I have just retired so it's a bit of a cliche but we have bought a caravan which I collected yesterday. My wife is very happy that finally the P38 is going to earn its living. I used to tow my Dad's caravan with his Datsun about forty years ago & I have regularly towed trailers & a horse box but the last time was over 25 years ago. It's a big van that looks twice the size of my Dad's old one. It's about 1500kg loaded & the P38 towed it easily. Two tons of steel stops the tail wagging the dog & the 4.6L V8 pulls it easily. You are aware that you have the van on the back but it still accelerates nicely. I only had to drive it for about 30 minutes on the A14 & A12 but it felt pretty comfortable. I recalled Richard's recommendation for towing & put in sport mode. We have to keep it at a caravan storage place as we have no room at home but it's only a 30 minute drive just off the A12. We plan on going away fro a couple of nights at the weekend.
I thought that this might be a solution in search of a problem when paper filters are so cheap.
I was just pricing up oil & air filters prior to doing a service & happened upon this one at Rimmers. It's claimed to be not only better breathing but also is cleanable by air or water. At £27.90 it's even more expensive than a genuine JLR filter (£23.49) & much more expensive than an OEM (£6.95) or a cheap aftermarket (£3.15) so would take quite a few years before you saved money with it. Has anyone experience or an opinion?
Try LV. I have just put my P38 back on UK plates. When I last insured it in the UK in 2020 it was £309 (also from LV) & this year it's £368 which seemed reasonable to me. Using the comparison websites the cheapest quote was £459 from eSure with most around £550 or more. To be fair when I inquired about adding my wife who only passed her test last year LV wouldn't insure her whereas I could get insurance for £600+ from Quote Me Happy or £650 from Aviva. I estimated my annual mileage as 10,000.
Gilbertd wrote:
It's listed as a sealant pack, and the subsequent picture of it appears to show a couple of tubes of something. Whether it is for installing the screen or for sealing it when it leaks, I've no idea https://parts.jaguarlandroverclassic.com/lr078295-adhesive-and-sealer.html
LOL So not a small intricate irreplaceable plastic part?
Gilbertd wrote:
How to release the top screen finisher clips is in RAVE, you slide them to one side with an old credit car or similar. You will break at least some of them but they are still available in packs of 5 (https://parts.jaguarlandroverclassic.com/dce10038l-clip-retaining.html). One pack should be enough but I think you need something like 8 to replace them all. They are probably used on other cars as when I bought two packs, they came in a pack with Rover markings. In fact I've just checked my drawer of assorted small parts and have an unopened pack of 5.
Richard, out of interest do you know what the part labelled number 7 is on that diagram? It's difficult to understand where it fits with the rest of the parts & there is no scale so even estimating size isn't easy. It's obviously smaller than the windscreen but is it bigger than a retaining clip? It looks like quite a complex moulding.
On my way to the ferry at Saint-Malo yesterday I was travelling along at 50mph (80kph) on a single carriageway road. It was still dark just before 08:00 when a full grown fallow deer shot out from the roadside straight into my path. I braked hard which must have surprised the car on my tail but there was no way to avoid hitting the deer. Luckily it wasn't thrown in the air to land on my windscreen but went under the car after a resounding thump as I caught it with the middle of the bumper. I stopped a couple of miles on when I was able to pull off the road to inspect the car. There was no evidence of any damage.
In over fifty years of motoring I have struck several varieties of wildlife but nothing as big as this deer. I'm grateful that we were in the Range Rover as I suspect a less robust vehicle would have sustained quite a bit of damage. I recall running over a rabbit in my Audi A6 Quattro. The animal went through the front grill & snapped the serpentine belt leaving a not so lucky rabbit's foot stuck on one of the pulleys.
Over the course of a couple of days the tailgate button became 'crunchy'. Then I could only open the upper half of the tailgate. I also frequently on switching on getting the message that the tailgate was open & had to slam it shut hard each time. The button didn't spring out like it used to do.
The problem was the switch of course. The spring was rusty & the o ring the consistency of dry pasta in several pieces. I have ordered the service kit with the stainless steel spring but in the meantime cleaning the spring & applying loads of WD40 revived the spring & switch enough that I can now open the lower tailgate with the button.
Impressive milestone!
Gilbertd wrote:
Not just Ireland, if you pick the wrong MoT test centre here, you can run into problems.
At least in the UK if you don't like the MOT result there are plenty of other centres where you can take the vehicle for a second or third or fourth opinion.
In France there are plenty of CT stations & you only need a test every two years (motorcycles don't need any test). Even if you fail unless it's a dangerous fault you get issued a CT for two months giving you time to get the repair done & return for a retest just on the failure points.
It sounds like test centres are thin on the ground in Ireland.
An interesting story & slightly worrying as a THOR fuse box is NLA as a new part although those for the diesel & GEMS are still available (the latter 3x the price of the former).
