Detailing World Forum banner

Henry_b's Range Rover P38

213K views 791 replies 62 participants last post by  enc 
#1 · (Edited)
i'm 17 s p38 nut/enthusiastic enthusiast

However when a p38 rears its head for reasonable money you don't turn it down.

What is it with me and cheap cars?? :devil:

Anywhoo here's my P38 Warts and all.

Spec's wise.

Monte Carlo Blue Metallic exclusive to 2001-2002 run out P38s :thumb:

Lightstone leather seats with electric headrests

2 person memory

4.6 Rover V8 225hp

4spd ZF auto

BRC sequential LPG injection system. makes 13mpg tolerable :)

18" Comet alloys

6CD changer

Harman Kardon 12 Speaker Surround Sound with 2 subwoofers and 5 amps and a 6 Disc Changer

Electric sunroof

Air con

Dual zone climate control

heated front screen

heated rear screen

Multi function steering wheel

Cruise control

etc etc :thumb:

Anyway here she is after a Mission about in some fields to 'er test the suspension



 
See less See more
2
#158 ·
My next installment, is to fix the throttle body heater.

A common failure point..

The intake trunking and Maf has to be removed





Hard to see but the cables have to be teased out, lift the throttle to WOT and slide them out.




Then the 4 swines that hold the throttle body to the manifold.



The heater also has to be un bolted.

Which is 4 6mm bolts


The next job was to reseal the unit, and repaint the throttle body, as the silver paint was peeling! ;)





Which added a bit of contrast ;) :)

and tbh i only had black paint!! LOL ;) :D

H
 
#159 ·
Scuttle next!! :D:D

The scuttle area was wiped down with APC, which helped make it look better :eek:





That bit in the corner is a bit of crust, which i'll have to deal with :eek: :doublesho

The cover was next.

The closed cell foam was coated with some Tigerseal to seal it to the body.



::

They need a good :buffer:

The other side i'll do tomorra or next week! :thumb:

LOL :D

H
 
#170 ·
Giving the old Girls undercrackers a wash FNARR!! ;)

This old girl does get used for the intended purpose, the only issue is, underneath she is mint and the idea of letting all the soggy muck fester wasn't sitting well with me, and I have just ogt a pressure washer with a foam gun ;)

the disaster ;)






The underside was covered in a mixture of strong APC and car shampoo ;)



After being left for a "cup of tea" AKA 10 minutes, it was scrubbed and pressure washed off ;) :)
The plastics were dressed and the airbags were sprayed with a rubber care product by autoglym.


The other side, was treated in the same way ;)


And after ;)


much healthier, the rear chassis next :)
 
#171 · (Edited)
Right where was I?

Oh yes..

Since the last update she had been developing a tappet clatter which was to be expected because the Oil in it had over 6k and it was cheap stuff.

Changing the oil on a V8 P38 is very easy, however the libation of choice is often debated, an issue common on engines that had/have a long production run.

People tend to create a "what works for them" attitude.
And to be fair from what i've seen all v8's in these things react differently!! ;)

Anyway enough of my waffling!!

Down to the Job..


First thing to do is remove the sump plug, which on the latter P38's is easy!!
Only issue is if you're badly equipped "like me" you'll make a mess. ;) :)



Pull the sump plug and give it a clean and leave it in a safe place YO ;) :thumb:



Slackening off the Oil filter is the next thing on the agenda, hopefully it will go easy, in my case it wound off by hand, be ready for the stream of oil that will invariably run down your arm into the armpit!! :doublesho :lol:

Once removed clean the mating surface Fnarr!! :doublesho



Open the new filter and prime it with new oil



Spin it on and tighten 3/4 of a turn by hand, it should go on easy :D



Once done fill her up with new stuff, i used 5w40 fully syn, which turned out to be a mistake as you'll see later on! :wall:



More to come! :car:
 
#172 ·
Next update involves an old filter and an angle grinder. :devil:

one issue is, giving me an angle grinder seldom ends well, and i did almost lop off my finger but it was worth it for the treasures inside :thumb:

I like to examine all parts of an engine, I tend to hear people who look at service history and the general running of an engine as an indicator of condition.
And rightly so..

however you can tell alot about the condition of an engine by what the Oil filter captures :thumb: :driver:

So i cut mine open!

Excuse the blurryness, 'twas my hangover ha!! :lol: :doublesho "joking"



This sludge in the bottom isn't what you want to see ideally, this really does show its hard life previous to my ownership!! :confused:



Luckily there wasn't any contamination in the pleats no metal etc etc

:thumb:





More to come :thumb: :lol:
 
#176 ·
"oil shenanigans"

It turned out the 5w40 was draining away from the Tappets and causing them to clatter even when warm, which isn't what you want!

