Well, that's some pretty bad news. I spoke to him on the phone a couple of times and he seemed like a really friendly and helpful guy :-/

I finally decided to pull the trigger on a cam kit for mine, only to find that the site I was going to buy from is no longer accepting orders - "closed until further notice". Given that they were 200 quid cheaper than the nearest competitor I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't do it sooner.

So, fellow P38 victims^W enthusiasts, where's the best place to get a nice new high torque cam and all the associated bits now? And does anyone know what's happened to v8tuner.co.uk and whether they're likely to be back?

I was running around on a set of Insa Turbo Dakars for most of the year which provided lots of grip offroad and weren't too bad even on very wet tarmac. Normally "mud terrain" tyres aren't great on wet hard surfaces because of the lack of sipes but I can't say I had any complaints.

I switched back to my Cooper Discoverer AT3s and they're a hell of a lot quieter. With the Dakars on it was like driving a three tonne hoover!

I adapted the Clarion in mine to use a little bluetooth module instead of the cassette - I tricked the cassette deck into thinking a tape was loaded but fed the audio from the bluetooth adaptor in. It was a little board I bought for a fiver off eBay. Only trick was I needed to also add a 5V regulator to power it!

Any time I've seen "valve stuck closed" and "cannot lower" it's been a knackered driver pack. Every single driver pack I've taken off a breaker has had at least one intermittent channel.

I really need to get my arse in gear and finish my replacement driver PCB...

It's a damn sight easier with the driver's side wheelarch liner removed.

I'm tempted to jump on and show him the bit of code that runs when the BECM is "fully alarmed" - it'll do fuck all until the timeout passes and then you either need a "magic" Nanocom or a 68HC11 debug cable to wipe it.

rr.net I know about but what happened on LZ?

Jeez, it's almost like being a dick to your users makes them not want to use your site...

That would indeed be me :-) Pulled up to the gas pumps and lo and behold another nice P38 sitting there :-)

I think the two SMD chips are opamps, and that big silvery thing top left is a transistor.

Basically there's a thing like a Wheatstone bridge with a diode and a resistor in the airflow, and a constant-current source to ensure the diode gets hot(tish) so when air blows on it it cools it down decreasing the current flow and causing the output voltage to rise.

I mounted the spare wheel standing upright beside the subwoofer. It's temporarily lashed in with rope but I plan to make a proper bracket for it.

The CD changer was knackered so I fitted a VHF radio with remote head there and a 500W inverter, powered off a 24Ah battery tucked into the spare wheel well beside the gas tank.

What's possibly an interesting avenue to explore is what are the diags telling you when it is locked down? Is it just random garbage, or is there some meaning to the stuff it reads back that we haven't figured out?

Since you've got to have the engine out you may as well do the rear seal and core plugs that you can get at.

When @miah and I did my core plugs we noticed the flexplate was cracked. Not actually broken but if you bent it a little you could feel the edges of the crack with your thumbnail.

The site's mine because I pay for the hosting and the domain name. But really it's yours because you are the folk who post here and who have made it a friendly and cohesive community and that is far more important than a box of plastic and metal and some assorted magnetic domains on a spinning plate of rust.

If you've got any suggestions on making things better I'm keen to hear them!

The Jane lie-flat one is similar to what my sister has, which is the kind of thing I was looking at. Typically the kind of journeys we'll be doing is up to my mum's which is a good hour and a half, and up to Skye which is about six hours - so the 45 minutes thing is a big win.

So, you rate those, then?

So, my life is about to get considerably busier :-D

I guess at least some folk on here must have children small enough to need a child seat, or indeed babies. What's the thoughts? What's good, what should I avoid?

I've set one up as a test at https://jitsi.gjcp.net/rrpub with the password "minesapint". Double-click on your thumbnail in the top right to set your name, and let's see how well it works!

I was thinking about avoiding weeknights but it's not like we've got to get up early for work :-)

I was playing about with Jitsi Meet and I've got an install of it running. Who fancies picking an evening to all jump on for a chat? If you're on a PC don't need to install anything, just make sure your camera and microphone works (headsets work just fine). There's an app for mobile users too, which seems to work okay. Unlike competing products that sound like an 80s ice lolly, they don't send all your info to China ;-)

I feel like the impact wrench is more likely to apply a "straight" torque to the bolt but a breaker bar is pulling it sideways. I've always had good results getting things like rusted-in bleed nipples free using a T-bar and a 6-face socket, and using the T-bar like you would with a tap and die - equal pressure on both sides so you're only turning it and not applying any sideways force.