Gilbertd wrote:
This https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multimeter-Resistance-Capacitance-Frequency-Temperature/dp/B06XW6FMWQ/ref=sr_1_41 is the one I've got. On the 2A DC setting it will read down to under 20mA (or 0.02A as it shows on the display). When you switch it on, it defaults to AC so you have to press the function button to change it to DC and then the zero button before clamping it on the cable otherwise it reads the magnetic field of the planet.....
Thanks Richard. The choice of models is bewildering so personal recommendation is essential. I have ordered with delivery next Sunday.
Can anyone recommend a reliable & reasonably priced DC clamp multimeter that I can use to investigate the battery drain? I have ordered two different models from Amazon & returned them because they were useless. They cost £35 & £50 respectively. I'm prepared to pay more if the bloody thing works reliably but obviously not hundreds of pounds.
The plot thickens...
Today I went to start the car for the first time in a week & found the battery utterly dead. Too dead to even jump start with my jump start pack. The voltmeter read 3.7V. As luck would have it the MF3100-1000 I took out 3 weeks ago had been revived by leaving it on my Ring charger for a few days. I took out the new dead MF3100-1000 & put back the old working MF3100-1000.
The car started easily & all is good except I've obviously got something draining the battery & that is what drained the battery 3 weeks ago. It's obviously not an enormous drain like leaving the lights on as it's OK left for several days. I did notice when after I put the good battery on & before I even put the key in the ignition that I could hear crackling coming from a couple of the speakers. There was no pattern or rhythm to it just random soft crackling. What could be causing the speakers to crackle when the car isn't switched on? It's got to be related to the battery drain hasn't it?
Gilbertd wrote:
It seems odd to me that it just suddenly died. I've got one that I took off my car a couple years ago that I can still put on charge for a couple of hours and it is still usable.
It seemed odd to me too. It has always started really easily with the new starter motor you fitted 3+ years ago. From some Googling sudden failure of lead acid batteries does happen but is unusual. I will try leaving it on charge for an extended period to see whether it can recover at all.
We arrived back in Essex OK after a week in Wales. I had to use the battery jump start pack a few times but usually when the engine was warm there was enough juice left in the battery to start it. On the 300+ mile journey we stopped for a coffee & sandwich then again for fuel & on both occasion the car started OK. We encountered a lot of heavy rain on the way back but reassuringly my sealing of the pollen filters etc meant no rain ingress. I seem to have fixed the leak from the overflowing A/C drains too so the passenger carpet is bone dry.
When we arrived in Essex I found the new Hankook MF3100-1000 waiting for me. I charged it overnight & fitted it to the car so it should now be good for another 4-5 years.
I went to start the car to go to the garage to fill up with fuel prior to setting off for a week in Wales. Unfortunately the battery was utterly dead. The voltmeter showed 2.7V It is a Hankook MF3100-1000 purchased from Battery Megastore nearly five years ago & had shown no signs of problems before. I tried charging overnight but it only showed 10.7V so looks like it is totally knackered.
I have an old battery I bought form Halfords about nine years ago. It worked well in the car for four years until I swapped it for the Hankook as BMS had a good deal. This had last been charged over a year ago but still showed 11.7V. I put this in the car & was able to jump start using the another old car battery I have that won't fit the P38. I put the Halfords battery on charge overnight & in the morning it showed 12.7V & had sufficient charge to use the remote locking/unlocking but not to start the car. I decided to order a new Hankook MF3100-1000 from BMS & have it delivered to our Welsh holiday cottage. We set off for Wales making a detour via Halfords to buy one of those Li-ion jump start battery packs as unfortunately the one that I bought about ten years back was knackered & no longer functioning. My wife sat in the car with the engine running while I popped into Halfords to collect the device which cost just over £100.
We made a couple of stops on the way. Once for coffee & a sandwich where I was able to start the car normally but when we stopped for petrol about half an hour later I had to use the jump start battery pack. When we arrived at the cottage I had an email form BMS confirming the order but with the delivery address as my home not the holiday cottage. I think the mess up must have been with their ordering system as I recall setting a delivery address different to the billing address & even added a note explaining why the delivery address was different to the billing address. I briefly considered ordering another Hankook MF3100-1000 from BMS delivered to the holiday address then return the other battery when I get home. I then decided the hassle & expense of shipping back a 25kg battery didn't make sense.
We have now been in Wales for five days with a nearly dead battery but have been managing OK. The car always starts easily & when hot usually doesn't need the jump start pack. Using the jump start pack only takes a minute or two & hasn't been much of an inconvenience but I will be glad to get back & fit the new battery that was delivered in under 24 hours. Lead acid batteries don't usually suddenly fail without warning but it does happen sometimes & this one was outside its four year warranty.
If it is BPX700010 as indicated by Richard above then a new part is readily available on Amazon from various different suppliers.
Marty, you sold me a working DSP amp last time you were in the UK having a clear out a couple of years ago. It's still working but I thought that I had better mention it in case you had forgotten & are searching for it.
Last time we didn't get to meet as I was in France so Richard collected the amp for me. Unfortunately we won't get to meet this time either as once again we are at our place in France.
If you want genuine LR packaged air bags Rimmers are currently "out of stock, expected soon" but at over £500 each they unlikely to sell many.
https://rimmerbros.com/Item--i-REB101740
https://rimmerbros.com/Item--i-RKB101460
Driving around in the heatwave with temps up to 26C in West Wales I was grateful that the A/C was effective. Not as good as when freshly recharged last year but enough to keep us cool. The good thing is that I seem to have fixed the problem with condensation from the A/C exchanger dripping down & soaking the passenger (left) footwell. I think that the left hand rubber drain hose had got twisted so restricting the flow of the condensate. Now that it's untwisted & secured with a fine cable tie it's draining OK.
