1995 Range Rover P38 4.6 HSE - Cool Running

[georgeb]

Aug 6, 2014 7:06:17 GMT notsoswift said:

Agree with indicators, unless you get smoked repeaters, but then you may as well try the orange in the mean time

As I say, I've ordered some so I can play, but having seen a dark blue one on Youtube with clear, I think I may stick with the orange repeaters.

Aug 6, 2014 16:17:29 GMT mrabody said:

Funnily enough my Epsom Green P38 has clear indicators, and I'm planning on swapping them back to the original orange because I think they make the car look bland and boring.

Damn, we could have done a straight swop! I can always change 'em back if I don't like them. Maybe one of each?

Aug 6, 2014 20:55:37 GMT dodgerover said:

Do you need CAT's on it at all to comply with local regulations?

With Philippine law, I don't think you need any pipes at all! Problem is I want to go stainless throughout eventually but can't find ss, or indeed mild, de-cat pipes on-line. They are all for diesel. I've tried to find somewhere here to make a set but even the Filipino's have warned me not to bother as they reckon a) it'll be a bodge up and b) they'll use the lowest possible quality stainless. Most exhaust shops here are only interested in selling huge back boxes to "bling your ride" anyway.

What appealed to me with the set pictured (and it certainly wasn't the price!) was that it looks to me like I could fit without dropping the gearbox X-member and when working on your own and on your back in a sweltering apartment car park, this would be a serious plus for me!

[adam73bgt]

Hm... unceremoniously stick a screwdriver down the sports cats to open them out a bit, fit a straight through system and go round terrorising everyone with V8 sounds?..

[georgeb]

Aug 6, 2014 21:55:38 GMT adam73bgt said:

Hm... unceremoniously stick a screwdriver down the sports cats to open them out a bit, fit a straight through system and go round terrorising everyone with V8 sounds?..

Five hundred quid pipes and a screwdriver. Got possibilities, maybe

I've mailed Rimmers to see if my crossmember non-droppage theory is correct and if so I'll probably bite the bullet.

[MiataMark]

Aug 6, 2014 16:17:29 GMT mrabody said:

Aug 5, 2014 21:20:22 GMT georgeb said:

It will be noted that in there are clear indicator lenses for the front and side and here's a little conundrum. The fronts, in orange, are too "in your face" and will definitely go however, I quite like the side repeaters in orange as they don't shout against the dark green body and I think the clear may do, but orange repeaters and clear fronts may look gash. I've ordered them anyway so I can have a play, but what does the team think?

[/p][/quote]

Funnily enough my Epsom Green P38 has clear indicators, and I'm planning on swapping them back to the original orange because I think they make the car look bland and boring.
[/quote]

I put clear repeaters on a Monte Carlo Blue Discovery looks much better than orange, althouh I woudl have thought smoked would work better againstv teh green.

[georgeb]

Funny but all the other lights on the site are quoted as grey, but the repeaters are clear. We'll see what turns up.

Anyway, we were about to go out last night, it being the missus' birthday and all, when those nice people at Rimmers sent a mail about a "Massive Land Rover Parts Sale" and wonder of wonders, for the first time ever, the very thing I'd been eyeing up was in it! Let me explain. This never, ever happens to me and I either buy just before a sale is announced or, the thing I want is not included. But yes, there it was, sixty quid off the cats pictured in another post. That makes shipping free and goes some way to offset the duty that I'll get slaughtered for.

Quick as a flash, I was banging in an order before they changed their minds muttering "Gotta have, gotta have" under my breath. Press "confirm" sit back with a smile and look up to see four very hungry and slightly pi55ed off Filipinas frowning down at me.

Trying to explain that these were 100CPSI rather than the knackered 300CPSI currently fitted, along with being stainless had huge advantages in terms of economy and performance, therefore availing myself of this opportunity in a sale was in the overall interests of the household, cut no ice I can tell you. "You get changed NOW. We verrry hungry, you feed us and we late!" and by the time they'd finished clearing out the Pan Pacific Manila's kitchen, I'd saved nothing

Mind, I do think I saw a flicker of interest in the word, "Sale".

In the meantime I've cured the rattling cats in the time honoured fashion.

First I bought a Philippine cordless drill.



You can't get ones powered by electrickery, or if you can, I ain't found 'em. Second, drilled a couple of holes, long self tappers and Robert is your Mother's brother. Nice and quiet.

[georgeb]

Just a quick pic from today showing the Range Rover in her natural habitat...outside the bar.



If you look really carefully at the left side of the photo, you'll see a very cold San Miguel beer.

This is the last picture that you'll see before the new stainless cats go on. I'll take one after to show the difference.

