You can get hydraulic pipes (including PAS pipes) made up by firms such as Pirtek. I've had a few PAS pipes made up by them. Take your old pipe in complete with end fittings, they have a vast range of end fittings on the shelf and 99% of the time will have an end fitting that matches your old ones so have no trouble matching your old pipe.
Most such firms can even come up with pipes to replace sections of AC pipe.
It's a bit alarming to hear about P&O, I don't know all the ins and outs but on first consideration it doesn't seem legal re UK employment law what they're doing. I also see this as likely the end of P&O. Not that it's really relevant or an important factor but I have to wonder if this could also have minor impact on my business, because if people wonder about being able to get their LPG converted vehicle abroad in future (and since they can't take their LPG vehicles through the Chunnel) there's the possibility a minority of customers could be put off LPG conversion.
Gilbertd wrote:
A wet compression test can be inconclusive on a Vee. Ordinarily the oil will seal the rings so if the compression goes up, it's ring, if it doesn't, it's valves. But with a Vee engine the oil will sit at the bottom of the bore so not seal the rings anything like as much. If you put a lot of oil in then the compression will go up anyway as the oil will partially fill the combustion chamber and reduce the chamber volume. I'd say your suspicion of a problem with the stretch bolts is the most likely and the gasket is starting to leak around where one of the bolts is. You'll soon know as it will come undone far easier than the others.
Agreed. Though with a RangeRover you could park it on a banking so the whole vehicle is leaning to one side thus making the cylinder bank to be tested more vertical lol.
I'm not a P38 expert but some general advice...
A poor fit on the intake manifold shouldn't effect compression readings.... You ran the compression check at full throttle anyway.
The compression problem could be valve leakage as opposed to ring leakage, have you tried a wet compression test? If only valve leakage were causing the compression problem and if only a HG problem were causing coolant pressurisation you could fix the problem yourself (whip the heads off etc).
The general advice wouldn't leave you with a top-hatted engine though.
mad-as wrote:
and where are you going to get gas from when Russia turn it off or do you get it else ware? how much of Europe and England get fuels from Russia?
As Gilbert implied, that's natural gas (methane, CNG, LNG) though... As opposed to the LPG we run on.
Been said on LPGforum that recent LPG shortages at forecourts have been due to home heating customers having their home heating bulk storage tanks filled early before price rises, the delivery drivers have been busy filling home heating tanks, suppliers prioritise filling home heating tanks over filling forecourt tanks. But if so many home heating customers filled early then since we are heading into summer when people won't be using as much gas for home heating then home heating customers won't need to refill their tanks again anytime soon so there should be plenty of LPG for forecourts... hopefully!
I filled 3 vehicles with LPG this week so far, had to fill 2 of them at Shell Redbeck near Wakefield because it was later than 8pm and Morrisons kiosk closes at 8pm. Recent price rises at Redbeck for LPG from iIrc 72.9 to 74,9 in a couple of steps. But petrol also went up and is now around £1.65, I also saw a guy taking a pic of the price on the pump when he filled with super diesel, had a look at the price when he'd gone... it was over £1.81 per litre.
Just a bit! 53P per litre would be great these days, I've got used to the new normal of LPG in the mid 70's pence per litre.
I was already booked until September before 'recent events'... Now I'm completely inundated with phone calls, emails, forum messages, etc, people whom are suddenly interested in converting to LPG asap.
Thanks Leolito :-)
leolito wrote:
Hi Dave, welcome to the den of P38s.
A little hijack - Simon very very nice website! I will dig into it when time allows, is packed with lots of info!
Thanks, it's been so long since I've looked at it myself that I've forgotten what I've put on there! I know it looks amateurish and has some dodgy formatting and broken links but I leave it as it is because a lot of people say there's good info on there and because I haven't got time to do anything with it. I regularly get firms emailing me to say they've reviewed it and could bring it up to date or optimise it for Google searches but unless I sat down with them I expect I'd end up with a cut down site that looked like every other LPG firms website. It used to work better with less dodgy formatting but I let someone I know have a go at changing it without changing any of the wording or sections etc, and I think they made it worse than it was before...
Thanks Richard (Gilbertd),
A problem may be that I am fully booked until September at the moment. Been a while since I did a P38 now, would like to do another.
Cheers, Simon
Only kidding with this...
I believe you can get the same fault code if mixture is incorrect due to a lambda problem too? In that case the MAF will read higher than usual airflow because the airflow really is higher (rather than the problem being duff Maf)... When mixture is incorrect (especially if lean, not so much if slightly rich but again if very rich) the engine needs more air to make the same power and more air to maintain idle speed.
