no10chris wrote:

Evoque, yuk ! The convertible is worse, it’s a girls car for sure, mrs beckham did a good job, cos there so popular, would I ever own one, no..
I think they’ve got front even putting Range Rover on it.

I...umm...err...rather like the Evoque convertible.

I don't think it should have a Range Rover badge on it (only the ACTUAL Range Rover should, what's this "Sport" nonsense all about?!) but I like how it looks.

super4 wrote:

I'm a bit out of touch with the latest LR/ Range stuff which is why I was a bit lost in the showroom but the models I'm thinking of were around 55,000 euros - is that a price for a Freelander ? (that was the cheapest model in there) Now I remember that whilst waiting there for my P38 to be looked at I filmed the showroom and the cars so if I can find it I'll put it on Youtube and you can see what I'm speaking of !

They don't make the Freelander anymore. They replaced it with something called the Discovery Sport. Same rough size but a new name.

There's also the Range Rover Evoque which is the same rough size too.

Given the time the Evoque came out I believe it is based on the last Freelander.

The Discovery Sport seems to then be based on the Evoque (making them both very heavily facelifted Freelanders IMO).

Both are available with 2WD.

super4 wrote:

if you look in the showrooms some of the modern ones with a 'Range Rover' plaque on don't even have 4 wheel drive. Not much 'Ranging' going on there. What is the world coming to ??

I got a little confused for a moment, nearly replied saying that as far as I knew all the Range Rovers still had four wheel drive.

Then I remembered the little Freelanders in pretty dresses that have a two wheel drive option :(

So going to the local garage was a bust. They had it from 8:30 until 5:45 and reckon they can't find a leak.

What they did "find" was a weep from the radiator top hose that was pooling on top of the water pump.

I don't buy this as the water pump area was the first thing I checked as that was the gasket I replaced the last time I had a proper water leak. It was bone dry when I checked. He showed me the hose clip he tightened and it was wet in that area - but it doesn't look at all like it's been leaking for any time. There's no dried red coolant residue etc. Its also the most visible and obvious element of the cooling system. If my leak was there I'd have found it instantly!

So I'm no closer to finding the leak at the front of my engine :(

He does think the rear core plug is leaking but they need more time to confirm as he needs to remove the starter motor first to get better access to it.

On the plus side, they didn't charge me anything for having looked at it and hooked up their pressure testing kit.

I've seen someone on the Range Rover P38 UK Facebook group offering it as a service. Not entirely sure where they are but its somewhere North.

For some reason I have Liverpool or Manchester in my head.

No idea of the quality of their work though.

You could maybe fit some small LEDs to the binnacle with their own switch to illuminate the dials?

Morat wrote:

mine is on!
But Simon has diagnosed it so as soon as I can get the sodding lambda sensor off the down pipe I'll be sorted :)
yes, this isn't the P38...

I'm guessing it's seized in its hole?

This happened on my girlfriends car and I had no luck whacking the spanner with a hammer because the exhaust moved too much and reduced the force of the blow.

I used a ratchet strap around the exhaust and some other fixed part of the car, pulled it tight to take the movement out of the pipe. This allowed the full force of the hammer blow to go into the spanner/sensor and it came free very easily :)

Sloth wrote:

Thinking about it, we used to have buses that ran on LPG in Southampton, but they seemed to disappear not long after introduction.

Not entirely sure why... and now we have the supposedly worst-thing-on-the-road diesels, with older models having DEF and DPF kit retrofitted etc currently. I'd love to know why LPG stopped being a viable option.

DAF (and I imagine other manufacturers) had a go at LPG (or some other gas) powered trucks but gave it up. Our systems still refer to them for specific parts or service procedures etc.

When I asked about it my boss said it had too many drawbacks compared to diesel. The lower power output meant they couldn't pull as much weight and the fuel tank required to give a decent range (for long range haulage) was too big.

They've also experimented with electric/hybrid but found that batteries with enough power/capacity were too heavy. They put the weight of the vehicle itself up too high to maintain an acceptable carrying capacity for the loads people need to carry.

Sorry, I was typing on my phone and I seem to have suffered some kind of autocorrect issues that my proof reading failed to pick up on!

If meant to say that what I can see of the core plugs looks fine, no evidence of coolant from them.

It's going to the garage to be looked at so they can find the leak, not for them to fit core plugs.

I was discounting the ability to run on petrol as the initial premise was what would it be like if petrol and diesel went away, leaving electric as the norm and LPG as the second option.

If my only options were LPG or electric (and I could afford an electric car) I think I'd prefer electric, based on the range I get on LPG and current limited availability.

However, if availability increased as petrol died off my issues with range would be mitigated.

If I had the option of refueling at home (like recharging an electric car) I'd have no issues with range at all.

Nearest Morrisons to me is nearly 6 miles away, in the centre of Leicester. Not convenient unless we're actually going to Leicester for some other reason. Traffic in and out of the city centre is almost always heavy.

The next nearest is just over 6 miles away in a direction I don't travel in for work or any other reason.

