That's one of them yes - there will be another on the opposite side.

As Marty said, check they haven't collapsed on themselves or become pinched a bit too closed - that was the reason mine backed up. I had a bit of flow through them, but not enough.

Could someone confirm the below for me? My top hose persists in leaking, and now that my thermostat is stuck open I'm going to change it for some siliconey bits.

On my Thor, the outlet pipe appears to be 32mm OD. The inlet to the radiator appears to be 36mm OD however. Does anyone have a Thor radiator sitting about that they could measure properly for me? I don't want to take the hose off just yet.

With a couple of corners and a reducer I can make that work if it is the case. I can get 32mm and 35mm ID silicone hoses, but before ordering I figured I'd check!

The fan has been performing well over the last few days, including a 120 mile round trip this afternoon. Nanocom has been on throughout and all is good.

A bit too good today... down to 75c while underway good... thermostat has started to stick open it would seem. Looks like that nice genuine one sitting waiting for the red car might need to go walkies...

Mine were blocked up enough to get water in the passenger side ducting - the bottom of the duct is level with the bottom of the air handling box. The drain channel for condensate is in theory lower... till it gets full!

Participants requiring headlinings - 8/9 July
1) Marty - 2 x Original, 1 x Black (all with Sunroof)
2) Smiler - 1 x Original (with Sunroof)
3) Morat - 1 x Original Lightstone (with Sunroof)
4) Orangebean- 1x Original Lightstone (with sunroof)
5) Sloth - 1x original lightstone

Did you get samples in the end OB?

While looking around for steel, I did come across a large (full) filing cabinet in a store room... it was very tempting. Spin it round so it faced the wall and I'm sure no one would have ever noticed...

Yeah, I have been looking at options like that, but there isn't much space in the top hose to fit one that I'd be all that happy with. That said, I'm considing a custom silicone top hose anyway, and now that I have no fan, I can actually lower the high point of the top hose to make it level with the top of the rad too. It does mean you'd have to remove the top hose to change the belt, but I've changed coolant more times than I've changed belts so far, so... pros and cons!

I'll be sticking the probe to the thermostat into the fits of the rad with thermal adhesive - both to make sure it stays put, and to improve the conductivity. I see merits of both options, and there are a lot of good reports to the 'probe in the rad fins' approach as well as the top hose method.

If it doesn't work, its only £4 worth of probe/thermostat.

I missed a picture... this is the cowling before the mounting pegs, fan hole and fan were added. Bit of paint on the bottom half as we were running out of time to stop it rusting, and in it went!

I'm going to use (or try, anyway) a generic 12v digital thermostat board, with the probe in the fins of the radiator. That way, I can set the on and off points separately. Most actual fan thermostats for cars seem to have quite a wide hysteresis, many of which have the 'off' point below that of the thermostat closing, resulting in the fan never turning off on a petrol P38...

Will take some tinkering to get the actual temperature of the radiator to match the coolant, but I think I want it to come on when the coolant temp is around 95c, and off at 90. That way the stat is still partially open, and it will actually cycle on/off.

The cabinet is one I've been keeping at work for such things :) It's pretty much useless to me, and worth nothing to sell - very tall, but not deep enough for rack mounted servers. Already have similar network cabinets in places I need them, and this one was actually removed and replaced with a small one.

Bit of a long post, but it might be of interest... I know this is a bit of a controversial topic, and I get why. The viscous fan when working correctly, is hard to beat.

Mine however, did not. Well it did - far too much. The fan is/was fully locked up I'd say 90-95% of the time, and resulting in a loss of power, MPG and the engine never got above 85-7c. Those of you that have seen/heard my car know it isn't that quiet. No centre silencer improves the V8 rumble no end, but its no fun when your viscous fan drowns it out entirely!

The ideal electric replacement fan would, by all accounts, be the 18" Lincoln Mk VIII fan found on various vehicles across the pond. Alledgedly rated at 4000CFM or so. Getting one over there is simple, getting it over here would be £200-250... err... no.

Looking at generic aftermarket options, Spal do a 16" 'HO' high output fan, that does about 3000CFM. I couldn't even find a price on that, so declared it unobtainium. All others I've looked at seem to top out around 2000CFM. And current draw on those topped out at about 10amps, which seemed a bit too good to be true.

A bit more googling looking at OEM fans pointed me at a pretty readily available Volvo 850/940/S70 fan... the internet suggests on low speed, its around 2500CFM, and on high its around 3300CFM. Best bit is, its about £30 on ebay, and another £15 for the Volvo relay module, which is a handy box that a) handles the current of the fan on high (about 30 amps running), and you just ground either the low or high speed selection to start the fan. A handy feature is high speed always takes priority - so if you hook low speed up to say, come on with air conditioning, and then have a thermostat for engine cooling on the high speed, the high always comes on regardless of what the low speed is doing.

