Gilbertd wrote:

I quite like the one that an Aussie has as his signature: Land Rover - turning drivers into mechanics since 1948.

Is that followed by...

If you want to go to the outback, drive a Land Rover. If you want to come back again, drive a Land Cruiser?

:)

Once you have the top of the dash off, you need to wangle all of the ducts out of the way. Then there is a metal 'bridging' plate bolted in front of it behind where the switch pack and radio etc would be. That needs unbolting, then the two bits of framework that bolted to it need gently bending out of the way. They will bend back just fine.

Once that bracket (and one below it, should be obvious) are out of the way, there is a single screw accessible through one of the vent holes in the top of the box that holds the box to the AC evaporator box behind it. Remove screw, and the heater box should sort of roll forwards and lift up/out of its home. It's a bit fiddly.. but it will come out. Make sure you've remembered to disconnected the heater pipes from the heater matrix first or it won't be going anywhere :)

They're an odd size - I think the ID is about 21-22mm at the firewall end. The original hose was about £18 each last time I bought some!

I have the machinemart Clarke 3 tonne jack with the long handle, and a few pairs of 3 tonne axle stands - both the ratchet type you can just lift up until they are the height you want, and the pin type. Both seem fine - I've never been worried about the ratchet ones dropping once they have weight on them.

The jack is bloody heavy though, and the nose of it won't go under my E60 (doubt it would have the E39 either) unless I've driven it up on some bits of wood first. Something to note if you want to use it easily on lower vehicles. At some point this year I think I'll buy one of the lower profile aluminium ones for those jobs - shorter at the nose and a lot lighter! But they don't raise as high as a downside.

Steering column nor AC evaporator (if you want to remove the heater box) has to come out.

I did remove the steering wheel to save it from getting scuffed by the binnacle surround as the dash lifted over and away from the column.

I'll record what mine sounds like at some point.

Rutland - with the centre box removed, you will certainly hear it inside the cabin. But it isn't overpowering by any stretch. And with the windows down, through a little village with buildings either side, how does James May put it... something about the fizz?

I had the same concept - but it was a bit of polylock flexible pipe replacing my rusty centre silencer. Sounded exactly the same as Marty's does now, and I loved it.

Currently I have half of the crap £249 stainless exhaust on ebay (with one part of the T piece welded up because there was no way the rest would fit), and its tiny centre silencer, and empty cats. It is very nice sounding, but very loud. And there is some rasp under load from the empty cats. If this P38 lives on, at some point I'll go back to cats, no middle silencer, and standard rear silencers. Loved that sound.

Our red one is standard - so very quiet. I do appreciate it feels a bit more luxurious... but at the same time, a V8 needs to make the sound of its people :)

We did find on one of Marty's cars, where it has been sat so long on the bump stops, when putting pressure into the bags directly they didn't want to extend to lift... quickly abandoned that plan before they went pop.

The earlier L322 is based on E39 5 series and E53 X5 - I thought you could use INPA to talk to a lot of it? I've got said INPA for that era, but never played with an L322.

On that point, my OMVL reducer restricts the inlet down to what looks like about 8mm ID. Given the heater matrix has 21mm pipes feeding it, I wouldn't/haven't put the reducer in series. On a nice cold day like today, having the matrix and reducer in parallel is working well, and I get heat inside the car nice and quickly.

Bastard clip is a pain to get back on... it will probably snap when you do. If it does... cable tie.

Honestly I'm not a fan of the Audi heater core anymore - I'm sure it worked fine on my first P38, but on my current one, I ended up taking it back out.

My main reason for removing it was trapped air - if you look at the way the pipes go in, their will always be air trapped in the top of the heater core. The inlet/outlet are on the bottom compared to the P38 core, which has them on the top. I thought this was contributing to my excess pressure issues - but it seems more likely I have a slight crack in the block, as it remained after going back to the standard heater core. What was improved however was the heat available inside the car.

And really, the o-rings aren't that big of a deal to change every couple of years. They were actually the one place that didn't leak under excess pressure in the cooling system.