[georgeb]

I like them anyway.

Before



After



Still mulling over the repeaters.

Tomorrow is new tailgate struts and relay replacement. New cats and front pipes should be here Monday, so that'll be Tuesdays job. Another 60 quid to the Philippine's Exchequer!

[adam73bgt]

Those clear lenses make a big difference! really makes the car look more modern, though I'm unsure which I prefer

Hope all goes well with the cat replacement

[georgeb]

Aug 14, 2014 12:16:11 GMT adam73bgt said:

Those clear lenses make a big difference! really makes the car look more modern, though I'm unsure which I prefer

Hope all goes well with the cat replacement

Dunno about modern, but I think is looks cleaner with the grey. Anyway the orange LHS lens has the locking tab broken on the back so was just held in with some black gunk and a prayer, so it looks like these are here to stay!

Just checked and the cats have arrived at Clark Airport this morning. If past history is anything to go by we may even see a delivery this afternoon, or Monday, depending on customs clearance.

Talking of customs, I've just paid a shade over 60 quid on a shipped order of 230 but UPS have estimated 80 on a shipped value of 540. I shall keep my mouth shut though, as they've used an exchange rate of 1:49, which is the US Dollar rate, instead of 1:72 which is GBP - PHP, but if Customs spot it, I expect the amount payable to double. Here's hoping!

[georgeb]

Well who'd have thought it? Exhaust arrived in Phils this morning and delivered this afternoon. Really can't fault UPS.

Even better, customs accepted the UPS duty estimate. Bonus ball!

So that'll be this weekend's little jobette.

I'll try with the cats for now, but Adam's right, a screwdriver is easily do-able.

[pauls0]

Bloody hell, well done on that, Peruvian Customs never accept anything!

[georgeb]

Aug 16, 2014 13:30:02 GMT pauls0 said:

Bloody hell, well done on that, Peruvian Customs never accept anything!

There's a first time for everything! They got me back this week though. I ordered a numberplate light which integrates into the upper tailgate and has a cutout for your hand to lift and lower. A grand total of fifteen quid. Customs stung me for a shade over thirty! Still can never work out how they calculate, it must be something to do with phases of the moon.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. I was just pulling up outside my local the other day, as is my wont, and this was outside







Very nice. It was only there for a second or two before the little old man in the baseball cap in the first picture fired her up and roared off down the road. Shame.

By the way, my bar is the lovely tasteful one on the right, not the "Many, many girl, no panty" one with the blue sign across the street. It was too early anyway

So, the other week, this hunka, hunka burning love turned up. The lovely new stainless sport cats and front pipes.



I was asking the question if anyone knew it they could be fitted without dropping the gearbox crossmember and I've answered it myself this morning. No. Where I'd need to cut the old ones off are exactly where the member is, so getting a saw in would be a pig. I'm sure they do it on purpose. So that means finding either somewhere with a ramp (very, very high tech here) or somewhere with an apprentice small enough to get underneath and not mind bits falling on him.

Otherwise it's me, myself and I, on my back again in 33 degrees, and I'm sure I'm getting too old for this malarkey!

Still, where there's a will...etc.

[SmokeEm]

Must be a nightmare havng to pay duty on everything!

Are you over there for a reason?

[georgeb]

Aug 22, 2014 8:58:41 GMT SmokeEm said:

Must be a nightmare havng to pay duty on everything!

Are you over there for a reason?

Duty's an absolute pig!! But that's the price for owning a British vehicle eleventeen million miles away from home. I just wish I could work out how they come up with the numbers but there's no rhyme or reason that I can see. They swing wildly from, "Oh, that's not to bad" to, "WTF!"

...Philippine Custom's new high-tech duty calculator

I'm here because I live here! I decided to leave the UK for good and move to Asia a few years back and met the missus, who's a Filipina, when I was in Singapore. We then went to live in Kuala Lumpur for five or six years, but the intention was always to get to the Philippines. Eventually, some work came along that the company I was then working for got and they sent me over. I then got a full time transfer but have since set my own company up, so no-one can move me again!

= Free!!


As a Brit, it's a great place to live. They like us, probably because it's one of the few places we didn't colonise, fuel is cheap (twice the price of Malaysia, but still cheap), fags are cheap and they virtually give beer away! Eating out is for nothing, buying groceries makes hardly a dent, so if you're earning anything like a UK salary, then you can live very, very well here. Oh, and it's sunny most of the time, if you ignore the typhoons that is, and generally 29-35 degrees. Nice

[dodgerover]

Aug 22, 2014 8:58:41 GMT SmokeEm said:

Must be a nightmare havng to pay duty on everything!

Are you over there for a reason?

