Howdy all!

As you've probably noticed - I'm not on here that much anymore - life in NZ has kept me stupidly busy, along with getting married last year, and well, more work.

I'm slowly trying to get back into some P38 parts as and when I have time, but that isn't as plentiful as it was a few years ago over COVID times! I have managed to make a V2 of the RF Filter, which is pretty much all SMD and assembled at the PCB factory, which makes the boards smaller, the boxes 3D printable, and assembly/programming/testing quicker and easier.

Anyway - I am going to be over in the UK for about 3 weeks (well, spread over 5, but we are going to Europe for a couple of weeks) between the end of March and the end of April (so in a month's time effectively).

My workshop lease is up for renewal at the end of May, and I don't want to renew it this year, as it's costing more than the mortgage on the house, and I'm never going to get the RR's there back into any sort of working shape - so I need to get it cleared out, so I can tell them I'm not having it any longer.

I was wondering if anyone on here would be interested in lending a hand to help clear some of it out so I can get at least one of the P38's there off to the scrap yard, and the second one - sadly will probably follow suit now - as in my last absence, rats got inside it and have basically trashed the wiring and the under carpet foam. Damn shame as it's a 2000 with 89K miles on it, and otherwise is reasonable nick once it would be cleaned up, but I fear it would be too much of a project to restore now!

That being said - if there are any parts people want from it, then if you're free and want to come give me a bit of a hand to sort some stuff out, then I am sure there's plenty there I'd be happy to get rid of cheaply or even free.

I have a few sets of wheels which are in good condition from memory (though the tyres aren't!) and also a totally rebuilt front axle assembly which I had fitted to my '98 before it became too much of a task to restore... but it's been painted, has new ball joints, original front diff with about 85K miles on it, new air springs, shocks, radius arm bushes, brake calipers etc.

I also have some tools - a big air compressor, hydraulic press, and probably other bits I can't remember.

The '2000 (if someone wanted it for parts - but would definitely need to be trailered - though it has 4 wheels/tyres and would roll to load) has a good Thor V8, which ran nicely the last time I started it. It's missing an alternator, and the radiator had the bleed nipple snapped off and repaired when I got it, but I also have at least one other good Thor radiator that can go with it. It's also got a DSP amp conversion in it, which I might yank out but if someone wanted to offer for the vehicle for parts, then I'll probably leave it in. I also have the original door handle/lock somewhere (I swapped it when my shop got broken into YEARS ago and they nicked the key - probably to try and joy ride off in it, but I had disconnected the battery, mega fuses etc so it wouldn't power up/yet alone start!) and I have a brand new Land Rover key fob which matches door/ignition/BECM/glove box etc.

We land into the UK on the 25th I think of March, go to Europe on the 7th - 20th April, and then leave the UK on the 30th April, so if anyone is free between 26th March - 6th April, or 21st April - 29th April and fancies a Workshop Wrap Up with me, and possibly some cheap parts, P38 advice/looking at any of your P38's whilst I'm back aswell, then let me know - it would be much appreciated, as getting the workshop gone is my biggest stress at the moment! My wife says she will help me, but she hasn't seen the state of it yet!!!

Cheers,
Marty

OK, quick post - pics to follow later..

anyone else who has terrafirma shocks - the standard ones TF125/126 had any issues getting the rubber bushing cups in? I'm putting them in as per the diagram, but the thread doesn't seem long enough, or I can't get enough compression on the rubber bushings to begin with to get them started.

If I take one of the inner cups (that basically go inside the P38 cups on the lower shock mount) then I can get the outer cup on and the nut on. put that one back, and I can't as the rubber bushing decompresses...

For the moment I'm going to keep it so that the top has both TF metal cups and the bottom doesn't have the inner one. If they'd made the thread on the lower mount 5mm longer it wouldn't be an issue...

BTW this is on the rear - I haven't looked at the joyousness of the front yet

So, I was thinking that now I have all this spare time on my hands, and no work to go and do for the foreseeable future...

Once we all come out of this crazy lockdown, and can move about again... who would be interested in a workshop weekend, to catch up and try to get a few of those post pandemic tasks done?

I'm happy to host one again at my workshop if people are interested - I'm not sure when will suit everyone, and obviously we have to wait until places are open again!

I'm thinking tentatively June at some point. Is there anything that collectively people want to work on or get looked at/fixed?

Thoughts?

So... It's been ages since I've posted anything up on any RR forum. Mostly due to how busy I've been with work, but also due to not having actually gotten some of the projects that I've been trying to work on finished, so figured 'what's the point' in posting up about them.

Well, other than the fact I now have NO work (the tour I was on has officially been cancelled, so my calendar is completely empty for the rest of the year now!) and have been at home for probably longer than I ever have in one stretch - I also had all the required parts to finish off a project I started some time in August/September last year.