They look fine. Filter ones a bit odd as you say, but we'll resolve that once the key starts working with the receiver alone. I'd be inclined to remove the images as that's basically a sniff of your key in a picture mind.

With the new latch in the driver's door, have you checked all three switches are operating properly? If they are this really should sync up. Do the hazards flash when you lock/unlock with the key?

No harm in trying 1515 if your car is already wanting the EKA. May as well give it a go with fingers crossed! Depending on the year of your P38, you may have to turn to lock (or unlock, I forget) 4 times before starting the digits.

This is true - although having a key that can still unlock the doors and unlock the steering would still be a lot of use if you do lose your keys and need to get into/move the vehicle (tow etc) in a pinch.

My spare keys don't live at home - If I'm not there, then at least one other vehicle is, and I don't want its spare key(s) inside the unoccupied house behind it. Sure, bit inconvenient if I lose the keys I keep on me and have to get to where I store the spares... but I'd rather that than risk some opportunistic skidmark having off with one of my vehicles if my house were ever broken in to. I may be slightly paranoid mind... they both have trackers too that update their location every minute back to my own hosted system. Costs me nothing so why not.

Marty has the tools needed for the radius arm bushes :)

Yes. All P38s came with locked BECMs when the vehicle was delivered.

I think I replied to a thread over on the dark side re. the 1515 EKA - I don't know for definite if all US ones had that code, but I'm relatively sure its not possible to not have an EKA programmed in. I'll ask Marty in a bit.

The blanks I use are the same BMW blade and fit perfectly :) They look identical to the P38 valet key - they just say Silca on them instead of Land Rover.

E39 BMWs (and possibly others) used the same key blade - so much so I routinely would get my E39 key and P38 keys mixed up and wonder why it wouldn't turn in the ignition!

I'll dig out the part number tonight - forgot last night!

Christ that has gone up a bit.

Yes, we'll be able to create keys 1/2/3/4 as needed :) Only 1 and 2 have the memory functions as per the originals as that is a limitation of the BECM.

In the meantime, do they still do the valet keys? Just a bare key with no remote. That would at least keep you going if you did lose the remote key.

I have the Silca part numbers of compatible blanks if not somewhere. Could get a decent independant key cutter to copy your key's blade onto one of those.

You could in theory, but you can't mix and match remotes from different locksets.

It also screws up the lockset that belongs to the vehicle - meaning if you did acquire a new remote fob from LR for your vehicle, it then wouldn't work (in the same way that if someone changed the BECM and lockset etc, you'd be out of luck too). Our red P38 is an example of this - mostly my own doing. The pair of physical key blades and various locks/barrel are from my first old P38, and the pair of remote fobs are from another scrapped P38, as the original remote fob we got with the vehicle had failed. So its a total mess and if we ever sold it and the new owner wanted another key, they're going to have real issues.

Won't have any battery drain issues though with its prototype fob filter still in place and working ;)

Last I heard however, LR were still supplying new remote keys for UK vehicles, but possibly not for NAS vehicles now.

On top of that, the BECM needs unlocking to make this possible - Marty has the kit to do that. He kindly unlocked both my test bench and red P38's BECMs so that we could develop the receiver fob filters with various remote fobs. Coincidentally my P38's BECM is also unlocked, but it was also a vehicle owned by LR for the first two years of its life - so I have no idea of the history or reasoning behind it. Handy though!

New aftermarket keys are available from a couple of sources, and we're in the process of developing our own remote fob too. We have prototypes that work and have proven the concept just fine - but with my house refurbishment, actual work and generally life in the way, progress hasn't moved on much further yet.

Might well be by the summer we have them available - with a couple of options too for the type of key/remote. Cheap too. The complicated bit will be how we get your fob code of your existing key if you have a working one. If you have no working remote, we'd need to get hands-on with the BECM etc.

I do, but I'd rather not post up too much publicly. Feel free to PM me if you want - I can try and assist.

Programming other keys to the BECM requires a) the BECM to be in an unlocked state and b) to know the fob code of the remote lockset you wish to programme in.

Unlocking the BECM needs a Faultmate and the SM035 module. This requires a direct connection to the MCU in the BECM, via soldered on leads to the logic board.