I was going to make a smutty comment involving the many many girls, no panties bit but then remembered Georgeb is married to a local

[georgeb]

Aug 22, 2014 23:30:26 GMT dodgerover said:

I was going to make a smutty comment involving the many many girls, no panties bit but then remembered Georgeb is married to a local

I'm allowed to read the menu, as long as I don't try the food!!

Anyway, the other day, as faithfully reported, I did the brakes. No problems until they get warm when any touch of the pedal is accompanied by a sound reminiscent of all the banshees in hell giving it large. I've never before had squealing brakes, just in with the pads, and off we go. So I decided to try the copper grease on the back trick but, as Mrs Beeton would say, "First find your grease". Two days later I did indeed find an establishment who a) knew what I was on about and b) actually had some. So yesterday, I decided to do something about it.

Donning my especially tropicalized overalls, i.e. normal ones with the sleeves cut off and half the length out of the legs, I set off downstairs. Let me set the scene. The parking lot in my apartment building is unventilated and poorly lit, so by the time you get to the motor, in some 35 degrees which IIRC is around 95 in old money, little rivulets of sweat are already forming. You then stand still for around 5 minutes until a mosquito the size of a house brick makes a tasty snackette of one of the blood vessels in the top of your feet (flip-flops, see?) before you kill it with a satisfying splat and hope it wasn’t one of the dengue or malaria carriers they tell you only come out during the day. This last step isn’t mandatory but, as it’ll happen anyway, you might as well get it over with.

Loosen front wheel nuts jack up, remove wheel, tilt caliper, lightly grease the pad mating surfaces, tighten caliper, refit wheel, drop jack. You are now soaking and your fags, which you’ve cleverly left in your top pocket have wilted to nothing. Rinse and repeat for the left hand side.

By now, you are gasping for breath in the airless void and in desperate need of re-hydration as all your liquid reserves are now in your overalls.

Stagger upstairs, drink copious quantities of water, peel off overalls which go straight into the machine and luxuriate under a cold shower for ten minutes or so.

Get dressed, go for a test drive. It was the rears. plums!

Not being able to face the ordeal for a second time in a day, you put it off. I’ve just finished the backs, got a big mossie bite on my left foot but, having just been around the block – silence! Thank God for that.

We knew when we moved that Malate is prone to flooding during typhoons and to give you an idea, all the lampposts, telegraph poles are painted thus.



Stripes at around foot increments, so you can decide for yourself if it’s deep enough yet to hydraulic your engine. The 7-11 across the road has them on its door too, but they go up to six feet! “Hmm, I’ll just swim over to the shop and see how deep it is” Maybe not!

[georgeb]

Tuesday afternoon, I was (for a change) sitting outside a bar just down the road. This one a Molly Malone's. I swear in the middle of the Sahara there'll be an Irish bar!

Anyway, next door is a 7-11 and on the paved area in front of that, two guys were doing a "service" on a Toyota Something (they all look the same to me now!), as you do. This consisted of dropping the oil and removing the filter. All well and good you say. They then proceeded to strain the oil through what could have been a coffee filter and wash the oil filter out with some indeterminable liquid. The filter was then refitted and the oil poured back in. Hmm. Then it got interesting and unfortunately I didn't see the end result.

Next out was the air filter and, with the aid of a hosepipe, this was washed. The last I saw was the pipe being stuck into the airbox Unfortunately I had to be elsewhere so had to leave our ace mechanics to it.

Yesterday, I was in the same spot when some guys turned up to do this.



When I asked what was wrong, I was told, "He put key in and engine turn once and then it stop. Now not move any more". Presumably the result of carefully topping off your intake system with a hosepipe!

They'd brought a rigid bar and I was surprised to see such attention to safety but all returned to normal when this was attached to both vehicles using the ubiquitous "baling" wire with which everything that needs fastening in the Philippines is, indeed, fastened!

Another day in Manila!!

[Sweetpea]

That's fantastic!
These things just don't happen where I live. I think that's a shame because I do enjoy laughing at other peoples foolishness.

I take it you've not seen Malate flooded yet? Can't help wondering what happens to the people living in the tin shacks when the water gets to the red bit on the lamp posts.

James

[georgeb]

Aug 28, 2014 21:47:38 GMT Sweetpea said:

That's fantastic!
These things just don't happen where I live. I think that's a shame because I do enjoy laughing at other peoples foolishness.

Daily occurrence here! Your Filipino is a highly inventive person but sometimes it can just go a little bit wrong.

I take it you've not seen Malate flooded yet? Can't help wondering what happens to the people living in the tin shacks when the water gets to the red bit on the lamp posts.