Some of you might remember the incident involving the self-destructive power steering pump, overheating, and heater core blowing out incident I had... yup, the one whilst in the middle of the night, doing 70mph, then "pop" hot coolant everywhere, burning my foot in 3 places, and a cloud of steam that I couldn't even see out the windscreen...

Somehow I got stupidly lucky (or I just did a REALLY good job building the engine) and other than replacing the heater core, and the offending PAS pump, cleaning up a lot of coolant from the footwell (thanks Sloth for helping out and also for attacking the carpet with his carpet cleaner!), and re-taping a lot of the wiring looms... the only other real casualty was my touch screen nav unit that took exception to being sprayed with hot coolant whilst it was on and running.

So whilst looking on eBay for possible replacements - 7" versions to swap out what was already there, my eye got caught by a bigger 8.8" widescreen version, which had a detachable screen, and a single DIN main unit. The advantage of this is not having to hack the case apart and cut it down to fit in the dash. But the disadvantage of it being pretty much full width of the fascia, and this would need a LOT more work to make it fit. Oh, I also upgraded to some fancy piano black Vogue SE trim awhile ago and didn't really want to cut through any of that wood finish, as there's no way I'd be able to make it look right.

So after much umming and ahhhing, and looking at the price of the 8.8" units (well over £300!!) I decided 'screw it' go big or go home'. Since I was already at home I figured I should go big, so ordered one. I also ordered their DVR camera to go with it, as the one I had was a bit crap. This one also appeared to take a memory card in it - so I was hoping that it meant it recorded it internally and used the USB for managing the camera, rather then the old unit which was just a USB camera, with all the recording done on the main nav unit. I am sure this added to some of the issues I had with it given it was constantly having to write to the memory and loads of USB traffic, which it never seemed to like.

So a little while later, a package from China turned up - this is what I was going to have to try and fit in a P38 dash:

So after setting it up on the desk, and playing around with it a bit, I was pretty happy with the unit as a whole. They managed to forget to send the DVR camera, so after a few emails back and forth they sent that out to me... cue another few weeks waiting...

But I decided I liked the look of it, though the stupid google boot animation had to go... I managed to find a whole host of information online about the Joying units - ROMs, how to change various things - including the boot animation etc. So to go with the 'factory fit' theme, I've made a Range Rover one...

It is actually animated, fades up and down and ends up on that image until the unit is booted.

So, now I have the unit... how the heck do I fit it in the dash? And what am I going to do, given the fact I don't want to chop up my nice black trim any more? I had the thought (before actually buying the unit!) that I could take one of the standard grey plastic fascias and cut that up... they're not quite dime a dozen, but certainly a lot easier to replace if I screw something up at any point along the way!... And as it happened, I had a spare one kicking about in the garage.

I sanded it back to try and get rid of the textured finish, then set about attacking it with a rotary tool and some saw blades. As it turns out, this screen size is pretty much a perfect fit and the same width as the factory radio bezel, so as far as visually lining up, was happy!

I used some extra ABS plastic that I'd cut off the cubby box that did live here before and used it to make some edges in around where the screen would go, to give it some rigidity and keep it in place. As you can see below, I plastic welded it in place with a soldering iron and added ribs either side (you can see some on the LHS below).

I then cut off some of the threaded screw stands from the back of an old window switchpack front trim and plastic welded them in place. The unit came with some mounting brackets that had plastic clips in them, which once removed and flattened out actually work pretty much perfectly for mounting the screen with very little modification, other than widening the holes so that some window switchpack screws would fit to secure it to the trim. The screen is a pretty tight 'friction fit' as it is, but wanted something to secure it from behind, so any harder presses on the screen didn't have it falling out.

The next step was to get some body filler and tidy up the edges where the cutouts were done for the screen. I melted a few bits of plastic in to fill some of the bigger areas, but some fine body filler would do the rest. I covered up the screen in cling film so it wouldn't get damaged and then mounted it. I wanted it in place, so I could fill up to the screen as much as possible to get as nice a fit as I could.

I left the filler to dry and then took the screen out. I was left with a few overhangs, but overall a good result I could sand back.

I was also having a look at other ROMs for the unit, as the 'new' UI that it came with had a clock on the RHS, which I kinda liked the look of, since I would be ditching the LR clock to fit this in. The down side to this is that a) it was ALWAYS there, so apps wouldn't go to the full widescreen (you would have the clock down the side and then apps would take up the rest of the screen - which was around the same size as the 7" screen I had previously... the whole point of this was to go widescreen and have a bit more real estate). Also b) you couldn't move where the clock was... If I could have had it on the LHS so it was opposite side to the driver, then I probably would have lived with it...
But in my research I had noticed on the EU 'version' it had a different UI... I managed to download and flash that ROM to the unit, which then gave me a full widescreen launcher and all the apps run widescreen now. I lose the clock completely, but overall I'm happy with this, as I get to have the map for example across the whole screen, which before wasn't possible.

