My 1999 Ranger Rover P38 4.0 V8

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ar1g3

Well-Known Member
Posts
148
Location
Belgium
In this thread I will present my green RR P38 with the 4 liter V8 engine. I came across this car while looking for a cheap car to tow a trailer with for a few months, at the same time I found the orange P38 you see in the picture. I didn't act upon it as it needed work to get it in the road, and I wanted something I could drive immediately. The orange one turned out to be a turd so I decided to buy this one to fix up and then keep and replace the orange one.

The car had been standing in a shed since 2015 as the owner didn't get round to fixing some of the issues.

Here's me bringing the car home, must have been quite a sight that orange sh*tbox with the green range rover on the back.

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It's a standard 4.0l V8 with EAS still fitted and working when I bought it. It has approximately 260.000km on the clock. The back seats were removed to register it as a van (tax reasons in Belgium) but where normally they need to destroy all mounting points during the conversion to van they didn't here so once it is old enough to register as an 'oldtimer' with cheap taxes I can bolt the back seats back in. All in all its a pretty rare car around here as it seems to be completely untouched.

But after the joy of buying a new toy comes the harsh reality:
  • Exhaust is completely shot from the middle box onwards
  • Front windscreen is broken
  • RH side mirror has fallen off and the RH side front door took a hit
  • Passenger front seat doesn't move fwd/backwd
  • Tailgate button is kaput
  • Bonnet lever in cab is broken
  • Cracks on the tail lights

And then, being a Land Rover, when you come home and inspect it further you find more stuff:
  • After a few weeks EAS fault popped up "height sensor out if range"
  • After a while auto box started acting up, there is lag befor it is grabbing and very little happens in reverse, especially on cold days
  • ABS accumulator needs replacing

I started with the exhaust. The previous owner said he thought there would be an exhaust leak because of noise. It was broken in two... I knew this when buying, luckily. Here's the exhaust until the middle box removed:
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All rotted through. As a bonus the rings/flanges on the otherwise perfect downpipe were rotted away. As I did not want to replace the downpipes for this (it seems like a hell of a job, and expensive) and I don't have my welder up and running, I decided to make a splitable ring from an old one from the back of the middle box. It splits in two and the two halves are held together with brackets. It's not finished but here are a few pictures:
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Bit if a faff really but I think in the end it will be stronger than just cutting and welding. I still need to finish it before I can install the new Britpart exhaust. Yes Britpart, I know, but I'm doing this in a budget.

I'll post updates when there is progress so you can follow all my pain and sorrow.
 
Continued working on the splitable exhaust flange tonight and its done.
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You may think 'what the hell is he doing' but I just couldn't being myself to remove the downpipes.

Next up is installing the exhaust system on the car!
 
Alright time for an update..

The exhaust has been finished:
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Was quite the challenge to fit it as I found that those Britpart silencers didn't fit exactly right. Took some messing about to get it to fit and it stil isn't perfect.

I then continued with some maintenance and refreshing works. I did an auto box service and replaced the final drive and transfer box oil. I tore down the top part of the engine to replace rocker cover gasket and blank of the holes left by an old LPG installation. I have just filled the car up again with coolant and started with an oil flush for the engine.
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I replaced:
  • Air filter
  • Oil filter
  • Oil incl. Oil flush
  • Coolant
  • HT leads
  • Spark plugs
  • Rocker cover gaskets
  • Intake manifold gaskets except valley gasket
  • Aux drive belt
  • Upper coolant pipe from intake manifold to heater matrix
  • Injector o-rings
 
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