Interesting about the Jap import, I work on a lot of Jap imports (usually Jap made cars like Nissans etc), it didn't occur to me before but have any other P38 fans considered importing a P38 from Japan? Jap imports are usually in great condition for the age.
Welcome Pete.
I wouldn't mind a few lez exemptions in my cab ;-)
Gilbert has a point though... The taxi exemption is a recognition that EV's wouldn't be suitable for taxi use, but if Joe Public needs to use a vehicle for similar range etc that a taxi might cover they get no exemption.
If I were to visit London, why would it be better that I parked my LPG converted car on the outskirts then got a taxi to pick me up and and drop me off at an inner city destination than if I just drove my own LPG converted car to the inner city destination? Fewer vehicles in the inner city maybe but no worse from an emissions standpoint. But from the number of vehicles on the road standpoint - if I had to drive to the outskirts, park my car, then hire an EV to drive into the inners that equates to one extra car on the road in my book?
Not just London, similar schemes exempting LPG converted taxis but not LPG converted private vehicles are being rolled out in Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow. At least there's the upside that the LPG refuelling places taxis use on outskirts will usually be available to the public.
Some of the taxis (well, private hire vehicles) have direct injection engines that use a bit of petrol all the while they're supposedly running on LPG anyway.
Some of the LPG components suppliers are partly re-modelling their businesses to meet the demands of taxi LPG conversions. One supplier in the Birmingham area told me 2 installer firms that just they supply jointly convert over 200 taxis to LPG every month. The supplier is offloading stock to make space for the specific sized tanks etc that are fitted on the taxis, they recently sold me 20 large LPG tanks at a knock down price just to make space for the taxi tanks.
Edit (OK I've already edited/amended a few times but they were shortly after posting and this is a while later)... Some of the private hire vehicle LPG conversions aren't going to do the trade or impression of LPG converted vehicles any good, they're making about £200 profit on a conversion and the conversions are going to have some problems.... But the private hire drivers won't mind driving around with engine warning lights on and they've achieved the biggest reason they converted to LPG (avoiding higher emissions zone charges) even if the LPG system doesn't actually work. A driver who delivers parts to me realised I did LPG conversions and asked if he could pass my phone number on to a guy who is involved with taxis / private hire vehicles in some way, sure enough the guy phoned me up and offered me 40 taxis to convert if the price was low enough... My price wasn't low enough and I didn't expect it to be, nor would I really want to convert 40 taxis for such little profit with the prospect of converting yet more taxis after the initial 40. The LPG scene will get an initial boost from the taxi conversions but in the long run they're going to mess up the entire scene for the rest of us. .
Chrisp38 wrote:
I'm not very good at this internet thing ^^^^^^
Have I messed up? Have I linked to my bank account?
Yes, £100 withdrawn thanks! 😉
I expect Gilbertd will be along soon and edit your posts so that your pics can be seen without having to click on them.
Did well there! Imagine if the leak were not on a visible side of the compressor, in that situation I'd probably keep looking around other parts for ages before thinking about replacing the compressor.
GasMan wrote:
If you have a Prins LPG system, there is no map - it bases its LPG injector times on the petrol injector times. However, if the LPG installer has set the Rc wrongly, it will cause these sorts of problems - could be the adaptations were out when they set it up, but they didn't have a tool to reset them?
Good to hear you've got it sorted.
Just about every sequential LPG system you'll see these days bases it's ginj (gas injector pulse duration) on pinj (petrol injector pulse duration) but most have a map. Prins VSI1 is a bit of an exception because unlike most systems it doesn't have an easily visible map but there is still a map if unseen... because the combination of offset and multiplier mathematically describe the same kind of curved multiplier line that other systems have. Egas and some BRC systems are similar in only having a control for offset and multiplier.
Most Prins dealers don't realise this and mess up mapping on VSI2 systems or any other system they try to calibrate that isn't VSI1 or BRC... They don't realise that if they plot points on a graph for a given offset and multiplier they'll end up with a curved line, and if they attempt to calibrate a system that only has the multiplier line or only has a set of boxes for multiplier the positions of the points on the line (or the shape of change of numbers in the boxes) should also be curved.
The shape of the curve should depend on the spec of the engine, the spec of it's petrol fuel system, the reducer pressure and reference pressure, manifold pressure, the spec of the gas injectors which includes the opening time, closing time and flow rate (including partial flow rates when the injectors are partially open during opening and closing).
We can draw a line for any combination but some combinations won't work due to limitations of injectors and/or pressures. With only a couple of controls (offset and multiplier) the line won't necessarily match the ideal multiplier all the way along it's length.
