The reverse signal is picked up from a plug that's located behind the NSR tail light. The rest of the kit bypasses the car loom in it's entirety.
David.
The centre fill speaker on the dash was standard on all of the late (2002) Vogue SE's. The half wood/leather steering was an optional extra on all of them and not many had it. I retrofitted it to mine.
I'm very impressed with them. They're quiet, drive nicely and do what they need to do.
It's been a week from hell since I returned from my break thanks to work but I'll do a decent post on them when I get 5 minutes.
David.
I think that might just be a Vogue SE badge as it's missing the dash speaker that the SE's have a standard.
EDIT - Checking the reg does indeed reveal it to be registered as a Vogue SE. Weird.
Either way, seems a bloody shame to do that to a P38.
I towed an Ifor Williams cattle trailer to Newcastle and back a few weeks ago. It’s taller then the RR, the front is very flat and it was like dragging a bungalow behind me. With a tail wind it took off, when going into the wind it was noticeably slowing me down.
I’d wanted to hire a fibre glass box trailer but couldn’t get one so had to use what we had.
I got 8mpg over 390 miles on that trip.
David.
The P38 will tow it just fine but it's lacking in torque to do it as effortlessly as the newer ones do. Our L322 doesn't even know the caravan is behind it, but with 313bhp, 516lbft of torque and 8 gears to choose from, it shouldn't!
I drive my P38's with a degree of mechanical sympathy so if I end up in 2nd gear on a steep hill, rather then having it screaming away at 5k rpm I tend to slow down and hold the traffic up a bit. Other then that, it's easy enough to do 50-60.
Just make sure your bushes and steering are good as a big lump on the back will amplify any movement in the car.
David.
The Vogue SE that I've just put the engine in needs a brake accumulator I think. If you park the car up for 24 hours, then jump in it, start it and move off straight away there's no brakes. Thankfully, moving straight away for us is going into reverse and turning around on the driveway but the first time it happened I did brick myself!
Going to order a new accumulator and a new radiator as the Eurospares one from Island 4x4 hasn't lasted 500 miles before it started to leak. There's no damage on it but when the cooling system is up to pressure it's leaking. Annoyingly, it's 1 month outside of it's 12 month warranty too.
David.
The Swift Conqueror 630 that we have is a fairly light caravan by todays standards at 1532kg (3377lbs).
It's modern equivalent is the Elegance Grande which has gained a few pounds coming in at 1745kg (3847lbs).
https://www.swiftgroup.co.uk/caravans/swift-elegance-grande/technical
The newer vans are 8ft wide now as well and the majority of them are between 400-500kg (880-1100lbs) heavier.
The Buccaneer Barracuda that my folks have looked at briefly is 1900kg (4188lbs) unladen.
We’ve just dragged the caravan back from Roy Bridge to home, a distance of 115 miles.
Other then being in 2nd gear on a couple of hills the P38 took it in it’s stride.
It's such a shame they've cut the bodywork. Especially seeing as it was done when the car was 3 years old and still had a significant value to it but when you buy the car at 15 years old there's not much you can do about it unfortunately.
The other Vogue SE we have has it nicely hidden behind the fuel filler flap and it's much, much neater. When we converted our last P38 ourselves we fitted it where the additional towing socket would be also. I've only ever regretted putting it there once when I had to unhitch the trailer to get the LPG filler to fit.
The paint looks good enough in the pictures!
David.
The LPG filler on the Vogue SE we've just fitted the new engine too is tucked in the behind the fuel filler cap. It's very neat.
I actually hate this one as it's a big hole in the rear quarter. I'd rather it was under the bumper to be honest.
David.
FINISHED!! :-D
She's been out for a run on the new tyres and is running perfectly. The tyres are much, much smoother and quieter. I nipped the steering box by a tiny, tiny amount and it's taken a bit more play out of the steering.
It's just a shame that the weather was disgusting tonight so the pictures look dull but it does show the shine.
David.
I had to extend one of my EAS pipes as it had been trimmed to much by someone before I bought the car. I got several or those blue ferrule connectors from a local airline supplies company and they've been spot on.
When the VSE was getting the new engine I bought 4 of them and threaded some schrader valves onto them and they were fine too. I keep an eye on them and regularly leave my car in off road height for a couple of days to check for leaks and all has been good so far.
I guess you use what you can get quickly when you need them.
Hmm, it's either a crap part or there's a leak causing it to run an awful lot more then it should.
It could be a number of things causing the book symbol to appear from low refrigerant in the air con system to knackered blend motors.
The only real way to find out what is upsetting it and causing the symbol to appear is to have the codes read from the HEVAC ECU. That'll give you the best indication of where to look for the fault.
David.
Has it kicked back into life now everything has cooled down or do you still have a hard fault on it causing it to stay dead?
I work in IT by day and can fit and balance tyres with no trouble at all.
Balancing a wheel is easy, you spin it and it tells you where to put the weight. I’d hazard a guess at the machine being miles out of calibration rather then the operator being clueless. I calibrate mine annually with the calibration weight we’ve got for it and I’ve never had an issue with it or a reason to doubt it.
Just glad I’ve got the ability to deal with it rather then having to take it all the way back to them again.
David.
New tyres went on today.
After the whole fiasco with the balancing (See “What did you do today thread”) I sealed them up with a ceramic coating and refitted them to the car.
I then fitted my new (to me) steering wheel.
And finally for tonight I refitted the missing bung that goes in from the underside of the body above the rear exhaust silencer.
Tomorrow nights job is the tailgate seal and the car is then finished for a while! Well, until I get a chance to give the seats a “proper” going over although I’m tempted to get a local leather specialist to do the leather on both of our Vogue SE’s.
David.
New tyre day today!
I took them to ATS in the boot of the other Vogue SE and when taking them out tonight the weights fell off the first wheel I took out of the boot.
I balanced that wheel and noticed that it took half of what they’d put on it so I checked the weights on the next 2 that came out of the boot and found them hanging off too.
The last wheel had the weights stuck well so I decided I’d check the balance on it. With the weights that ATS had fitted the balance was a mile out!
I removed all the weights from ATS and then spun it on the balancer again. It needed less weight to balance them from scratch then it did to “fix” the balance from ATS.
David.