Back on the fascia side, I got into the trimming and sanding of the body filler, and was pretty happy with the results:

I did do a second round of clingfilm screen, fill gaps - but after that it looked good enough for me... And it was onto paint! Grey Plastic primer first, but at least 6 or 7 coats probably to help build it up and get rid of any last texture in the plastic:

I then sourced and ordered some Jet Black paint, and 2K clear coat lacquer for the top coats. Whilst waiting for that to turn up, I played around with the unit some more. I fitted a fan in the top of the casing, as with all these android units, it gets pretty warm on the MCU board. I thermal epoxied an old graphics card heatsink on the MCU, and then put a 50mm silent cooling fan into the lid of the case to keep some air flow. CPU workload and heat on my previous unit were a couple of things that made it run stupidly slow at times - even with a fan, it would sometimes lock up, so I went a bit extra on this one!.

I also had a play around with different home screen launchers, and finally settles on this one - from memory it's called 'car web guru' or something like that. some of the features don't work with my unit, but you can customise the look of the home screen - and again, I wanted something that could look like it was factory, so after a LOT of tweaking, ended up with this:

The DVR camera also turned up, and I got that installed in the RR and tested it out:

This camera DOES have a TF card slot, and now has a 32GB card in it. It connects to the main unit with USB and you can view the camera feed in the DVR app, and set the camera recording settings up. But then after that, it records on it's own to the internal card. You can view (and I think copy) the recordings from the main head unit. Far better than my old one and from tests I did, I believe that now it's set up, any time it's plugged into USB to power it (even if it isn't the head unit) it will automatically start recording.

At this point, I then headed away for work a lot, shows in the UK and then off to Canada, and then the USA where I was on tour until this pandemic brought me home. So it was now time to pick up where I had left off nearly 4/5 months prior.

This was how I'd left it, primed and ready for colour:

I'd been priming it with spray can paint, but had bought a HVLP spray gun, air filter and all that good stuff to use with my compressor to spray the top colour coat and clear coat. So onto the colour:

After about 4 or 5 coats of colour, it was time for some lacquer:

I gave it probably 5 or 6 coats to start with:

I ended up with an 'orange peel' finish, which I didn't like - so I sanded it down to then be able to put some more clear coat on it. Unfortunately I managed to rub through to the primer on a couple of spots - right at the top where it curves slights to the edge of the trim. So after some swearing, I sanded the rest of it a bit more, and then sprayed another 4 or 5 coats of colour back on it to cover up the primer. Follow that by more clear coat - but this time thinned down a bit. I got a nicer finish, but a few dust marks which I attempted to sand/polish out with some high grit paper. All I ended up with was a flat looking finish, so after some more swearing, it got another few coats of lacquer, with me saying to myself that even if there were a few specks of dust, then it would do - as realistically not many people will notice, and I just wanted it finished!!

So the end result:

Then it was time to fit the screen:

And take the RR apart to get all the switches out, and the aspirator temp sensor:

At this point, I realised that the little white plastic 'button' I had removed from the top of the headlamp switch had been put in a REALLY safe place (I still haven't found it) and that my original black trim didn't have one, nor did any of my other wood trims. I'd kept this hole free to be able to put it back in again, but now I was facing having a sodding hole in the nice new trim, that I could have filled right back in the beginning...

Then I saw a thread on here about battery going flat by leaving the lights on... and I figured that whilst I haven't done it personally, is it was possible to have the lights on with the ignition off that I could utilise the hole that I now didn't have the button for to make as an indicator LED...
I drilled the hole to fit a 3mm LED and then sanded the end of one down a bit so it now has a frosted look. I went with blue, and it is wired in so it has a 12V positive feed spliced into the wire that would go to the clock. The LED is then grounded via the headlamp switch when it's turned all the way to dip beam.

So then it was onto the conundrum of what to do with the aspirator temp sensor... I could just leave it in the dash, but it would then read whatever warm temp was in there, and I didn't fancy leaving it unplugged and having a book symbol the whole time!
Since I've had the Android units that do radio aswell as nav and everything else, I've replaced the single DIN head unit space with a cubby tray to be able to put phone and all that in. So I figured if I drilled a hole in the top of this and made a mount for the aspirator sensor, it would then be able to suck air through the hole, and it would at least get SOME external air flow.. So a bit of alloy plate and some PCB standoffs later, this was made:

So now, all that was left was to take the trim out to the RR and get it all fitted... The final results are below: (the first pic is missing the headlamp switch as the locking tabs broke off as I was fitting it, so had to LED convert another one and refit... boring!

Done.... for the moment...

It works with the factory steering wheel controls, the DVR works nicely, the maps are pretty decent on the big screen. I think it looks as close to 'factory fit' as I could make it, given that it's totally aftermarket. It's also got 4G built in, so I have a cheap giff gaff data sim installed, which gives me online searching when I'm out and about, also live traffic, and ability to use google maps for anything that isn't in the iGo offline map (iGo also will get live traffic if there's an internet connection, which is handy).