It's a bit smaller than the mahoosive viscous fan, but not overly so:

I wanted a cowling/shroud that would get the fan pulling air across the whole radiator surface. Take one 600x600 network cabinet lid, and a bit of steel from one of the doors, and you're left with this:

And some fettling later. Sadly I didn't remember to take any pictures of the cowling with the fan in place, and the pegs on the bottom that fit into the standard radiator cowling mounts. The ears on the top are used to bolt the cowling to the radiator mount brackets - so the weight is hanging off the mounts holding the radiator, rather than the radiator itself. It isn't actually that heavy anyway.

Plenty of room!

The relay module can be wired up using 10mm spade crimps for the positive feed - the fan plugs straight in. The ground goes to the fan directly, again a 10mm spade fits nicely. The only problem is the speed selection that has round pins. I soldered some wires onto some red bullets, crimped them a bit smaller, pushed onto the pins in the module socket, and then filled with resin. Don't want them falling off!

Currently I don't have a thermostat - so I'm grounding the low speed before I set off and leaving it running. It's in the post...

Today it has been 17-18c all day, and I've had the fan running on low while driving around town, hooning it a bit, and letting it idle. At idle, it will keep the coolant temp down at 87c, with the A/C on too. Once I get the thermostat and can set the on/off points, it should cycle and keep the thing running proper temperature.

Best bit... I can hear my V8 again! And I no longer sound like a Nissan Navara pulling away...

Yes, no noticeable difference.

Taken a while to get back to this.

Today ran the engine from cold with the belt off, and as before, no noises for the first 10-20 seconds or so, and it would rev perfectly, no hesitation or lumpiness. After that though, the noise returned, and it would stumble as it picked up speed. Sure enough, on the nanocom, cyl #3 is missing when you open the throttle.

No other faults in the engine ECU though, except for alternator voltage implausible, from running it with the belt off.

In this video, the engine has warmed slightly, and is doing its squeak thing. The belt is off, so the video is short as I don't want to run with no water pump and risk further damage really.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS2OSKRp_u8

The roughness in picking up speed goes along with the squeak sound becoming audible, so I'm hoping its a slight blow into the valley. Next weekend we'll start pulling it apart. Anything else anyone can think of, or does this sound plausible?

My parent's car has all three speakers as standard - tweeter, midrange and woofers in the front, midrange and woofers in the rear. But no amplifiers bar head unit of any kind. The additional inline filter 'thing' looks factory.

It is an actual Bordeaux though, so it may be unique to that run.

I'd avoid the Skytec stuff - if they're amplified and non amplified wall mounted speakers are anything to go by. Cheap and has its place, but not if you're looking for quality sound.

It is in two bits - front and rear. The divide is alone the back of the front seats. So with front seats and centre console out, you could remove the front half entirely.

I'm relatively certain that's the divide point at least!

I've disconnected the superlocking in three of my four doors so far - I started superlocking not long ago after replacing my siren, but knew it wouldn't be long before one got stuck, and it did a week ago or so (before neutering the superlock function in that door). Thankfully after a few lock/unlocks it let go.

Anyway, I digress...

Ultrasonics will only be activated if superlocked, and then only if the windows are also closed :)

The foam under the carpet is very dense - on both my P38's I cut it out as far up the transmission tunnel as I could, and hung it up to dry out for weeks to get it properly dry. In a warm dry place it might just take a few days.

In my opinion, if its properly saturated, that's the only way you'll get it dried out fully. Once its dry, you can lift the carpet and slide it back in.

It may still be the A/C drains...

This was after a 45 minute drive or so when it was particularly humid last summer - there was enough condensate to run over the carpet, out the door seal, down the side step and then off the back of the step. Certainly going to be more humid when its been raining too.

I'd gotten so used to the Bosch whine I hadn't thought about it, both the red and silver one do it!

Belt was on indeed, as it was a bit warm by this point and I didn't want to run it without the water pump for any length of time. I ran it with the belt off and the noise was there again. I'll do another video tomorrow from cold with the belt off.

It does seem to be hesitating more noticeably when increasing revs slowly. Will plug it in and see if its counting any misfires, though as we saw from OBs, that might not be all that accurate!

Quick recording of the noise. It is not the belt or something being driven by it sadly. It is the high pitch squeak.

Something to note - when stone cold, the noise in question is not present, but as soon as it gets a bit of warmth in it (I'm talking 20 seconds perhaps), it starts doing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p57HQttsFQ

It seems like its originating from the centre of the engine.. if you go to either side, it sounds like its coming from the opposite side.

Not able to get it up to temperature and drive to get things properly warm, so I don't know if the loud noise is going to return yet.