VSI1 won't cut it on a lot of modern engines, which is one reason why they introduced VSI2. The points above hint at why Prins VSI1 installers are so inadept at getting good results when they try to fit VSI2 or any other modern system - bolt on guys not LPG conversion experts, main focus on nuts and bolts not the finer points of correct fuelling.
There is something in it though? People do tend to put in batteries without thinking about battery chemistry but different chemistry batteries do need different charging voltages and unless batteries get fully charged the effective amp-hour rating, cold cranking amps and life expectancy are all lower?
I recently bought some ECU's from Poland, daft of me but I forgot about import tax until the delivery bloke arrived and asked me to pay the extra £60 :-(
Last time similar happened was when I bought some pistons for my boat's 2 stroke outboard motor from the US.
Lambda probe sockets are available, they're a deep hex socket with a cutout along the length for the wire to stick through, they have a hex at the other end so you can use a ratchet or spanner on them. In the past I've cut the wires off and just used a normal socket. Been a long time since I've changed a probe on a P38 though, and don't remember if there'd be space for any of these options on a P38.
I suppose if heat is an advantage there's an easy way to heat it, run the engine. It'll heat the probe up as much as the surrounding area but it would be difficult to prevent heating the probe if you're trying to heat the boss anyway?
Once when trying to undo a probe from a P38 the lambda boss twisted out of the exhaust but I reckon whoever installed it had somehow cross threaded it, it was blowing and soot etc had probably made removal even more difficult by packing out the crossed threads. I know I've done some on P38's that have come out very easy, others very tight, the cross threaded one wasn't going to come out. I've also known them strip threads in the boss on removal.
I've made various tools for removing probes on various vehicles over the years, e.g. for the XJ8 Jags I made my own crow's foot by cutting a slit out of a ring spanner, cut the spanner short (close to the ring end but longer than a crow's foot) and welded a socket to the cut end to allow use with an extension bar and breaker bar / ratchet. Not as strong as a proper crow's foot (the ring spanner isn't as thick as a crows foot and loses strength with the slit cut through it) so has the disadvantage that if the probe is really tight the ring end could open up and slip.. but with the advantages (for the XJ8) of having a longer length from the probe to the bar and having the socket at an angle to the ring end.. perfect for using a long extension and ratchet/bar working from above in the engine bay, there wouldn't be space to lever near the probe itself or working from below and a conventional crows foot would see the extension bar foul the engine or engine bay components working from above but the DIY tool makes it easy to undo the probe working from above.
Passed my test at 17 in 1987 but learned to drive much younger, did a lot of it on 'Shell Island' (campsite) in Wales including towing boats (and pushing boats with a towbar fitted on the front of a Landrover, sometimes towing and pushing at the same time lol), driving a 6ton Merc lorry converted to an RV with boats on tow, etc. Up and down the cliff track, beach launches etc with the Landrover. Dad used to send me off-site onto public roads to nearby towns to buy petrol for said boats before I was 15. Drove tractors and ploughed fields working on a local farm after school and weekends at 15/16. Day I got my provisional I drove to London to deliver an outboard engine dad was selling but I could already drive properly. Only had 5 lessons before passing my test but dad was a club turn / entertainer and I used to drive him to and from gigs so got a lot of practice on unfamiliar roads between getting my provisional and going for my test and he was a good driver/teacher.
Dad's mate didn't even take a driving test until he was in his mid 40's but had owned cars since 17 and somehow managed to get insurance. The first vehicles he drove were the oversized dump lorries they used to dump spoil on pit tips when he was 14. Never even had any lessons, police pulled him one day and found out he didn't have a licence, he wasn't prosecuted but had to go for his driving test, when he went for his driving test the examiner asked him how long he'd been driving and owned cars.. which was around 30 years... the examiner said 'take us back to the testing station you've passed'.
At the other end of the scale my grandad could have been give a licence when leaving the Navy but didn't bother to apply for it after getting home from the Jap POW camp he'd been in for 4 years. Then he set up in business and wanted a licence so had to go for his test. When the examiner failed him for the 2nd time grandad punched him in the face in the car lol. He passed 3rd time...
Missus is learning to drive at the moment. Told her that due to the new rules she can drive to Cornwall with the caravan on the back while I go to sleep... but she told me where to get off (and I don't think I'd sleep well anyway).
I missed this thread or I might have suggested the problem could be LPG calibration.
As mapping LPG systems go they don't get much simpler than on a P38... Was it the same firm you visited that messed up LPG calibration in the first place?