Henry_b's Range Rover P38 Vogue Project'ish

[Fermit and Sexy Sarah]

Henry_b said:

I've ordered some and it should be here soon!

The wheel is the worsts bit tbh lol

I'm not sure if what you've ordered is a colour balm type product, or a pigment to restore with, but some advice if the latter. I can see that your steering wheel is grease (hand sweat) contaminated. The pigment has up and left, leaving bare hide for gripping hands to sweat on. If this isn't fully removed before pigment application the pigment wont cure, the grease will mix with it, and you'll have a sticky mess.

Furniture Clinic or LTT Leather Care can sell you a degreaser, and explain to you the process.

[Henry_b]

Another update!

This is a thread to document the Oil change procedure for the P38 Borg Warner Transfer Box.

Yes I know, this is simple to some!!

But we do have a " Door Card Removal " how to so eh

1. 1 Locate the Drain and fill Plug(s) these are a 1/2 square drive, i used a my small 1/2 inch breaker bar.

First 'orf make sure you can loosen the Filler plug!



Ideally when you remove this filler plug, a nice stream of fluid should trickle out, in my case I changed it around 2 years ago so i knew the old oil only had around 4000 miles on it and TBH it wasn't in bad nick, but i used cheap crap and wanted to get some proper stuff in there

Make sure you can remove it!
1/2 bar.




Leave this for 5 minutes to drain...




Then there is the most important bits.
The Oil and Syringe, in this case i'm using Mannol Dex III, the manual specifies Dextron IID or III.
If you can find IID then i'd like to know where!!!

But TBH Dex III is far superior, so use that!!

The syringe is needed for a clean fill



Fill the thing up with Fresh fluid.



And pump it in, this syringe is 500mil per fill so roughly 4 1/2 syringes needed for this case!!


Remember to put the drain plug back in!!




And fill 'er up!

When it starts pishing out the fill hole you're done!!



Put the filler plug back in, don't torque the mothering fook out of it..

Just snug it up!!!


Clean the area and yer done!!



This is the old stuff!!




Not too bad.

But the new stuff should last a good while yet..

but with it being so easy to do i'd do it every other engine service.

Literally a 10min Job


More to come..

[Henry_b]

Transmission fluid next..

When i drove her, the gearbox used to hold its gears for far longer than usual, sometimes holding 4th until 20mph!

Which wasn't ideal..

Back then i didn't have the time to change the fluid.

Now she's off the road i can get on and change the fluid!


This is the sump.



Drain and Fill can be seen..


This is the fluid i used - Millers Millermatic Fully Syn ATF DEX III.




The crap that came out!!





Not too bad but definitely due..


The drain and fill procedure is relatively straight forward, on the Thor V8 ZF gearbox atleast..

1. 1 Loosen off the filler plug 8mm hex.

1. 2 pump in new fluid - the initial cold fill is around 2.3 litres.

1. 3 Once is trickles out the filler hole put the plug in loosely

1. 4 Start the engine, and with your foot firmly on he brake cycle all the gears pausing for 3 seconds in each/

1. 5 Climb back underneath with the engine running and add the remaining fluid..

1. 6 All in all you should get around 4.5 litres into the gearbox.

1. 7 button it up.

And you're done//


It does change much better than before..

on light throttle it would change at a minimum of 2600rpm which ain't good, especially in town.. Now it changes around 1400rpm on light throttle.

and the changes are slicker and less hard..

A defo improvement.

[Henry_b]

Still a mild mud plugger at heart!!








Can't wait to get it on the road, hopefully soon.

Can start to enjoy spunking £130 on pez a week




More updates when i can!!

H

[Filibuster]

What a great thread this is!

I really like your no nonsense approach with this car. I will be picking up my first Range Rover, a 2000 4.6 HSE tomorrow.
Your thread comes in really handy Cheers!

[Coley88]

Henry_b]Another update!! said:

.

That looks so wrong!

[Aluminati]

Coley88 said:

That looks so wrong!

[Filibuster]

I too want to do an oil change, incl. automatic gearbox, transfer box, power steering and differential.