We are in West Wales enjoying the lat spring heat wave but avoiding the extreme temperatures in the east of the UK (35C by day & 20C at night). It's fun negotiating the narrow lanes in the P38 although the fuel consumption takes a bit of a knock with constant low gear. Yesterday morning as we were about to set off for the beach I switched on to find Beep! AIRBAG FAULT.
I pulled the Nanocom out of the glove box & it reported that the right side airbag was open circuit. I looked under the driver's (right hand) seat to find the usual culprit which is the dinky connector with wires sheathed in a yellow sleeve. I plugged & unplugged a couple of times then switched on & the fault had gone. I followed up with a squirt of contact cleaner just to make certain it stayed fixed.
I think that it's likely down to poor handling of error conditions by the EAS ECU. It gets a glitch with a height sensor giving an impossible reading & so loses its marbles which is why there is a fault with no valid error code. You can get a similar phenomenon with the ABS ECU when a wheel speed sensor throws an out of range reading. If the error handling was more robust it would be able to ignore the odd spurious reading.
My P38 had a ticking noise for at least ten years. It was cured by having V8 Developments completely recondition the engine,
I just remembered that the other P38 news from me is that it just turned over 200,000 miles. Nowhere near Richard's 500,000+ but still decent high mileage. It's 30,000 since I had the engine completely reconditioned by V8 Developments & it's been running beautifully. I have a list of minor problems that need attending to (crackles from left hand door speaker, squeaky rear windscreen wiper, sticky driver's door handle, wet passenger carpet, broken glovebox hydraulic strut etc etc) not to mention the many & various scratches & paint scrapes that are just cosmetic but I am confident I can rely on it. Stating this has probably jinxed it so it will have a catastrophic failure next time I drive it but I really think that the reconditioned engine & the other maintenance over the years on EAS etc mean that it is now as reliable as it has ever been.
A few days ago we drove back from south of Biarritz in the Basque Country right on the Spanish border to Brittany. It was almost exactly 500 miles (800km) & took a leisurely eight hours with stops for food, fuel & shopping. We were cruising on the autoroute at 130kph/80mph for most of the time. I detoured from the motorway so I could fill up with E85 at 73c per litre. At the motorway services E85 was 88p per litre still a considerable saving over E10 at €2.20 per litre.
There was one unscheduled stop when I got an EAS FAULT which the Nanocom told me was an Invalid fault code. I cleared it & we went on our way. Funnily enough the last time this happened was almost exactly a year ago when driving to the South of France. Almost certainly just a glitch from a height sensor that caused the EAS ECU to lose its marbles & throw a fault. It probably means that the error handling in the ECU code is handled poorly rather like the intermittent ABS FAULT that I have had recently which oddly enough has not occurred since I cleared the EAS FAULT.
Kbs wrote:
Thanks Gilbertd.
I'll try to get about 25% of that price (after fees) as these have paint chips with minor scuffs in places.
Those eBay ones look like a good deal with new tyres.
Oddly the listing doesn't say what type of tyre so I assumed they would be cheap & nasty Chinese ditch finders. However from the photos I can see that they are Avon ZX which are excellent tyres that I have on my P38.
After my recent issues with two failing brake light switches generating an ABS FAULT & TRACTION FAILURE I thought my problem was fixed.
https://rangerovers.pub/topic/3982-abs-fault-traction-failure-fixed
Unfortunately I am fairly regularly getting ABS FAULT & TRACTION FAILURE while driving along. This isn't every journey or even every day but probably once every two or three times I take the car out. There is nothing I have seen that will definitely generate the fault e.g. it's not when I turn right or go over a bump. It can occur at any time but I drove 500 miles from Brittany to south of Biarritz & didn't get the error once. The brake light still works & the brakes seem powerful enough although I have never been in a situation where I needed the ABS when the fault is displayed.
If I switch off the engine the fault is cleared. There is no fault stored. If I connect the Nanocom while the fault is displayed then I cannot connect to the ABC ECU. It's probably one of the ABS sensors giving an intermittent false reading that the ECU cannot handle so it throws the fault but it's not easy to figure out which one. The whole right front hub with wheel bearing was replaced a couple of months ago so that's probably favourite.
The fault is occurring more often so I need to attend to it before it's permanent but does anyone have suggestions as to how I might identify the culprit? Of course it may not even be a wheel speed sensor but is the ABS ECU throwing a wobbly. Ideas...???
When I was towing a caravan with my P38 I had cheap pair of Ring branded mirrors from Halfords. In fact the P38 door mirrors give you plenty of visibility of a van at the rear & you don't really need the extension mirrors but I put them on anyway just to comply with the law.
Pete12345 wrote:
Tape will improve it, but only for a while !! Guess how I know ?
There are some on eBay, but £29 plus postage for 11 clips ?
That's £29 for 11 USED clips too. I'm surprised that nobody has used a 3D printer to create new ones yet.
For a change this really is "What I Have Done To My Range Rover Today" as I dropped it round the garage for an MOT at 09:30 & they called at 11:00 to let me know it was ready for collection. It passed with a few advisories which was nice especially as when I took it out for a run to get it warmed up prior to the MOT the EAS had twice spontaneously changed to Wading Height while driving along. Given the weather today with it raining so hard that there are deep puddles standing on the road that may be the car exhibiting AI. I will put the Nanocom on & see if there are any error codes but won't worry too much about it for now.
Incidentally I know that they have a check list for the MOT but some of the advisories are useful e.g. brake fluid at minimum which I knew about as I checked it yesterday & then realised I couldn't top it up without buying some DOT 4 today. I guess that I should have a look to check that it's not obviously leaking anywhere as I don't recall ever topping it up before.