Bluetooth audio is pretty good for calling, I can stream media audio from my phone aswell, and the quality of this is pretty decent - definitely better than the FM radio quality in these head units (or really any aftermarket head unit in the RR).

The ash tray and cigar lighter have been replaced with a dual USB charging socket, and a modified infotainment controller from an Audi - which gives me a few more manual input buttons. The LEDs are all controlled through an arduino and the buttons act as a resistive network to a USB HID device which you can map resistive button presses to keyboard commands. This unit then presents itself to Android as an external USB Keyboard. It's a bit complex, but if anyone is interested I'll do a follow up post in this thread on that bit itself.

Anyway... thanks for reading - I hope it was an interesting write up.
Marty

Hi all,

I just wanted to write a quick post on here as I haven't been here in ages, and I've had a metric shitload of emails from people (some on here, some just enquiries from the website) which I've pretty much had to read and hope I'd find a time to reply to - which I haven't!

The last 6 or so months for me have been stupidly busy work-wise, I spent probably 5 nights at home between the middle of November and Christmas Eve when I flew out of the UK to the USA to go on tour with a theatre show.

As some of you know - my 'real' job is in the entertainment industry, I'm a Lighting Designer/Tech/ AV tech etc for events and shows. My current role is the Head Lighting Tech on an USA National Tour of 'An American In Paris' which we started tech rehearsals in Washington State on the 2nd January, after I'd been to South Carolina just after Xmas to de-rig and get an LED video screen packaged up to be shipped to the tour. The tour opened in Yakima, Washington on 11th January, and was supposed to be touring all the way through until the 7th June - where most of the shows are all 'one nighters' Ie we do one show in a venue in a day, and then move somewhere else - instead of like a lot of shows where you'll be in one venue for a week!

From memory we are due to hit about 85 ish venues in 30 odd states, and do 130 odd performances. Our schedule has a load of travel days where we as crew are travelling overnight on a tour bus, and then in a location for most of the day, before leaving again in the middle of the night for the next venue. We also had 2 full days off scheduled in the whole tour!

Our show tours in 3 x 53ft trucks, one of which is JUST lighting/video equipment, the other 2 have audio, costumes, scenery, props etc in them. My day generally starts just before 8am walking into a new venue and figuring out where we are putting everything that day, where our mains power comes from, where we have to run it to, how we are running cables to keep them out of the way of doorways, loading access, cast access etc.

At 8am, I'm in charge of unloading our truck, with local crew who are varying levels of usefulness in each city. By 0830, the truck is usually unloaded, I've had my morning workout in the process and we then get to hanging all the lighting. Some of it is on a pre-rigged trussing system which we hang with electric chain hoists - other parts of the lighting package hang on battens in the theatre.

We generally are finished with our load in by 15:30/16:00 and have a couple of hours to go out and get coffee/food, before being back for a show call to run the lighting for the show. The show itself usually starts around 19:30, and runs for just over 2 1/2 hours, including a 20 minute intermission. We're usually finished the show just after 10pm, and then we start loading it back out, and then once everything is packed away and flightcased, we load the truck about midnight. We now finish our load out around 00:30, have a shower in the venue, and then get on our tour bus and go to bed (there are 12 crew travelling on the bus, and we have a bunk to sleep in and a couple of lounge style seating areas). We generally leave a venue about 01:30 once everyone has showered and on the bus. Maybe we'll have a drink, or a bit of food, and then head to bed, with the alarm set of 07:30 to get up and do it all again!

A couple of weeks ago now we had 7 shows in 7 venues, in 7 days.... one of them was a matinee show, where our normal 8am load in is earlier at 6am!! I worked over 90 hours, so then when we had a travel day, I spent most of it in bed asleep! We've been through the midwest, where some days it was around -21C when we were unloading the truck OUTSIDE!!! And then reloading it outside in the same kind of temperatures at midnight!

Every day is different - venue, crew, how much of the show goes in depending on venue size/layout/access... we had one place where we had to unload the 3 trucks on the street and everything went up on an elevator on the outside of the venue to get it inside... and it started snowing on the loadout, whilst we were trying to load the trucks on the road!

This is my 'normal' kind of lifestyle, and P38's are my hobby, which I do love working on - but unfortunately it's all had to take a backseat due to this tour and schedule. Likewise, emails that I've had, I've tried to read and then failed at responding to - because of time, or where I have had time off, I've been sleeping, or trying to get out and about and see some of where I've been etc. So my apologies to everyone who has been in touch, and I haven't gotten around to replying to - and the fact I've not been on here either!