OP, any reason why you didn't use the Mannol Dexron III in the gearbox as well? I was about to purchase a 10l barrel Mannol to use for the gearbox, transfer box and power steering.

Sure, Millers is amongst the best, but Mannol can't be bad either....

[Henry_b]

Cheers Gents..

Regarding Mannol..

The transfer case i'm pretty sure needs rebuilding, i can hear the morse chain chattering occasionally and the VCU is seized, so i used a "sacrafical" oil to keep it going well i source a new box in the interim..

[Henry_b]

Next up was some standard service items, the P38 has grease nipples on the prop U joints and Sliders this is a very often neglected service item on these busses.

And in the spirit of my new found enthusiasm for this old thing i decided to put my new grease gun to good use..



The choice of grease can vary I use Marine grease, because it is water resistant and has great lubrication properties..

Lady fate farted in my face as per usual as all the grease nipples were in the wrong place!

Rear slider first,.



U joints next..





I pump grease in until the bellows swell this ensures the joint is lubricated..

engine stuff next..

[Henry_b]

The next job on the P38 was to change the engine oil, she had "almost" prehistoric 10w40 shell in it from 3 years ago.
It had been in there long enough and was near black..

So a change was in order..



Thought to what oil to use swayed me to a 5w40 full synthetic, this was an error as you'll find out later!!
Anyway..

I put her EAS in WADE mode and set to work..



The first thing to do is loosen off the drain plug and make a mess as shown below!



Once the mess was contained i cleaned and stashed the plug away to a safe location.



The Oil filter next, which is an easy access item on the bottom of the engine, loosen it off and be ready to get a gush of oil down ya armpit..



Once removed it is advisable to clean the mating surface.



Prime up the oil filter with new oil to minimise oil starvation on startup..



screw her home..



next up fill her up, 5 litres should do it..




Done..

Or so i thought!!

[Henry_b]

As per the previous post I had change the oil and used a rather thin grade 5w40,
The Rover V8 is partial to either a 15w or 20w you find the tappets drain down rather quickly if anything thinner is used.
In my case the tappets had started to clatter when cold and even after a short time inactive from a run.

So some new oil was sourced.

A 15w40 Grade should do nicely.



A new oil filter was sourced and fittted.



Fill 'er up!!



To also negate the possibility of there being any crap blocking the NRV in the tappet I added a bottle of this..



Which i'm pleased to say has silenced the tappets!!

Huzzah!

[Henry_b]

Some cosmetic rather than mechanical or electrical fettling for a change!
The rocker covers on these are a plain aluminium affair, and usually have a habit of going grey and corroding, leaving you with a horibble dusty mess.

As per this picture i gave them a clean with a brass wire brush..




Subsequent polls on forums showed the best colour for them was black..

Not going to lie i fancied a nice purple of yella!! LOL

I bowed to online pressure and gave them both a spritz of black..





I also repainted the manifold and added some red conduit to smarten the affair up a tad.





Much betterer..

[peterjones2]

Hi, I happened to buy a Monte Carlo blue P30 2.5 DHSE, last year. So far it has been good, although, as with them all there have been a couple of issues. The EAS exhaust valve stopped working so the suspension wouldn't rise and fall correctly. An easy fix when I found out what was wrong.

I had to fit a new rear seal to the tailgate, and do a bit of metal bending on the tailgate lip.

I had to fit a second hand front courtesy lamp as the passenger side reading light button was missing, and I fitted a new ventilation duct in the back seat area, where it must have been kicked and broken by a back seat passenger. Then I bought a walnut panel for the lower half of the centre console, to match the gear shift, and gearbox tunnel side panels.

I had to fit two rams, one to the glove box door, and one to the centre console cubby box.

I fitted all new wheel nuts, and locking nuts, as someone had added three extra locking nuts - I don't know why, and it was so weird that I couldn't be bothered to go back and ask the garage from where I bought it.

Finally, I am in the process of changing all of the door handles as the existing ones are almost white !!