Other than that the 5w40 was running alright, oil pressure was perfect..

However I decided to up the cold grade with a 15w40 Mineral Mobil 1000/



Yet another filter primed up!!



And pour it down her neck :lol:



Verdict is...............

She runs rought 2.5 million times better, much quieter from cold start :thumb:
 
#185 ·
"oil shenanigans"

It turned out the 5w40 was draining away from the Tappets and causing them to clatter even when warm, which isn't what you want!

:thumb:
Better than my experience, I put Mobil 1 in a 80,000 mile 1600 cvh, got half way to work the next morning when the oil light came on and the lifters started rattling like hell. I nursed the car home and pulled off the cam cover to find it dry :wall::wall:. Turned out that the Mobil 1 did a great job of cleaning all the sludge out of the engine which subsequently blocked the main oil gallery :censored:
 
#189 ·
I remember reading an article regarding newer oils in older engines (possible from RPI regarding the Rover V8) and they said always use the oil specified when the engine was manufactured as it was designed with the prevalent oil in mind. Newer, low viscosity oils were pants owing to the greater clearances etc. I remember using 20W50 in my Series III land rovers and even that was a bit on the thin side!! Seeing as the Rover V8 is around 50 years old, it's not surprising it didn't like the lightweight oil, even if it had undergone a modicum of engineering updates.
 
#190 ·
The origin of the Rv8 is in late 50s-60s america, it saw light as the Buick 215 which was fitted to the buick skylark and a few others.

Rover acquired it in the 60s in the Rover P5 and Range Rover both manuals denote the use of 20w50

my P38's manual denotes a 10w40 grade,

In my case 15w40 seemed like a good compromise.

many argue the use of thinner oil is for the interest of fuel economy, :devil:

I will probably use 20w50 VR1 next oil change.

:car:
 
#177 ·
"Crusty Bits"

One annoying thing that has plagued this car since i bought it is an unrelenting scraping noise which is due in part to dust shields on the front brakes scraping the disc.. ;) :wall:

So it was time to repair this issue :thumb:

first off her wheels had to be taken off, on the P38 it is a good idea to leave a door open to stop the EAS self levelling, if you don't bad stuff happens.

In my case the wheel had to be beaten off with a rubber mallet, which is never a good thing and is a result of the aluminum wheel and steel hub corroding together! :devil:

Anyway...

Wheel off..



Removed the 2 12mm bolts holding the caliper and slide it and the pads out and place them in a safe place.. :thumb:



Next up the carrier bolts were being a right pain in the wrist, they're a bi-hex 21mm affair and are fiendishly tight, in my case i couldn't get enough leverage on them.
so a little out of the box thinking was required! :doublesho



Once removed you can see why!

rusty threads!



anyway once the carrier is off the phillips retaining screw was removed from the disc and that was placed aside.



this revealed the issue!



several small 8mm bolts secure them to the hub, in my case they came out very easy!

once out you're left with a pile of scrap..



I would the bolts back into the hole with copper ease to stop the threds being contaminated.



Next up if you have a bit of jenolite sitting around you can slap that on the surface grot..



learnt my lesson though, utter pants it is!!

Also smells alarmingly like Jeyes fluid. :doublesho

Refit is the reverse!!



And done!!



:buffer:
 
#178 ·
Next up was the other side!! ;)

Wheel off 27mm in the case of the P38 :thumb:



Remove the carrier and caliper like on the other side, the shield wasn't nearly as bad, however it needed to come off, due to the fact all the others are AWOL :lol:



The carriers were treated to a wire wheel and a coat of VHT silver..



several coats were applied.. :buffer:



The Hub and assosiated metal work was wire wheeled off and given a coat of rust converter, to hopefully quell the bran flake effect! :lol:



Once dried a coat of primer and Chassis black was applied. :thumb:





Certainly by the standards of ALL the members on DW that is a pants job! :lol: but it will halt the rust until i can get them powdercoated!! :thumb:

Caliper and carrier were fitted along with the disc, all of which were painted.



cat stopped play and refused to move so i didn't get a wheel on shot


:censored: :lol:

I did do both sides!

so here is the driver side, surprisingly hard to picture painted calipers on one of these!! :D

 
#180 ·
Such a lovely colour Henry, its lovely to see you making it better bit by bit.

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk
 
  • Like
Reactions: Henry_b
#182 · (Edited)
Right, where was I?

Oh yes...

RUST!!

By and large the P38 doesn't rust, however it can corrode in a select few areas.
The most common of which is the tow bar mounting crossmember, which is pelted by all manners or stuff from the rear wheels. :censored:

as a result it corrodes, if left untreated it isn't unknown for it to shear off :doublesho

In my case it was painted by "me" around 2 years ago, however the job was less than satisfactory :lol:
As you can see.