Why am I writing this now?? Well, I have a bit of time off... due to the coronavirus outbreaks, we were told a couple of nights ago that some venues were cancelling or rescheduling, and we now had a week layoff at the start of April (which would have been a welcome break by that point!!). The next day (Friday 13th incidentally!) we got a message to say that as of the 14th we were all being laid off for 5 weeks until the 21st April. We were in Florida at the time, and everyone has been disbanded back home. Well, ish... I'm currently sitting in New York, waiting to find out if I'm flying home on Friday, or being put up somewhere out here to hole up and wait out the layoff. Part of me wants to get home, so I can then have some time to myself to reset, and hopefully catch up on a load of p38 jobs for myself and other people. Part of me worries that if I do that, then I'll struggle to get back out here with the travel ban to the US from the UK/Europe - if that's still in effect when the tour is due to restart.. so hence I'm in a bit of limbo waiting to see what's going on.

At least it's given me the time to start replying to some emails, and get on the forum again a little bit. Hopefully I'll be able to spend a bit more time on here and get the rest of my emails caught up on over the next few days!

Thanks for your patience if you have emailed, and I apologise in advance for when the tour starts again, and I have to get back into the routine of lots of work, little sleep, and zero spare time!!

Marty

Pictures to follow, but had my first experience in nearly 14 years of P38 ownership of turning up back at home on the back of a recovery truck last night...

Driving home from work last night and get a "whump" sound and then alternator light come on... Immediately know the drive belt has failed ( it had been looking a bit worn and actually had a new one turn up with some other bits yesterday whilst I was out!), But the cause appears to be something else.

No hard shoulder where I am, and doing 70mph, with now no power steering in the middle of the night.

As I'm looking for a place to pull over safely "pop" in the dash as something catastrophically fails, and suddenly I've got hit coolant pissing all over my foot, and steam everywhere obstructing my view.btemp gauge in the red, you name it... A few choice curse words going on...

Managed to pull off safely into a side road after exiting dual carriageway and called the RAC at 11pm... " We'll be with you soon, but it could be up to 90 minutes". Called back after 85 minutes. "recovery is on the way but he won't be there until between 2am and 3am"

Finally recovered at 2:30am, home just after 3am... Now waiting on a train the Cheltenham as I've got 2 shows to do today, one tomorrow, and then load the show out and train home. Friday will start looking into the damage and see what I'm up against.

It was supposed to be an easy week commuting from home for a change!

First sign is the power steering pump (which was new a few years ago) is shot - the pulley is flapping about, so guessing the bearing in there decided it was unhappy, and shredded the belt, but will update as I find out what's happened.

Needless to say with the overheat, I'm looking at a top end rebuild at least.

So had the MOT test today, and it failed on emissions...

They tested it as a "Catalyst Equipped - closed loop vehicle", even though I told them it was running on LPG... They said they tested on both petrol AND LPG and it failed both times.

Just got home and checked last year's paperwork (was tested at the same place) and it was tested as a non-catalyst vehicle, with fuel type listed as LPG - and passed, with the CO values pretty close to what they were this year...

I called them up and booked a retest for tomorrow and told them it was tested incorrectly - which they didn't like being told, they just said "it's been tested on both and if it's failed, then it's failed"... despite the past 2 years being tested as a non-cat vehicle on LPG.

Am I correct in thinking they've tested it incorrectly? They said there were emissions changes this year, but I thought that only affected Diesel vehicles with DPF and things like that.

I've been having a trawl of the internet, but can't find anything out there on LPG vehicles and emissions testing - as if it should be done as a non-cat test, then I'd like to go back in there tomorrow with the previous 2 years test results and something in black and white to say what it should be tested as. I noticed the testers name was different this year to the past 2 years, so wonder if the guy doesn't really know what he's doing!

It also failed on the crack in my bumper having sharp edges (first year it went in like that they actually put tape over it and passed it!) so I'll get the dremel and duct tape out this afternoon to attend to that.. but I don't want to end up having an argument with them over emissions without some evidence from my side over how it should be tested - if they disagree...

Marty

So, long story short - I've just had my transmission reconditioned whilst I was away working last week. Picked the RR up today, and drove it home.

Seems to behave ok, and definitely has more poke than before, so there was some noticeable wear in the old one!

But, the kicker... just as I was getting near to home (was about 50miles to get back) when I slowed down, I would get a fairly hard change and a 'clunk' when shifting down between 3rd - 2nd. I could replicate it on both auto driving, and bringing the selector manually down the gears and forcing it to change. Sometimes it's a bit of an low clunk - other times fairly solid sounding, and even a lurch.

Going up the gears seems to be fairly well ok, and it's only on the 3 - 2 downshift the issue occurs.

I've called the garage about it and they've said to drive it for a couple of days to see if it gets better, but otherwise I'm going to have to take it back, which is a pain around work and travels - so not going to get the chance to take it back until about 11th July! I also was supposed to be driving up to Liverpool for work at the start of next week, but not this has happened I'm going to have to look at alternative means, as I don't want to possibly damage the box at all!

