Long time since I have been a Land Rovering with alt.fan.landrover but I figured it's still the best place for mechanical advise?
Looking at an early P38 4.0 (UK) and my head says 'walk away it's a P38' whilst my heart says 'oooooh another V8'
This one has a head gasket leak (back left bank) but no other visible drips or leaks. Bit of a clonk in the transmission when shifting from D to R with handbrake off but nothing as bad as my 1989 Classic!
What else should I be having a butcher's at with this RR and are they a dodgy car to own or not (I see mixed reports all over the www about owning them - I'm handy with the spanners, welder and the like (yes the 1968 Ser 2a is still alive and kicking) so no problems with getting oily.
RUN AWAY WHILE YOUR WALLET HAS SOME MONEY STILL IN IT!
Seriously, as Lee says, why buy something that potentially has a slipped liner or cracked block issue? If the block has gone and you decided to make a permanent repair of it, then be aware that a replacement top-hat re-linered block is around £900 exchange - for the bare block!! If doing the work yourself and not ccounting labour, then a potentially bomb-proof engine could be built for around £1500, but to be economical at that you'd need to have a lot of spare time that you don't value and be getting the vehicle for next to nothing.
Thanks for the advice - I think I will leave this one (my dusty memory recalls folks waving others off the P38 even when they were young) as I can remember doing just a head gasket on a 3.5 EFi and that took me all weekend - if this one needs more than that then I'm not really up for it - better spend my time mulling over a new chassis for the 88"
Having read around the place it looks like the P38 was ... a dog?
It's got a bad rep, a very bad rep. I was in a Land Rover dealership about 7 years ago and commenting on how many second hand ones they had at cheap prices and he said people who buy them just don't realise how much time they will spend in the garage and tend to sell them quite quickly, usually within a year of buying it.
I loved the RRC, we had two... when the P38 came out I hoped to be able to afford one. Fortunately as I am in the second hand price range they had shown their true colours before I could afford one.
The next bonus was when I could afford the second hand L322 those nice chaps at BMW had thrown out all the bad stuff and put in all their goodies.
The electrics are a nightmare, especialy anything to do with the air con' / climate control. Spares for that stuff varies from needing to sell the house to raise enough cash, to being unobtainium.
On or around Tue, 1 Sep 2009 07:15:32 +0100, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:
what, P38s? I doubt it. FWIW, though, BiL Tim has one, a 2.5 diesel which has been converted to coils, and it's done a lot of hard work. However, converting to coils removes one of the potential trouble-making systems, and it's not been without faults either.
To be fair I can't say it's had any problems that are attributable to the vehicle or it's design rather than the hard life it has had. I've had to replace the clutch, gearbox and transfer box, but I find it hard to moan about this in a 190,000 mile vehicle that regularly tows right up to the legal limit. Beyond that it's only had routine brake parts, one serpentine belt just after purchase another one ordered for a routine replacement for this week, one CV joint, one propshaft UJ, new cooling system hoses and a few ball joints and bushes which are all fair game for a vehicle of this age working hard on and off road IMO.
Electrically it throws up the book symbol on the CC occasionally, due to the timing I suspect that it's possibly down the missing aircon drive belt which I've never got round to replacing as the PO had seriousy butchered the bolt and we rarely need aircon in the UK. It has a tendency to show a high temp (gauage and red light!) when towing heavy laods up steep hills on hot days, I suspect this is merely a gauge or sender issue as I'm sure that I'd have blown something in the last 35,000 miles if it was genuinely that hot.
For well inside £5000 in purchase price and parts it's given over
35,000 miles of hard graft. If it self destructed tomorrow it would have been a real bargain workhorse.
I suspect that the P38 has a bad name because folks are quicker to report problems than they are to report the good points!
The classic is a great car but as a tow vehicle it's not a patch on the P38 IMO.
I knew there had to be another P38 fan out there somewhere ;)
I'm fairly certain it's not the servo motors, it runs through all the non air con related test routines OK but the book comes up on hotter days. I had the rad and intercooler out for a flush the other day and took the opportunity to grind out the knackered air con belt tensioner bolt. Next step is to purchase and fit a belt and see if it alters things, at least having the air con running should trigger the electric fans which has to help on hot days.
If all else fails I can whip the dash apart and chase problems behind there but to be honest it's on;y the air con that's missing and with our great British summers I don't get to miss it very much ;)
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