James

In a typhoon last year, we were staying up north Manila in the leafy green suburb of Tondo ( www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1536&bih=696&q=tondo+manila&oq=tondo&gs_l=img.1.0.0l10.1727.3035.0.5682.5.5.0.0.0.0.240.692.2-3.3.0....0...1ac.1.52.img..2.3.690.U12o-RTBTC8 ) and I was supposed to be in Makati. the only thing stopping me was the seven foot deep floodwaters in Malate and Pasay!

They were proudly announcing that the metro was operating (it's all elevated) whilst ignoring the fact that no-one could get to the stations! Though that only lasted about two hours before the substations became submarines.

As to the shacks? Well, to put it politely, they get a much needed wash! There's bits of Manila that smell much better for a bit of a downpour.

Seriously, they have flood relief centres dotted around the city that can take evacuees until the water abates. Generally it's just a clearing up job afterwards, it's out in the countryside where the mudslides and raging rivers do the damage and injury.

[georgeb]

Okay, so no updates recently? Well no, because not a lot has been happening. The old girl's been behaving so no emergency jobs to do. 

I was awaiting my new fuse-box from the UK which was due in on Friday but good old Typhoon Mario (Fung-Wong to the rest of the world) decided that he'd pretty much shut half the country down instead. Just shy of a quarter of a million evacuated in Metro Manila alone, with floods six foot deep in parts. We were around halfway up the yellow stripe in Malate, so escaped the worst and 4x4s could get around with care. All schools, government offices and banks were officially closed, loads of flights diverted and much of the rest of the city didn't bother either.

However, all this meant that over the weekend, instead of getting on with jobs, the old girl was pressed into service shifting the family around, as Madam's nasty little Toyota Fortuner is only 2wd and she was too scared to drive it anyway. Pity, as it may have hydrolocked and then I could scrap it! The M-i-L had a hospital appointment for an eye op on Friday - funny, the doctors could make it in, so she had to be carted there and back, the girls needed picking up from Tondo and bringing here to Malate. Fortunately the winds weren't bad enough to throw things around like Yolanda did so you could get about without a sheet of corrugated iron (formerly someone's roof) joining you in the cab via the windscreen. At least, if nothing else, the underside is now mint, which is good, because the exhaust is next.

I was looking around for someone to fit the new front pipes for me but I have to admit, I've failed miserably. I've tried four or five places but they all look highly dubious, have no ramps and less tools that I've got. Anyway, having another careful measure up, I reckon that by making two cuts in the pipe that crosses from one bank to the other, I can turn the old cats side on and slide them out without having to remove the gearbox X-member. The new cats are significantly smaller and more to the point, separate from the rest of the front pipe. So I reckon I can loosely bolt them in place, offer up the Y piece and connect it all together. It's eight bolts/nuts in total. How many are going to co-operate I wonder? I know two will as they are the ones that connect the front and intermediate pipes and I replaced those earlier in the year, it's the ones to the manifolds that are the unknown quantity. Let's see. Must remember to take plenty of H2O down with me to re-hydrate!

Anyway, as the floodwater abated, leaving 10 dead, DHL turned up yesterday with the fuse-box. Those that know P38s will also know that they love to cook their fuses, especially in the under-bonnet temperatures we see here, so whilst it's not let me down yet I've seen a couple of crusty bits, so it's going to get swopped out. At least I can do a fair amount of that in the cool of the apartment.

Another job on the cards is a rebuild of the air suspension valve block. and I ordered the bits from the US on Monday. I think I've sourced a compressor and hopefully, some height sensors, so once I have those confirmed, I'll be getting some new air bags and returning the suspension to how Mr. Land Rover intended. That should be a fun weekends work getting it all operational.

I also stumbled across a local advert offering second-hand interior trim parts for P38s, so I'll be taking some pictures of what I need today and firing those off to see if they can help. It's only a couple of parts but the heat makes the plastic go brittle and I have a few bits which are held together by Faith, Hope and a spot of superglue. So let's see what he can come up with.

And finally a quick and free win. The air-con had decided that it was going to work intermittently at first then gave up the ghost completely. I could get it working with the direct application of 12v but that was all. With the multimeter, I found the wire that triggers both the pump clutch and the relays for the fans was only getting around 8v, not enough to stir things into action. So where was the missing 4v? Had a trawl back through that font of all RR knowledge that is RangeRovers.net and found an old post from 2010 with remarkably similar symptoms. The fault was narrowed down to the trinary pressure switch on the receiver/dryer that tells everything what to do. Well, not having one handy in my pocket, I scooted underneath and found, under 19 years of grime, the offending item. Pulled off the multi-plug, gave everything a clean and hey presto. Air-con!