My wife's Smart FourTwo has the stop/start system. She doesn't mind it so much as her driving instructor's car also had it so she didn't know any better & thought it normal for all cars.😀 I find it incredibly dangerous to sit at a junction or roundabout & not be certain when you put your foot on the accelerator whether the car is going to pull away cleanly or hesitate. If you remember you can press a button to switch it off every time you power on the car but happily there is some nifty software called DDT4All that allows you to reprogram all sorts of parameters on the car including permanently switching off the stop/start system.
In both UK for MOT & France for CT if you disagree with the opinion of the tester who failed your vehicle it's easy enough to take it for a test at another more friendly place as there are loads of alternative testing stations. In the UK most garages do MOTs & in France the CT stations just do CTs but they are all independent & there are loads to choose from.
My P38 is a 2001 Vogue so has all the options although I could do without some of them. The Etch-A-Sketch satnav is useless & the unrepairable & unobtainable Harmon Kardon DSP amplifier has failed so I currently have no sound from the radio.
Aragorn wrote:
85L of LPG is 18.7 gallons.
200miles / 18.7 gallons is 10.6 MPG
220miles / 18.7 gallons is 11.7 MPG
So it is.😀 I have no idea why I divided by 70 instead of 85.
Aragorn wrote:
My tank is labelled 92L in the spare wheel well.
Oddly it routinely takes well in excess of 80 litres at most pumps. I usually stop somewhere around 85L myself. I've had on a few occasions the pump cut out around 65-70L, but the vast majority of the time i have to stop manually.
That much gas gets me around 200-220miles, which seems fairly poor given some of the other folks results, circa 11mpg.
Your calculation is a bit pessimistic. You are getting approximately 3 miles per litre which is 13.35mpg.
At 150K miles when my Vogue was overheating in desperation we used three bottles of Steel Seal. This fixed the problem & lasted for over 25K miles until the head gasket started blowing & this time I had the engine completely rebuilt by V8 Developments.
I have had the odd leak locked by a the A/C drain in the past but in the current hot weather here in the UK I have now got icy water pouring into the passenger footwell. A drive of a few hours in 28C heat totally soaked a large bath towel & left a lot of water on to be soaked up by the carpet. I cleared the A/C drains from underneath but it's not helped at all so suspect that there is something at the other end that is blocked or dislodged. Where do I start dismantling to get at wherever it is that this condensate from the A/C is forming?
I have had the headliner refurbished by Alders Classics near Norwich who did a really excellent job for £299. I also had them fit some sidesteps as my wife is only 5 foot & was struggling to get in & out of the car. They are used genuine sidesteps in excellent condition. The car originally had sidesteps but as with so many P38s the brackets that fit the sidesteps to the car rusted away & they had to be removed. Foolishly I had chucked away the original sidesteps. I am really pleased with the jobs they did for me & thoroughly recommend them. Their main business is rebuilding classic motors & they showed me some interesting projects they were currently working on like the body shell of a 1965 Ford Mustang that was being completely refurbished & resprayed.
I was happily driving home after collecting the car when I stopped at B&Q in Ipswich to collect some items. When I came out & tried to restart the car nothing happened but a click. All the dashboard lights were on & there was a beep. Then as I continued to try the key I saw some error messages flash up on the dashboard including the one about the engine being immobilised & needing to use the remote. I called @Gilbertd who is my go to helpline whenever I have a problem with the car.😀 We ran through a series of tests & eventually diagnosed that the starter motor had died. The definitive test that the starter motor was toast was putting a screwdriver across the terminals on the starter motor. Instead of a large spark destroying the screwdriver I just got a very feeble spark.
I had to leave the car in the B&Q car park as I was working the next day but the day after I met up with @Gilbertd who had collected a new Bosch starter motor from his regular motor factor. It was a remanufactured item cost £166 with a surcharge of as I recall about £90 refunded when the old starter motor was returned. Interestingly a sticker identified it as remanufactured in Ukraine.
Fitting the starter motor took @Gilbertd well under an hour & as soon as it was fitted the car fired up as usual. In retrospect I had commented to several people that since I had the engine refurbished by V8 Developments a few months ago that the starter motor didn't seem to have the same 'oomph' as previously. It started the car OK but sounded a bit feeble. I suppose that this should have been the warning to me that the starter was on its way out & needed replacement. The starter motor failing on the P38 really leaves you stranded as there is no other way of starting the car & I had even thought of carrying a spare as pattern parts can be had for about £80. I think that the series of errors messages that were briefly displayed on the dashboard each time I tried to start the car were probably because the starter was drawing current & the battery voltage dropping so causing the BECM to have a wobbly & that the messages were completely spurious. The new starter has the 'oomph' that the dying one didn't't & it now sounds just like it used to.
I want to profoundly thank @Gilbertd for yet again helping me out with the car.
LV proposed £589.36 for the Jag. I got that via www.comparethemarket.com so nabbed meal offers & cinema tickets for the next year. Prima, company that I had never heard of was cheapest at £476.71 with LV second cheapest then several other major companies like the AA & Sheila's Wheels at just under £600. I decided to give the unknown company a miss. Interestingly I'm pretty sure that LV never used to appear on comparison sites.