rangerovers.pub
The only place for a coil spring is up Zebedee's arse
Member
offline
1310 posts

Spent a couple of nights up in Yorkshire recently, and had a great time!

Was nice to cruise about in the RR - especially when coming to a flooded road along our route. When we came back the other way, the road was actually closed to all traffic, so was lucky to give the underside of the RR a clean in one direction at least! Suspension up to wading height and carry on!... saw the Citroen thing in the rear view mirror decide to turn around as I was heading off down the road.

My lovely co-pilot took a video of us going through it:
Flooded Road in P38

Then decided to take a cruise up and over a couple of the mountains, and managed to get a few pictures on the way up... most of them don't show it, but it was chucking with rain and blowing a gale... I didn't mind though, made the drive more interesting!

Skinny road

Wet wet wet

More narrow roads

Queen of the mountain

Queen of the mountain 2

As you can see in the last picture, you can just pick out the sideways rain in the headlights!

I'll have a look and see how good the recording was on the dashcam, but managed to attack some pretty big puddles in the road too - think a couple of times I managed to splash the roof!

Marty

Looks like Donald Trump in the driver's seat of that P38 in the crusher... where was that pic from?

Can tell it wasn't originally AA yellow, but red, going by the sides of the tailgate. And I'm guessing a vinyl wrap.

Glad it's all sorted and running again as it should do!

Did you get my email re: door latch Morat?

And nobody has noticed the bright yellow brake calipers, on a green vehicle?!? I could live with the green/lightstone (just) but bright yellow brake calipers on a green vehicle... yeah, no thanks...

The manual does state a particularly small battery for the petrol models, which is a bit frustrating, as they were usually the ones with all the extras added on, that are more likely to be power hungry!

I only recommend either:
MF31-1000 from Battery Megastore (115Ah and 1000CCA)
Yuasa Type 664SHD (115Ah and 800CCA)

I also noticed on one of the P38's I looked at the other day, there was a Lucas LP31-1000 - again, same specs as the MF31-1000
I've also just found a 'Superbattery' SB31-1000 - which is rated at 130Ah/1000CCA which would probably be OK

All of the MF31/Yuasa, and Lucas batteries I've seen have the battery terminals in the correct orientation, and the batteries themselves just fit in the battery tray.

As a practicer of what I preach... I had one of the MF31 batteries in my P38, and it lasted 4 1/2 years (often being left 2/3/4 weeks at a time when I was away working) and it finally failed when I was away working for 8 weeks, and the RR wasn't started at all in that time). I replaced it with another MF31-1000 battery 18months ago, and that's still going strong!

I'm sure it will clean off... You'd better not take all night doing it... Sloth and I are the record holders for the all nighters ;)

You're overthinking it way too much...

If you have a trigger wire in the video cable from camera...

Connect wire from BECM output to one of the reverse lights, up to head unit. Connect this to reverse trigger on head unit, and the wire in the A/V cable.

At camera end, use the trigger wire in the A/V cable to power the camera. If you need another ground, you can connect it to the likes of the loadspace lamp, though I'm pretty sure my camera shares the power ground with video ground on the video RCA.

No need to go digging around for more wiring or anything like that.. it's then all done up front where it's more accessible and easier to trace.

They should be getting woken up if the wake up wire is connected at the head unit to turn the amps on... the wake up wire is all spliced off the greu/black wire to all the devices that need it.

As far as I was aware, most P38s came with diversity antennas. If not, then it was definitely a specification thing.

My first P38 was a '95 HSE and had a radio antenna on both sides as well.

Sloth is correct... they both do FM, for diversity and one of them Is AM too, with Hythe key fob receiver separate.

DAB...
Mine is patchy, and I've got one of those stick on antennas on the glass.. I've put mine on the windscreen to the side of the heater screen elements. It's ok, but I'm going to look for a better solution...

I mean, I know TWO VSE's is exciting... but that exciting?!? ;)

I have considered the NFC tag and wireless charging pad, but so far haven't bothered... I found the having NFC enabled all the time drained more battery that it was being useful for on my phone - so just switch bluetooth on manually when I get in the RR.

My rear view camera had an extra wire tagged on the side of the AV cable, which I used for power, and powered it from the reverse light power at the BECM, rather than picking it up at the tailgate... as the reverse signal to the unit is +12V to trigger the unit into bringing up the camera, and the camera itself draws next to nothing.