Horrible isn't it! :doublesho

The angle grinder of truth with a wire wheel took care of the paint and revealed what metal i had to work with..
It is important to note it should be cleared down to shiny steel this helps halt the advancement of future rot.




After grinding all the grot away
Being happy with the fact there was some metal to work with, i lobbed on a few generous coats of Hydrate 80, just to halt the rust..




Once this dried i was initially happy with the black hue, it certainly looked better than rust!! :thumb:





In time there may be a coat of chassis black on there, however i like the fact i can see any future corrosion before it takes hold, as paint can hide a multitude of sins!! :devil:

H
 
#186 ·
The next installment is to address the squiffy front lip spoiler,
naturally on a Range Rover it gets a right bashing and in my old Rangies case.

It was really rather twisted! :censored:



Not ideal!

removal is rather simple, just a selection of screw rivets and a two spring clips.

The fasteners!



The spoiler can then be removed :thumb:



50/50 shot :lol:



Sorting out the spoiler is relatively simple, i gave it a quick waft with the heatgun to straighten the plastic, it was then given a coat of trim restorer, just to bring some colour back to it :car:




Clips were painted with some black paint :buffer:



Re fitment is the reversal of removal and upon the refit, it looks good, no more twist in it, which is nice :thumb:





getting there!! :wave:
 
#188 ·
Bodywork has been a bug bare of this thing since i bought her, subsequent owners seem to not have cared as she got older!

This happened in a Waitrose car park shortly after i bought her! :censored:



Plan of attack was to wetsand the scratch out, and try and polish it up, i did wetsand it, however i didn't get any during pictures thanks to wet hands!!

Anyway the polish of choice was this stuff!!



And this pad :newbie:



After several passes the finished result looked pretty good, if i do say so myself.. :thumb:



Naturally i gave the entire side a quick going over. :buffer:













:driver:

Much better to the naked eye! :D
 
#194 · (Edited)
One issue that has been in abundance, and one that i equally have never got round to fixing was the glovebox that opened far too wide,
and also liked to open all by itself and smack my passengers on the knees!
Also with it hitting the floor, all the gloves would fall out!! LOL! :tumbleweed:

Anyway i finally found time and energy to fix it!! :thumb:

This is the issue in question, a rather droopy glove box!



The first issue was removing the plastic mould below the box to allow me access to remove the hinges, in my case it was stuck fast!! :eek:



Fortunately with some undoing of screws and a bit of force it came off, revealing a pile of metal dust which used to be my dashboard frame!! :wall:
This is probably attributed to my leaking issue, to which i have yet to cure!! :(



Note the issue with the dash it seems to be dissolving! LOL



anyway enough of that, the glovebox is attached to the dash with 4 10mm bolts, remove them and it comes away ;)
Worth noting the bolts are held by 4 not so captive plates that like to fall out once the bolts are removeded! I had push Blue Tack up the gaps to ensure they didn't move!



Once removed we can see the issue!!
the glovbox has a small shock absorber type piston arrangement "see later" which is supposed to to two things (1) allow a certain amount of travel (2) stop the glovebox smashing the knees of your passenger, IE it allows the controlled opening of the box if you just hit the botton.

This is secured to the back of the glovebos with 2 brass inserts and screws, if you have had work behind the dash it is possible to brake these off. :censored:

Anyway with a sense of improvisation..





I drilled out the inserts, and went straight through the glovebox, this is imperative! :thumb:

Next up was a Tap!! :thumb:



At this point i realised i couldn't get a tap in there with the proper tool!

So again i had to improvise! ;)



The bracket was tapped and a bolt was found! :)



Using my Connolly seats as workbenches :lol:



"note the shocker" threaded!! :devil:



Next step was to drop the plastic valance that secured the cable to allow me to get my hands in to thread the bolt through the glovebox :lol:



And success!! :thumb:



The result of my labours! :driver:



A glovebox that opens and closes properly!!! :D

FINALLY.

It was time to Kurust the frame, a thin coat was applied after a good wirebrush



A coat of black paint finished it off ;)



Refitted the latch cable and made sure it closed!



And done!!



You'll notice the carpet needs serious attention!

my next job..

H
 
#195 ·
"half Arsed job"

You might note the Rocker covers were painted by myself in an earlier post
The Job wasn't quite upto standard for many reasons..

So i decided while I had a free minute to rectify the issue!! ;)

This also gives me a chance to show ya'll the "service mode"! :thumb:

The bonnet goes vertical to ease access! :p



The Rocker covers were repainted with a Dull enamel! ;)




The passenger side cover is the best to represent! :buffer:




I have seen red covers but that doesn't suit me to be fair! :wave:



A smarter arrangement! :thumb:
 
Top