I bought a set of fan wrench spanners/pulley holder to get the fan off the water pump - however, to do the tensioner, I use a 15mm socket on the end of a breaker bar to release the tensioner and get the belt off.

Marty

Yes, props have been on and off a lot, but I have never split them at the splined joint, or moved the vehicle whilst one/other have been removed so the phasing of them should be OK... I will make a note to check them the next time I'm under there. I didn't get up to the workshop in the end as I had another last minute door latch, and BECM unlock to do!

Will have to get a DTI to check the park brake drum.. good excuse to get another tool I guess :)

Have to try and do a few bits before I go away, otherwise it's going to end up waiting until the summer when I get back from tour!

Marty

haha, I know the feeling - I try and keep the same or a very close variation on it... even then I still sometimes forget which details I'm using for which site!

Yeah, definitely feel it through the seat and the vehicle. I almost want to say it's rear/right but it's so hard to pin down. I'm going to try and get up to the workshop tomorrow and finish putting the green one back together (changed exhaust manifold and just need to get steering shaft back on) and will see about finding 4 decent wheels with legal tyres on them and swapping them over for a couple of days to see if there's any change.

I don't think the rear prop is bent - out of balance, I guess it's possible... If the wheels/tyres don't make a difference then I'll look at dropping the rear prop off an seeing if that makes a difference.

Worth checking the water pump for any play in the bearing... other than that, noting else really that is worth doing.

Might still be the tensioner or one of the idler pulleys - when driving the engine is obviously under more load so it could be that it only shows up when it's actually having to work...

I had one of my idler pulleys and the tensioner start to make weird noises but only at really random times - so I replaced the lot of them just to be sure!

I have considered that, though I am not sure if I have a set up there with enough tread on them to be useful! I have thought I might swap the whole lot of one of the sets of hurricanes I've got... it's finding enough that hold air and are legal tread wise that's the problem!!

Might pop up there when I get a chance and have a poke about.. would be a good way of ruling the wheels/tyres in/out, yes. :)

Thanks for the nudge! might get me up there!

Right, next thin on my list... death wobble...

Driving down the motorway today and the RR is damn near impossible to drive without feeling like it' going to be shaken to bits. I've done a load of the common things, which I'll list below... and nothing has made a difference yet.

Done so far:
Wheels balanced not long ago - they found they were well out as they hadn't been done properly when they were originally fitted.
Tyre pressures checked and topped up where necessary.
Front prop UJ's have been replaced a couple of times, and I put a brand new prop on it not too long ago aswell
Rear prop UJ's have also been changed.
Anti-roll bar bushes and drop links renewed
Front Ball joints replaced (genuine Lemforder)
New drag link and track rod (one was an MOT fail a year or so ago, so replaced bot of them
Replacement steering damper - had a Boge one to begin with an now got one of the Cellular Dynamic ones on - no real difference
It's had new Boge shocks a few years ago aswell

Vibration is mostly felt from 60mph up, but sometimes down as low as 40mph.
Generally feels like it's shaking the whole vehicle, rather than just through the steering wheel - sometimes you can feel it through the steering wheel too though.

My current thought is that it could be the tyres? they are only a few years old and have about 15K miles on them, but wonder if because they are an A/T tyre they causing it - or maybe the fact that it spends so much time sitting there that they've gone 'out of round' a bit?

It's getting to the point where I don't want to take the thing on the motorway as it's such a chore to drive - you can't actually cruise in it without feeling like your teeth are going to fall out.

On an unrelated note, It wanders like buggery too - but I think that is the steering box wear. I tightened it up today, which has made it feel sturdier to steer, but now feels like it's wandering a lot more (part of that I think is slop in the steering box) - it doesn't constantly pull to one side but have to constantly correct it. It's fine around town - just at higher speed.

Doesn't feel right, compared to my previous 2 RR's that had really good road manners and you were able to cruise happily. I've been considering changing the tyres for something a little more road biased, as it doesn't get offroaded as much as I hoped it would!

Thoughts?

Haha, yeah - it's cheaper than the other garage around here, but only a couple of p/L though I still need to get the bloody system working properly..

Somehow when I went to reply it didn't show up with GilbertD's response - otherwise I wouldn't have posted the same sites!

Brit-Car have them listed as Genuine LR at about £60 plus VAT - but that is on a 1-2 day order IF their supplier has them in stock.

LR-direct also list a genuine Land Rover part at about £61+VAT - but again, subject to LR stock.