Any thoughts of simple things I can check that might have a bearing on it? I'm going to double check fluid level tomorrow, and also silly things like prop shaft UJ's and bolts etc.

Slightly annoying given the cost of getting it done - but hey ho...

Marty

So after the last couple of years of doing a bit of a meet up of P38 owners from various parts of the country (I think Morat still holds the record for coming from Yorkshire!) I haven't really had much time with work, and the rest of life going a bit crazy this year to put much thought into any of it.

As it was mentioned in one of the other threads, I figured I'd start a fresh thread for anyone to register their interest in it possibly happening again this year..
Last year was a group buy on headlinings, and re-trimming a number of them over the weekend - followed by Sloth giving me a hand swapping the modulator block on my RR long into the night!

I'm not sure what people would want to get done this year - I'm getting my RR back from transmission garage tomorrow, as I've just had the autobox pulled out and reconditioned, so there isn't really much major on the list of things that I want to do on mine. If I get around to it, then I might start looking at getting a winch, and then I can finally fit the factory winch tray that's been sitting in the garage for the last 3 odd years! But I'm also happy to help out others with things they want looking at - electrical is my speciality! Though I have tools for doing ball joints, pressing out/in radius arm bushes and the likes aswell.

If you're interested, then leave a reply below - with anything that you would like to try and get done... and also when suits. I'm only really free the weekend of 28th/29th July and 4th/5th August at the moment - though could possibly go 18th/19th August too.

Marty

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!

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

Had an email from a mate, asking if I knew anyone who was interested in a 2002 Vogue SE...

He's seen an ad for it, but thought I'd either be interested ( I am, but money, space, and time are all against me at the moment) - listed at £2250 and apparently just needs a window switchpack and the heater core O-rings doing...

It's in North Wales, and apparently MOT'd till June 2018, no advisories, all manuals, 2 keys.
Black in colour, and the guy who has it says he wants it to go to a loving home only!

If anyone is interested, then let me know and I'll see if I can find any other info about it/who the seller is etc...

Marty

I've been through and tightened up a bit of security on my server, so that if someone was to go to my external IP address, before it would show up the main landing page of my web server admin page, it now shows up an old version of my website (for the time being).

As the directory structure has changed a bit some of my images in posts might now not show up as they aren't referenced properly.

As an interim measure - i've effectively 'doubled up' on my folder structure, but over the course of 'when I get a chance' I'll be going through and updating the links in my threads etc. I've started on the engine rebuild one, as it had the most pictures in it... but if you come across one that I've missed, and there's just a title where there should be an image, then let me know and I'll make sure it's updated...

Cheers,
Marty

As the title says... I have a few oddities, which I wouldn't mind a couple of other opinions on!

My Zavoli LPG ECU has decided to take a dive to the point where it wasn't putting out 5V properly (I made mention of that in my engine rebuild thread). I traced a bit in the ECU, and found that a couple of the capacitors were pretty dead - bulging on the side and things like that. I've got replacements to fit, but found that even with no load on it, the 5V supply to the sensors etc was pulsing 0V-5V-0V..... found this was also the case on the 12V input side of the 5V reg, so think I have a bit more digging to do to see if I can fix it..

However - I decided that the best way forward was to get a brand new King LPG ECU, it's the later type 'D' which has OBD connection if I want (not wired in yet). Bought said ECU, and it came with a wiring loom which I've kept in the box, as it's identical to what's on the vehicle already - other than the OBD wiring.

Got it plugged in, connected up and on the laptop - configured everything (set injectors to Hana 1.9 ohm! :) ) and all good.. or so I thought.
Got it to autocalibrate, but have now noticed that the temperature sensors for both the gas rail, and the reducer are showing 110 degrees C permanently, no matter what setting I set them to in the ECU (Mine are 10K sensors from the old Zavoli ECU).

Any thoughts as to why this is showing like this? Also noticed that a couple of times the LPG switch hasn't lit up when the ignition has been in position II (same as the Zavoli ECU was starting to do) but comes on as soon as the engine fires up...

My next step is going to be checking the wiring to the temp sensors to see if there is a break/short in one of them that's causing the erroneous reading.
The RR runs OK on gas - good pick up and happy to cruise, but it is pulling the fuel trims a bit (needs fine tuning) but then I also wonder if the temp sensor values being out has affected the calibration when I ran that (I don't recall them being that far out when I calibrated it - but could be wrong - I had taken the RR out for a good spin to get everything nice and warm to calibrate it with).

Any thoughts or pearls of wisdom?
The ECU is stamped as 02/2017, so a new build, has firmware 11.52 on it, and I'm connecting to it with King software version 6.2.1.0 IC

Thanks as always...
Marty

Ok, so Winter Camp never happened - mostly because I didn't organise it...

Between being away for work, and freezing over an engine swap (Thanks again Sloth for the extra help!) and freezing again to do a dash out/heater core swap in between 'real work' jobs, winter has (happily) seemed to have drifted past us.. nearly..