My P38 is Monte Carlo blue with Lightstone upholstery, and was very clean when I bought. The colour combination really appealed to me, even more so than a burgundy red version that the seller also had.

[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/RxhkPlKR[/url]


Parkman.

[K50 DEL]

One of my favourite external colours is that.

Enjoy your P38, they're a lovely drive.

[RC1807]

Top lurking, virgin post in 141 months!

[Henry_b]

Cheers gents!

Parkman..

That is a good looking motor, I wondered when it would sell..

There was also a 2001 Vogue V8 with 200k going for an obsene price!! lol

[Henry_b]

EAS that old chesnut....

If you utter "P38" most will note the horrific unreliability, usually proclaiming the EAS being the main gripe, in my experience this is crap..

However I'd be willing to bet they can be "quirky"

Anyway..

Half way home after a 40mi trip I get the noise every P38 owner dreads "beep beep" from the dash, and in the binnacle it reads "EAS FAULT"

this means she drops to the bumpstops and the ride is horrific...

It took me 2 hours to drive 20 miles!!

The result!







Diagnosis showed the EAS compressor was rather weak, the car detected no change in air pressure when the compressor kicked in and BAM!!

Fault!!

Removing the compressor is easy...



Removing the cylinder head is next on the agenda...

4 torz screws..



The compressor issue is almost always down to worn piston ring or seals..




It isn't looking very clever...

However i rebuilt it and threw it back on, the EAS worked however she took forever to rise from access mode and the compressor itself would stutter..

So i ripped it out again and pulled the motor apart..



What you don't want is chunks of carbon brush falling out........................



One of the brushes were seized in the housing, a good squirt of contact cleaner and a nudge, they popped out..



I since replaced the brushes and it is now sat on my shelf...

Why???



Yep a brand new compressor this was bought as a precautionary measure..



Unfortunately the intake filter didn't thread in, so some bodgery had to take place..



And new one fitted..



She rose up quickly and all is well with the world.....

[Henry_b]

Suspension Overhaul Part 1..

After a few Months of daily driving she had started to wander and there were noises emanating from underneath never a good thing with a P38 lol

The ride was also shocking "ahem"..

Rimmer bros had a sale on shockers, so i decided to treat my old bus to a set..

The Front ones first as payday was next week LOL



A rather odd choice for a road going P38 however they have improved the ride.

The old shockers as you can see have been attached for a good 19yrs, so some force has to be exerted to get them off!





Trying to undo the the shocker only resulted in the shock body twisting, so some Oil filter pliers helped..





Once the lower bolt was removed the upper ones were next, these are 18mm and a right pain...




The driver side bolt is a pain in the arse as the coolant pipe gets in the way, however after some perseverance it wound off..



old shock off..



The other side had the same treatment..



And the new shocks..





The old shockers were completely dead, there was no resistance to compression and they didn't return when compressed, even though they were BOGE GAS/OIL shocks..

Edited by Henry_b on Saturday 4th July 05:55

[Henry_b]

Suspension refresh PART 2..

Next up was to complete the front suspension overhaul this included..

1 Anti roll bar Poly bushes
2 New Drag link
3 New steering damper

First up was the new Drag link, there was an appreciable amount of play in the drag link and the steering was getting slightly vague so a new one was sourced, a quality MOOG replacement was in order!

Removing the old one was quite hard due to seized Nuts!!

The Drag link came off the steering box quite easily..



However the other end needed my blue spanner!



The Nut had seized solid, i'm 256lbs and built, this bd wasn't moving!!



After some snippy snippy " note the steering damper"



The new Drag link arrived in a comically large box, it is handly to keep the old link to get the alignment close as possible..




Not too far out!!

A new set of poly ushes..



While the drag link was off the new Polys were fitted..



note the wear on the old rubber items!!




New drag link thrown on..





The new steering damper arrived just as the drag link was fitted, i assumed it would come next day and I was preparing to refit the old one!



Old one off..



New one on..



The complete suspension..



More to come!! lol

Edited by Henry_b on Saturday 4th July 05:56