I have a feeling that it will probably be a case of you'll put the order in and then they'll come back and say LR doesn't have any stock left.. To be honest I'd just go with the Britpart one and keep an eye on it, especially as there seem to be very few alternatives. I'm not even sure if the old one is fixable - it looks like in the pictures that the bottom cap is held on with a couple of machine screws - it could just be that there's an O-ring under there which has cracked or something silly like that... I wouldn't recommend trying to take it apart until you have a replacement one in there though ;)

I have an account with Calor in Swindon for autogas - the advantage is that I get a fob so can fill up 24/7 and they bill me on account about 28 days in arrears.

The pump price is 57p/L though the account price has a 2p/L discount, so I pay 55p/L Which I think is a bit too much given it was that price when petrol was £1.20/L and is now about £1/L... though it's still just over half the cost of petrol, so I'm not complaining too much!

Still seems a bit high though, even with F1 removed...

You should see about 0.03A when it's fully sleeping - 0.12A is still 120mA, which is about 4x what it should be..

Still, a 120mA drain is still going to be a lot less than a woken up BECM, so if the vehicle is used fairly regularly then I doubt you would notice anything!

That's good news then... Well, ish... I had a mate back in NZ who had one let a core plug go and it was an engine out job to replace them (as no point only doing the one if the rest are the same age!!)

I did wonder about valley gasket, and had been toying with the idea of changing it as I am sure it leaks a bit of oil out the back of it too but I also keep planning on pulling the engine from my other Thor 4.6 so I can strip and rebuild it, and thus swap a fresh one in ... maybe over summer... sure as shit ain't going to happen before I go away for work!

It's definitely not dripping out the bellhousing (it does end up on the bellhousing at the bottom by the little notch out which I presume is to let any leakage out), as I can see it on the bottom of the starter motor where it's run around the side of it.

Mine run and work fine aswell.

Though it's interesting you mention that - another owner that I installed a door latch for mentioned that his clock would randomly stop and start when it felt like it!

And people say that P38's are expensive to run!!

Well, I finally got time to install the sensors this afternoon. Re-crimped new pins onto the vehicle side of the loom, cleaned out the connectors and refitted them to the loom.

Installed new sensors, plugged it all up - and happy to report that everything is back to normal.. Switching O2 sensors all the time, normal idle - not trying to stall itself or any nonsense like that.

Got some Geocell black sealant and did across the top of the windscreen aswell, so just have the front sunroof drains to check, and then that's my mini-list checked off for the moment. Next job is to find out where my coolant leak is at the rear of the engine on the drivers side. Can see it running down over the starter motor, but typically can't see anything above that from below, and the manifold heat shields are in the way from the top... I'm going to try giving the hose clamps on the heater hoses a nip up on that side as they are kind of above the area.

Anyone (gilbertd) who's had the engine out and seen what else is around that area where coolant could leak? I can only think of head gasket (if it's leaking externally) or core plug leaking, if it isn't a heater hose join..

Marty

I've managed to capture the RF transmissions from a key onto my laptop via the sound card. I'm also working on trying to capture the transmission on an arduino and then see if that's possibly to do anything with.

I've only tried it with one key, but there is a common pattern in the first part of the transmission on every time you press the button. I might hook all the bits back up again later and then see if the first part of the transmission is the same for every key (I've got at least 7 or 8 different locksets kicking about and most of them have at least one functioning remote..

Might be interesting to compare them... I then just need to figure out how to translate the transmission that's captured into Binary, and then to hex, work out the rolling code table, and then I'd be able to know what the key ID is.. I know it can be done, I have been in touch with someone who's done it about building me a fob checker, so I could read a fob transmission to test them, and then also make sure that the ID the fob is transmitting is within the range of what the BECM is expecting to see.

Might take a few bits with me when I'm away working in China for 9 weeks... if I get bored then I can work on that!

Gilbertd wrote:

I wouldn't have thought how a car is used would have any affect on the hose from the pump, it's going to have full pressure in it all the time whether the brakes are being used a lot or not. Ambient temperature may well have an affect though.

True - I just wondered if the pressure cycling from the brakes being used more often around town would have had an effect.. I know that the standard rubber brake lines can bulge out over the years - figured since it's rubber hose on the main side it might have done the same.

I also have the older version which isn't cracked, but requires the date to be wound back to get it to start properly. My version came with a little utility which changes the system date for you, and then resets it once it can see that Microcat has launched...

But I am with the other guys, I hardly use it these days - I used to use the Russian site - but found a better one at www.allbrit.de It has most Land Rover, Rover, and MG's I think - and although it's on a German site, it has a proper English page aswell, rather than the translation on the Russian one - so it's now my go-to site for parts catalog.