Dear All,
Yep looks like my suspicions were correct, they have quite a history of being total beulshighters. Avoid like the plague.

Dear All,
Change of tack here, i hope the pictures are self explanatory.
The raw materials

first attempt after plastic welding and a rough sand

and in position

will wire it into the cigarette lighter. I might try to see if i can wire in a green LED to light it.

Dear All,
Anyone ever used Turner Diagnostics in Hemel Hempstead? https://www.turnermechatronics.com/contact-us/contact.html
I stumbled across them googling for HEVAC solutions, web site seemed to show some knowledge of the P38 and makes great claims about what they can fix, down to pcb level if needed. They sounded knowledgeable on the phone and as I have a big valved, flowed and ported fast road cam engine I thought i'd take her up and see what they could do with a re-map, they even sent an automated SMS booking reminder. I pulled up and they greeted me with the bodging builders sharp intake of breath between closed teeth "blimely that's running badly". As she'd just purred up the M4, M25 and A41 not what I was expecting. I asked in what way she was running badly and they said we'd know when they hooked her up but it could just be a bad set of plugs. I was immediately feeling uneasy about letting them loose on my car so I switched to discussing the LPG fine tune they offered, at this point the younger of the two walked off. I lifted the bonnet for the older one to look at the LPG ECU and his first words were "can't you smell the gas?" err no. He then asked the by now predictable "who did this install!", err I did. "You've not got equal length pipes between the injectors and nozzles" he said. My response was two fold, how on earth could he see that standing as he was by the bumper, with the pipes tucked away beneath the injector rails and behind the intake plenum and in any event how was he to know whether I'd cut the pipes to the length of the most distant gas injector and then led those from the closest through curving routes?
He then scoffed at a restrictor ball valve I have in the water supply to the LPG evaporator and finally literally shouted at the plumbing of the evaporator into the heater water circuits, "why have you used T junctions there". At this point my bull**it alarms were at full volume, I said he'd wasted my time and he the same to me, I ended up driving off with him shouting and gesticulating at the back of my car. This was all a 9 am booking so I have no idea if something else set their day of on the wrong footing.
So not what I was expecting and certainly not in my opinion to be recommended to anyone. I now notice despite the many pages on their web site they only have one testimonial. I'm interested if anyone else has had experience of them?

Dear All,
OK so i found my dashboard message display was dead because all th bulbs had failed. So continuing the LEDification of my car i purchased a few of these in green
https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/products/286-t5-led-dashboard-upgrade-bulbs-t5-74-various-colours?_pos=1&_sid=d2feb8952&_ss=r

they are a direct physical replacement but when fitted as is the SMD emitter on the top of the plug in produces an overpowering amount of light, see below
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=0B7E93546DBB33C9&id=B7E93546DBB33C9%2131556&parId=B7E93546DBB33C9%2131552&o=OneUp

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZEnIr8VFMcNQzYRQ

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZE8sqGSdDejlCiKw?e=hH0AfM
So out came the dash and knowing i was going to be in trial and error mode is first set up the connections to the plug using heatshrink so as to keep the wires in place to allow for lots of shifting and changing, see here

the wiring is pin 12+ on pin 14 for the LCD backlights and negative to pins 20 and 7 with 12+ on pin 6 to light up the instruments

anyway at first i tried with teh top SMD emitter decapitated, you can use a stanley blade to cut of the top emitting layer whilst still leaving the electrical connection below, as per below

but that then leaves th opposite, a dark shadow where the emitter was once creating (too much) light. See below

i then knew i had to start bodging until i found a solution. i tried a variety of things, covering the top SMD with hot glue so as to create a diffuser lens, covering it with a semi opaque dark plastic, etc. long and short of it i found that what worked best for me was to glua snmall disc of white plastic cut from the side of a butter container.

and here trimmed to fit

which when fitted to all three positions gives a much better and more even distribution

still not ideal but acceptable.

This final pic shows the dash with LEDs replacing all the bulbs, much brighter than the OEM set up and the instruments remain dimmable.

I know that still looks a bit uneven light distribution but in real life its far more even tahn that, the mobile phone camera seems to enhace the difference in lighting in the LCD panel

Apologies again for the mess up wit the embedded photos, i still cant seem to get the site to work as it should, these are all uploaded to Onedrive which i understood worked.

FFS I've followed the forums instructions, Gilbertd's instructions and all the other advice i can find but non of them result in getting images to show in my thread.

Can someone please provide advice as to how to get photos to appear within the thread?

Many thanks

Dear All,
Having long been unimpressed with the darkness of the lighting in the load space i recently used one of these to replace the bulb in the tailgate laod psace light;
https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/products/hyundai-i30-led-boot-trunk-light-upgrade-panel-18-smd-320-lumen-bright-white-1?_pos=1&_sid=dbb312269&_ss=r

That got me thinking, so got a pair of these from a scrapper
enter link description here

I then cut the end of
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZPYXM3gCIKvWRWHw?e=PyaAzL

and cut again
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZNLbkC-doBjl4OqA?e=ttkTYH

then discarding the middle section i used hot glue from teh back to bond the two pieces together
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZCcWBRtnv7ZByh2w?e=wF1TbF

and then a bit of scrap plastic from the discarded middle section and a soldering iron to plastic weld / fill the gap
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZBxEV1fciKxOsgZA?e=mQjjoR

which after a rough and ready file and sand looked presentable
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZDjqJM2HlhUlz86g?e=cC4n2Z

next bend the original bulb holder brass contacts to shape to grasp the SMD panel, that means bend the very top over and fold them flat against the back

use some hot glue to hold it in place
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZKPTAxtB_FRtSpuQ?e=tvuIvR

connect up the wires and hey presto you have a OEM style manually operated load space light just waiting to be cut into the headlining.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Askzu21Uk34LgfZFUfwjH1sLKe7fXQ?e=hpvfQz