So turning thoughts to 'Summer Camp 2017'...

1) Who's interested in having another get together/working weekend?
2) If you are interested, then what would you like to get done to your RR?
3) If we get lots of people wanting to do the same thing (headlinings seem to be a theme already I think) then do we want to see if we can get any deals on bulk buying of parts etc?
4) Are we all happy to convene at my workshop again? There will only be the one indoor bay this year, as one of my restoration ones is inside and being pulled apart slowly... but if we are happy to roll it in/out, then we can free up the second one.
5) Yes, the disco is still where we left it 9 months ago...

For those who haven't heard of the camp before - you can get the idea from the title graphic for the forum - at best we ended up with about 8/9 P38's there (including my 2 restoration ones) - and got a few bits done, and had some good laughs and food cooked by our resident chef...

I'll start up with the task list... I'd like to get my headlining done, and hopefully 2 more done if we are doing a whole load - for my other P38's as they will need doing at some point, and the restoration needs to start somewhere!

So I'd be down for 1x Black headlining, and 2x Cream.
I'm also hoping to have my spare ABS modulator rebuilt by then, and possibly swap that over.
Otherwise, I'll be happy to help others out - especially with electrical issues...

Anyone else?

Ok, so I have a weird one for you...

Working on replacing some potentiometers in some blend motors, so I can send them off to someone who wants a set. Replaced the pots, and set them up, checked resistance across the range of travel, and all good - nice and smooth end to end.

Hooked them up to a HEVAC controller to make sure that it was driving them properly and they would calibrate, and that's where the fun started. Distribution motor would calibrate, but the temp blend ones fail and then chuck up an error, saying the stall position is wrong. Look in the live values, and their stuck at a max of 75/76.

Figure OK, something must be up with these pots, even though they are Piher NV15's 10K ohm, as mentioned many places. Decided I'd swap them for an older set of (new) pots, which have a different centre - so needed to grind them out for the thumbwheel gears to fit in.. No trouble, I've done it on a set before, and they've worked fine.

Put the other set of pots in and the same thing happens... tried with 2 different heater boxes that I've reconditioned - so no sticky flaps etc. and a couple of different HEVAC controllers - same deal...

Here's the rub... I've got an older set of blend motors, with original (working) pots... put them on the same HEVAC controller, and heater box, and they will calibrate fine... sit them next to the new ones, and measure resistance range vs resistance on pot, and pretty much the same.. even if I tweak the new ones, so they are the same, then no difference when trying to calibrate.

I've tried swapping one of the motors from old-new in case there was something up with that which was causing the issue to do with stalling etc, and again no change.

I'm really at a loss now - they are pretty much, for all intents and purposes 2 sets of working (when checked on a multimeter etc) blend motors... any ideas on why set, on the same heater box/HEVAC controller won't calibrate the end points on the blend motors? I know they only use about 50% of the actual motor range, but seems happy enough on the other set of motors, with original pots...

I've now spend 2 days pissing about with these things, and not actually any closer to a solution...

Well....

I thought I'd make an official thread about it, since it has been mentioned in a couple of other topics now, and the thought of working on these beasts when it's freezing outside (and probably in the workshop) hasn't scared everyone off... rather it seems to have enthused a couple already with thoughts of just having a bigger BBQ....

I am typically heading away for 6 weeks again in November for work, and due back just before Christmas. I am also then going to be busy the first part of January with hopefully finishing off and installing my new engine, which I would like to have done before any such gathering - as that way I can then lend a hand on ball joints, or radius arm bushes and things like that. I would possibly look at swapping my ABS modulator as there will be someone to press pedals etc - but I'm happy to also do other electrical work for people, and give a general hand... doing my headlining would be great as it is getting bad now!

So on that thought - Who is interested in attending a Range Rover 'Winter Camp'? I am happy again to 'host' if you like at my workshop - as it seemed to work last time (with a couple of 'obstacles' but we got there in the end) and be somewhere central-ish between us all... though if anyone else has somewhere more suitable for working on RR's in the middle of winter, I'll be happy to travel aswell once the engine is swapped.

I still have both of my RR's inside at the moment, but the 00 is still moveable under it's own power (just - the transmission is slipping I think) and at some point I need to look at the '98 and get it started, but it should be moveable aswell with any luck - so again can probably have 2 workshop bays available... 1 at a minimum...

Show of 'hands' if you like as to who's interested, when suits, and what you'd like to try and get done?

I'm thinking towards the end of January or early February - but it will also depend a bit on when I'm working - I won't know that for awhile yet, but if we start getting some ideas together, then we can hammer out a definite plan closer to the time...

Cheers,
Marty

Well, Thought I'd post a thread for a change with the progress and pictures of my engine rebuild... I'm sure i'll need help and advice along the way!