Gilbertd wrote:

My thoughts entirely. All cars have their faults but it seems that the P38 has got a bad rap for a couple of fairly minor, easily fixed, problems. With the number of us running LPG we could probably start to dispel a few myths there too.

That one is probably a tough one... even that of the V8 being reliable is probably a challenge, since they will always slip a liner if you look at it the wrong way, and LPG is basically the catalyst for it to just randomly grenade itself.

Yes, the Rover V8 isn't the bet engine out there these days, but it also is not nearly as bad as everyone makes them out to me... so much of it all comes back to preventative maintenance though...

I'm fine with whatever... feel free to link to one my threads on the Android swap if you want aswell. Can't remember if I did one on here, or just Rangerovers. net...

Glad it's all installed and working... I'm thinking of replacing mine (again) as the current one is pissing me off... it's got issues with USB devices, the 4G modem always drops out as if it's been disconnected, the DAB reception is crap (might look at a different antenna) and now it's just decided to start not recognition the steering wheel controls all the time.. or it thinks they're different values every time you press the same button. I might pull the unit and check to make sure it isn't the buttons, but everything else on the steering wheel works, and no faults etc..

I think k it is just an issue with the actual unit I bought and used this time, the previous one (even though it was slower) was a lot more stable!

Will be interested to hear how yours goes over the next few months and you get settled into using it..

Marty

I think it's good to get the p38 or the mote. Not necessarily to promote it and get more people behind the wheel, but I would like to try and start dispelling the myth of unreliability, EAS is crap and whatever other stereotypes people want to throw out there.

Mine is going to get a wash once I'm back from Yorkshire, as I'm sure the underside will be a bit cruddy - something tells me they use more salt on the roads up there...

Better spotting than me! Though I was watching it on my phone screen, so not the easiest to see...

So the new tag line of L322's is "don't get one, they'll burn a whole carpark down?"

the later subwoofers have the amplfier bolted to the back of the actual speakers, so you need to pull the whole box out and apart to remove the amp before the individual speaker units can be removed.

Glad the rest of it is all done - just need a pic of the finished install now :)

nice idea about putting the rest of it vertically - I had considered it on mine, but wasn't sure if it would fit, and also I wanted to make it so I could remove the whole main part of the unit for future tinkering if required :)

Mine's running in Parallel Morat :) but i get good cabin heat and vapouriser heat running as it is..

Just make sure to chock the front wheels!

You shouldn't need a small speaker - use the ones that are in the vehicle!

Use the MP3 player as the input to the amplifier, and then it should amplify incoming signal to the door speakers that are connected to that amp.

DSP option disappearing suggests that the head unit is already in a non-DSP mode - so should be outputting all 4 corners.

F15 blowing probably because something shorted out with the Purple wire as you were splitting it 4 ways to the amps. It's one of the main permanent 12V feeds to the DSP amp, along with RF receiver, loadspace lamp, tailgate lock, some of the other interior lamps and the rear door locking/unlocking relay.

I forgot to mention earlier too, the random brown wire you found is another 12V permanent feed to the DSP amp - so I would recommend capping the end of it with some insulation tape, so it doesn't short on anything too. It comes from Fuse F1, which also does Radio, Clock, instrument cluster, window switchpack etc... so probably don't want that one randomly going pop either!

Ok, so if you have permanent 12V/ground on the correct wires, then I'd suggest a couple of things...

When turning on the radio, do you still get the option of DSP when you scroll through the settings? if so, then it could mean the head unit is still in DSP mode and you may need to totally unplug the power from the head unit, and then power it back up/input code etc. I'm not sure how it detects the DSP amp to switch between modes (it obviously looks for communications on the I-bus line - but whether it only 'refreshes' once the head unit has been fully powered off/on or whether it does it on any power up, I'm not 100% sure as i've always done my testing on the bench where I can turn the power off fully).

If you don't get the option of DSP, then chances are it's already just outputting normally in non-DSP mode. in this case, I would then try testing the amps separately.

I test my amps on the bench, just with a 3.5mm jack and then connecting one side of this (Left or Right, doesn't matter) to the input pins of the amplifier and then play some music through my mp3 player. As long as the amp is powered up with 12V, gnd, and then 12v switched on the grey/black wire, then you should hear something through the speakers for that amp.

I have a few amps here which are faulty - they don't seem to power up fully when the switched 12V is provided, and if I jumper the amplifier chip manually, then it powers up and works - so there must be a component on the amp board which is causing it to not turn on fully. That being said.. I would find it very strange if NO speakers work...