See you on the next post

Dear All,
Doh! - turns out all three bulbs were blown, relief its not an LCD problem. Whilst i'm there i'm going to play with LED replacements and have a variety of options so will set the dash up on the bench.
I'm seeking reassurance that everyone thinks this will be safe and not fry anything. Going from Gilbertd's contribution above and pages J1 and E2 from the manual, on connector C242, putting 12v+ on pin 14 and the negative to pin 20 should light up the 3 LCD back lights.
Putting 12v+ to pin 6 and negative to pin 7 or 17 should light up the back lights for the dials and gauges.
Anyone disagree?
Regards
Paul C

Dear All,
I've searched this and the other forums but can't find much about the best options for spray painting the external plastic trim panels; such as the window finishers, the rear "D" panel external trims and the front and rear screen finisher trims.
Where the external body plastic trims / finishers suffer from ageing / weathering, what is the best method to restore them?
I've heard wash them in WD40, oil them or paint them.
Any views or experience gratefully received.

Dear All,
Whats the official way to add pictures or images on this site? I've used the image icon above and pasted the photo's web address but clearly does not work for all. Is there another way?

cross post from RR.Net

Dear All,
Thanks for all the help. That reading is fine and is pretty much what mine reads under hot and cold water, its quite a steep linear relationship. here are some photos of how i rebuilt mine using a 22K NTC thermistor and some rapid araldite. the thermistor is buried in potting compound and sits into the hollow in teh round metal plug that faces the heater pipe, i suppose i could have just ground that out and rebuilt it as one unit but by then i'd engaged hacksaw rather than brain!

the component parts

soldered in

then sealed with Araldite

Dear All,
I would not do this. When Nobles were first introduced they had braided brake lines throughout. Braided lines have a flexible liner, so when you press the pedal the first thing that happens is the liner expands as the system pressurises and presses against the stainless braid. Thats OK if you only have short sections of braided hose between the chassis and the calipers at each corner but if you had the entire car with braided lines youll kill the "feel" and first bite of the brake pedal. It may also affect the ABS. I was an early Noble owner, the brakes were awful because they were so soft and spongy. After my feedback they changed to hard copper pipes in the chassis with the usual braided out to the calipers at each corner. it transformed the bite and feel of the brakes. running hard pipe will be a pain but i would strongly urge against doing anything different, on a car the size of the P38 you may end up finding half your brake pedal travel will be taken up with expanding the pipework before the brakes start to apply.

Thanks again, at least that was buried further in the archive. I'll check at the weekend.

Quick question, i know the Dashboard stores a mileage and can cause issues with synching with the BECM. from my reading of the RAVE electrical diagrams the lights are supplied via connector C242 and the feed and return do not connect to any other part of the binnacle cluster. So it will be OK to power up on those two pins and not risk screwing up the mileage in the memory? I'm aiming to work on the lights and test it on the bench.

Thank you that man. No idea how i didn't find that. Thermistors ordered.

Dear All,
I'm talking about the heater core temp sensor on the aluminium pipes into the heater core, not the A/C sensor on the other side.
Well it looks like there's only one left in the world, in Latvia, and he wants £100 for it. As its a thermistor that could cost just a few pence is it possible for us to put our heads together and source an alternative? I'm told by Martin Cox that it maybe a 10K ohm or 22K ohm @ 25'c NTC thermistor. Can anyone confirm this? Alternatively could anyone with a working one possibly measure its ohms and make a note of the temperature at the time, even better still measure the ohms at two different temperatures, one hot one cold? Once we know what spec thermistor it is it will be easy to rig up a mount of some sort.
i'm not keen on getting one from a breaker as its likely to be as old as my own and moving and manhandling these 25 yr old components not always good.

Dear All,
Transfered from RR.net. I've searched but cannot find anything on this subject on this forum. I recently did a dashboard out HEVAC re-vamp. When the instrument cluster went back in the message center LCD is dead. Everything else works. looking through the RAVE wiring diagram it looks as if all the backlights in the cluster are powered from a single feed and return via connector C242. Ergo if some of the lights are working then there should be power to the message centre lights. If they all died at the same time i'm wondering if the PCB has failed / cracked somewhere. Anyone else had this issue? Anyone else had experience of re-soldering joints / cracked conductors on the PCB? is there a connector to the LCD similar to the HEVAC ribbon? Anyone got a clue? I've done some work re-soldering a known issue with dry joints in Skoda Fabia's but am grateful for any knowledge before i dismantle the entire cluster.

Dear All,
Just stumbled across this site having been on RR.net for years. What a pleasant surprise and active community. Just coming to the end of a 2 yr rolling restoration, re-spray, re-hevac, re-air con, LPG refresh, locks, interior and exterior trims and currently working through some greml,ins with the heater core temperature sensor and binnacle LCD display, but more on those on the forum. Rather than a Nanocom i've got myself one of the Lynx Evo dongles which at the moment is paying for itself. Anyway looking forward to picking everyone's brains and hopefully contributing as well.