There's a Morrisons 5-10 minutes off my evening commute (but not my morning one) that I try to get to as often as possible as it sells LPG at 53ppl.

I know these sound like relatively minor inconvenienced but I'm responsible for taking the baby to nursery and picking him up in the evening. This gives me inflexible times that I have to be in certain places and limits my ability to detour. In contrast, I pass by several regular petrol stations that I don't have to detour to but don't offer LPG.

I agree that a two day charge is unacceptable. However, the 9.5 hour charge is an irrelevance. You'd do it over night when you're not driving the car anyway. The number of people that would be driving over 300 miles in a single trip every day in a passenger vehicle would be so tiny that I don't think it would be a wide spread issue.

I accept that it only works if you have a suitable power system installed but once these things become widespread I don't see why you wouldn't have one. The prices will come down as they get more widespread. As I said above though, it only works if you have a driveway or garahe. - which is very limiting.

Haulage and public transport probably wouldn't cope with that range and charge time but then I doubt they'd run the same size batteries as a passenger vehicle. They'd have scaled up batteries in the same way they have far larger fuel tanks. It would push the charge time up but by the time we get to that level of electrification there will probably be huge advancements in charging systems too.

Had a good look under the bonnet at the weekend. From below I can see what I think are two of the core plugs and he there of them look to be red/wet.

I also had a look at the heater pipes and they also look to be free of coolant residue.

Car is now booked in at the local garage to be looked at properly. Luckily, they have an ex-LR tech that worked at LR when these were being sold new so he's nice and familiar with them :)

It was an expensive weekend, ended up buying the girlfriend a 1 year old Astra to replace her Corsa. It's giving frequent O2 sensor codes so I took a look and found engine oil in the connectors for both sensors. Turns out it's fairly common for an oil pressure sensor to fail and send oil out through various wiring looms to things like the ECU, O2 sensors and EGR electronics. Time for it to go!

I'm not sure range is a real argument anymore. On LPG my range is somewhere between 130 miles and 190 miles, depending on my mix of commute and motorway driving. I'm having to fill up every few days.

Plenty of electric cars can top that. The Tesla Model X claims a range of 250-350 miles (closest match to a Range Rover I could think of).

I'm also finding availability to be bothersome. I have a filling station at the end of my road but it's only open between 9 and 5, when I'm at work, and not open at all on Sundays. I pass a BP station on my TO work that offers LPG at over 70ppl but it's not accessible on my way home. If traffic is bad in the mornings I quite often don't have time to stop and fill up.

I can definitely see the appeal of electric cars. Chargeable at home, starting to get acceptable range, performance seems to be very good. The only downsides I can see are the lack of noise and the fact you can I only charge them if you have a driveway/garage.

I don't think they'll ever take off the standard method of powering cars until they can figure how to charge a car parked in the street.

I'm getting through a few litres of coolant per week so I'm sure there's a reasonably sized and fixable leak somewhere - I just need to find it.

This one has sprung up suddenly, I had several weeks of coolant-loss free motoring after the throttle body heater was bypassed but now I'm having to top up every couple of days.

Might wait for the FIL to get back from his holiday and see if he wants to spend a weekend taking a look at it with me, if inspecting the core plugs and heater pipes turns up nothing.

The O-ring is still on the list of things to check :)

In the few years I've had it I've never run it with plain water in (never even topped up with water, always ready mix coolant) and when I got it it had proper coolant in too. I bought it from some kind of automotive engineering chap with a fleet of motorbikes, a big garage and huge tool box so I'm fairly confident that it was well looked after in the time he had it too. I don't know who had it before him though.

What's the purpose of a core plug? I appreciate that the plug is there to plug the hole, but why are the holes there in the first place? Pressure relief if the engine overheats?

It's been leaking for a couple of weeks at varying rates. Sometimes not at all and sometimes quite bad (like in the images above).

I'll pop out at lunch and take a look at the plugs.

As for replacing them, if it is them, I guess it's just a simple task of prising the old ones out and hammering new ones in? Once the manifolds are off of course.

Scratch that...found them in RAVE. Did a CTRL-F search for core plugs.

Looks like there's three in the side of the engine, below the cylinders.

I'll check them now I know where they are but it looks like the leak is coming from somewhere on the front of the engine.

Looking at that diagram only really leaves the front cover gasket. Or another gasket on the engine itself.

Whereabouts in RAVE are the core plugs?

I've had a poke around in Engine and Cooling but can't see them.

Wanted to see what needs to come off to access them so I can find the right place to check for my leak.

I also tried to find them on the LRCAT parts diagram website but I can't find them there either.

Do you get power to the bulb holders?

Mine was like that but need bulbs solved it.

Maybe also check continuity in the bulbs to make sure they're good. If they all blew instantly it would point to an electrical fault somewhere.

Is that pipe visible in this image?

I have a feeling I'll be taking off the alternator, AC pump and power steering pump to try and locate my coolant leak.

It's leaking at quite a rate from somewhere above the oil filter:

On the topic of wet passenger footwells....I never did find the source of that leak either. Almost completely certain it's not the AC drains as it only ever happens after heavy rain!