It all started when I was under it replacing the radius arms with a pair that I pressed new bushes into... and noticed a nice wet stain amongst the dried on mud and dirt... and the bad news is that it's definitely coming from core plugs...

So whilst a bit frustrated, as it means my plans for engine rebuilding are now having to be brought forward, and not being able to refurb the engine from my '00 to swap in, it is also a chance to do the full engine rebuild that I've been planning/hoping to do for the last few years!

So, I have currently ordered a new short engine from V8 developments - which is coming with a new top hat linered block, crank, pistons etc. also comes with front crank pulley and flywheel, all balanced and ready to go.

I've also managed to source a replacement front cover, lower inlet manifold and sump.
I had previously acquired some parts a few years ago, so already have new oil pump gears, Piper Torquemax cam, sprockets and timing chain and come other general bits and pieces including second hand set of heads and rocker covers.

I'm currently in the process of ordering all the other bits I need and sundry items, bolts, gaskets etc.
I have also been starting to clean other parts ready for assembly.

I picked up the heads from the engineering shop today aswell.. feel a bit like I've paid over the odds for them to be done - but they did have to clean them, relap all the valves, skim them, and pressure test them. Next time, I'll look at doing the cleaning and valve lapping myself to save on labour cost!

They look good though - the only worry I have is that there is some pitting in the face of one of the heads. The machine shop didn't mention anything about it, and they do a lot of Rover V8 heads, and work building engines themselves. So my thought process is that if they haven't mentioned it, then there is probably nothing to worry about... especially as it's in the fairly meaty part of the head, and when there's a gasket squished in there. I am also planning of fitting ARP head studs, rather than just bolts.

I'm now heading away for work for a couple of weeks, so left the front cover soaking in a bucket of what was warm water, and cleaning solution, so hopefully will help break up the rest of the baked on gunge that's in there.

When I get back home, the next installment will commence... cleaning the lower inlet manifold, drilling and tapping it for LPG, and probably painting the rocker covers and the upper inlet manifold.

More to post as and when I get some more done!

Marty

Just sold a couple of my HEVAC screen connectors on eBay...

A bit surprised when I saw that the place I was sending them appears to be the guy that runs Britcar...

Quick question for those that have been in the bottom of an engine more than I have...

Been slowly stripping the bits out of this engine block that I have here, and now getting the main bearing caps off. I've just got the rear one to go in the morning.

I've taken a few pics of the crank, what's people's opinion regarding condition? It doesn't feel scored anywhere, so I'm hoping it will be OK to re-install when the block comes back, just with putting a new set of bearings in it...

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Marty

Right...

Before I bugger off for a couple of months work (it's been pushed back a few days due to work Visa issues!) I thought I would create a separate thread here to be able to discuss the 'Summer Camp' that we were talking about in the other thread I had going about the death wobble...

So far we have interest from (in no particular order):
Orangebean
Sloth
Gilbertd
Oldshep56
Myself

Date we have fairly well decided is 2nd/3rd July
Location is my workshop just outside of Marlborough. I have mentioned to my mate that I would like to be able to use bother workshop bays that weekend, so fingers crossed the Discovery that is currently still lurking in there is gone by then. I got the steering shaft back on the green one that we are fixing up, so it just needs the arch liner, mud guard and wheel put back on and then it can be shifted out.

I was on Landyzone and mentioned I had the ball joint press kit, and a couple of guys on there are interested in me giving them a hand to replace their ball joints... What do people think about adding a couple more names to the list (assuming they are about that weekend), and doing that aswell? May be a couple more people to add to the forum here, and generally other owners to meet?

I am conscious about what we want to get done in the couple of days, and don't want to try and fit toooo much in as we don't want to get to Sunday afternoon and find that we still have a bunch of P38's in bits and people needing to drive long distances to get home!

I would like to get a bit formal with it all in the coming weeks/month or so once the tour I'm on in China has bedded in and I'm not spending every waking hour in a dark theatre - but mostly just to get a definite idea of what people want to get done, and if people are wanting to bring any parts they need, or if I put in a bulk order for any parts required and see if we can't get a bit of a discount. Things like ATF, engine oil, diff oil etc will be cheaper if bought in a larger quantity, and I am happy to buy it all in advance and have it there for general use and we can work out what the per-litre cost is for what people use etc. I'd like to think we'd all save a bit that way too!
Other parts, again, I am happy to go to someone like LRdirect or Island 4x4 who offer options on OEM/Aftermarket parts and do a bulk order of everything that we need for people to do what they want, if it is easier to have them all delivered here and then ready and waiting for that weekend. Or if the consensus is that it's easier for everyone to bring their own parts that they are wanting to fit, then that's fine by me too!

Let me know your thoughts about adding a couple more people to what we already have (I haven't even mentioned it on RR.net yet) and the bits about parts, and as I say - I'll try and get the majority of the organisation done whilst I am away, and then we can just get stuck in when the time rolls around!

Cheers, <br>
Marty