TEMPTED BY A VERY CHEAP P38
With an unfulfilled desire to experience the joys of Range Rover P38 ownership, Richard Hall nearly bites the bullet
Iknow that the P38 combines the electrical complexity of a Boeing 737 with the build quality of a Soviet-era Russian motorcycle, but it is undeniably a nice place to sit while you wait for the AA truck to come and take you home. What’s the worst that can happen though? It is a 50-grand luxury 4x4 that can be yours for little more than the cost of the first year’s road tax on a new Range Rover – and if it breaks down, you get rid of it.
But when I was browsing the local cheap cars section on ebay a few weeks ago, P38s were the last thing on my mind. I was actually after a simple, solid, dependable car for long journeys. My old diesel Peugeot 106 is brilliant around the narrow lanes of rural Norfolk but a bit out of its depth on motorways. As usual the answer to my problem was a Volkswagen Golf or similar, but something else caught my eye: a great big hulking Range Rover P38, and a diesel at that, with what the owner thought was a transmission sensor fault, only a few miles up the road, for sale at a very reasonable-sounding £995.
I thought very seriously about it, but in the end I wasn’t brave enough, what with reliability being right at the top of my list of requirements for my new car. But I knew someone who would be interested. Dave the landlord, having recently sold his Td5 Discovery, was on the lookout for a big comfy diesel automatic 4x4 to tow his Series IIA trialler, and the idea of turning up to the Nationals in a Mitsubishi Shogun didn’t really appeal. So I told him about the P38, and within minutes he was on the way to view it.
Within an hour Dave returned with said motor. I wandered over to take a look. What we had here was a 2.5 DSE automatic, ’97 on the R (in trader speak), in pale gold, tan leather seats with green piping, all the toys, just over 100,000 miles on the clock and very, very straight. A quick look underneath brought good news: no major leaks, a bit of surface rust but no rot, new suspension bushes throughout and no sign that the old beast had ever ventured off road. The engine sounded sweet, the air suspension went up and down as it should, all the warning lights went out when the engine was started and it generally had the air of a well cared for vehicle that had led a quiet life. Dave immediately ran it down to the local MOT station and came back with a fresh test certificate and no advisories. Apart from a transmission that only had two gears (third and reverse) it was perfect.
I was at this point buried in work so Lee from the workshop next door agreed to do some initial investigation. The vehicle had already been plugged in to a diagnostic tester and the transmission fault code read. A bit of online research pointed to the gear position switch (often referred to as the XYZ switch) as the most likely cause of the problem. This switch is mounted on the side of the transmission and can suffer from water ingress and corroded contacts. Although expensive to buy new they can be dismantled and cleaned. In this case the switch internals were nice and clean, and poking a multimeter around the contacts showed that everything was as it should be. It was time to call in the specialists.
Two garage visits and a good deal more multimeter-poking later, Dave had the answer. The fault was in the electronic control unit under the passenger seat. This is a Bosch unit and doesn’t go wrong too often, which means there are plenty about. Cost new – more than Dave paid for the vehicle. Cost secondhand on ebay – 20 quid plus postage. Plug and play, no need to code it in or any of that nonsense, and a happy ending, with normal transmission operation restored. It’s a fabulous vehicle for the money, and I might yet have it off Dave if he gets bored with it.