitable exhaust system etc, probably hard wire it. See where this is going already - Go on to upgrade to a much bigger genny, bigger electric motors for the car, convert the genny to LPG, don't worry too much about the battery aspect. Unless illegal, in which case it might be a stealth install, maybe not hard-wired / hard plumbed... There might be cause to shut-off the genny before stopping for a blue light, much like some people put on their seat belt before an officer appears alongside ;-)

Simon

rickrwg wrote:

Thanks for that Simon my car isn't actually a Range Rover it is a "cough cough" 2003 Jeep V8 HO do you know if this would work with the OBD interface I would like to monitor fuel trims from the laptop as I am getting a flat spot in the mid rev range and am sure its going lean not just on gas but petrol also just more pronounced on gas if you could tell me the pin numbers it would be great so I can have a look what's happening.

I used to have pinout notes on my laptop but that was on the old laptop which broke... getting to know them again will involve either my scouring around in the garage to look for a bit of paper sent by a supplier years ago, or making my own pinout diagram from looking at a loom I have here, but I'm a bit busy to do either at the moment and will be on holiday soon as long as I get all my jobs done!

I'll come back with pinout at some point but it might not be for a while. Still, you'd be better off using an OBD2 live data scanner than connecting the OBD wires of the LPG ECU - The sample rate of the LPG ECU is a bit slow for purpose of using as a calibration aid / If you were to use the connection for purpose for which it was designed (enabling the adaption facility) it still wouldn't make up for incorrect map shape but could cause problems at other engine loads/rpm / Don't know the year, board suffix or firmware of your ECU but it might not support the OBD connection anyway. There was only a period of maybe a year where ECU's that could support OBD connection were supplied with looms that didn't have OBD wiring already connected / On some vehicles, leaving LPG ECU OBD wiring connected can inadvertently interfere with the canbus, which can cause problems ranging from minor such as inability to connect with an OBD2 scanner to far stranger and more concerning symptoms affecting anything on the canbus, even inability to crank the engine on some Mercs. Do yourself a favour and buy a cheap OBD2 live data scanner rather than wire in the LPG system's OBD connection!

Simon

Above advice is sound, I was tempted not to add anything in case it added to confusion but I think this worth saying...

As someone wrote above, if you saved your config before changing anything you could just load the saved config file and all should be well. There can be exceptions to this, though... E.g. Could have a situation where fixing a long term issue highlights other problems - Suppose the engine was running open loop due to problem code(s) due to (say) failed lambda probes. In open loop fuel trims are not applied, so if LPG calibration was wrong the engine could have been running 20% lean on petrol and 20% rich on LPG. The engine might run OKish running 20% lean on petrol or running 20% rich on LPG, in which case switching between fuels wouldn't reveal any further drive-ability problems. But, if you fix the probes and closed loop running resumes, then you run on petrol, the fuel trim needed to correct the 20% lean running on petrol is learned/applied so now the engine runs great on petrol. But then if you switched to LPG the engine would at first get a 40% rich mixture giving poor drive-ability, but eventually the incorrect LPG calibration might steer fuel trims back to -20% and now the engine might run great on LPG, but if you then switch back to petrol it will be 40% lean. I know this reads an unlikely set of circumstances, after all we would expect the LPG system to have been calibrated correctly in the first place and fuel trims on petrol not to be so extreme, but I've seen similar sets of circumstances so often this type of scenario seemed worth a mention. Other issues can be revealed after fixing an underlying issue too, such as worn LPG injectors giving some cylinders a far greater dose of LPG than others. What should be drawn from this is that when you get it running properly on petrol, make sure you check LPG calibration as soon as you run on LPG.

If you didn't save your config file but you only changed reference pressure, changing reference pressure back to what it was should do the same. If however you changed one of a few other things such as type of injectors fitted, that might have changed the map back to the default map figures for the last type of injectors you selected

Simon.

This must be a thread I didn't use topic tracker on... Late to reply again sorry.

It''s been a long time since I had to think about which pins are for the OBD connection (back when OBD connection was first introduced the loom didn't carry OBD wires but you got the OBD loom separate with pins already attached to push straight into the connector block). I could check on the pinout but there probably isn't much point - For various reasons good installers generally think it a bad idea to connect the LPG ECU to the vehicle OBD anyway. Never tried it on a P38 but results of doing so on a P38 could turn out to be very much negative unless it's a very late model. Earlier models are not fully OBD2 compatible and although code readers will connect and read live data, the fuel trim info they display might be have long term fuel trims showing at constant -100% or similar. The LPG system would read the same info and interpret it the same way as a generic OBD2 scanner so the LPG system would also read -100% fuel trims, the result of which would see the LPG system subtracting it's maximum range of -20% fuelling from what might otherwise by perfect fuelling.

Onto another question, there are various AEB boards, some look entirely different and contain different sets of components to others. AEB ECU's have been wearing Romano badges for years but King is relatively a newcomer. If the Romano system is an older board it is unlikely that firmware between it and a King ECU would be compatible given the different hardware sets. If the boards are the same year and same spec then if software allowed you to connect to any system it might be more easily possible to change firmware to whichever brand you liked but software doesn't allow that, so although it would be possible it would involve a bit of hacking...and probably not worth the effort when an 8 cylinder AEB ECU these days is about £150... Years ago the same brand ECU only of course of older spec (not truly sequential like modern AEB ECU's and lacking some of the other features too) would have cost over £500!

Other post - Yeah you could make your own single point controller but, like above, would it be worth it (unless you'd be doing it for fun!) when a controller itself is about £50. The AEB175's such as Leonardo's aren't that badly thought out and cover all of rpm detection, stepper motor driving, relay control of solenoids and lambda connection, ability to limit range of stepper motor movement, adjust speed of change of stepper position for rpm, AD converters to read TPS, lambda and much less commonly reducer temp, DA converter for programmable simulation of lambda voltage, serial link to in-cab AEB fuel changeover switch, etc. Not many guts in them but they do a lot for the money and to fully replicate the functionality yourself you'd need to not only make it but program it and maybe write another program for the laptop to adjust it's settings. There are even cheaper controllers (Bingo is one) that have all the basic functionality without the ability to set range of stepper movement or stepper position during over-run, or in fact any sort of connection with a laptop. I've never had problem connecting to an AEB175 using any version of Windows, I have seen some 175's in incorrect branded cases though, e.g. had to connect to a Millenium using Leonado software lol..

Simon