Sam Glover
Sam has a second go at owning a Range Rover P38
Sam hopes it’ll be second time lucky as he buys another P38.
My first attempt at Range Rover P38 ownership was a train-wreck. It was a 2001 4.0 HSE in excellent condition, with a mileage of 80,000 and a full Land Rover service history. A new set of prophylactic airbags and a pump rebuild did nothing to prevent regular and diverse suspension failures. It chewed through its centre diff, its front final drive and a front wheel bearing. Lubricants got out and rainwater got in. Key plastic parts – like door handles – snapped off. Its heater matrix burst, its dashboard display babbled incoherently and its electrical system was a war-zone. Finally, a slipped cylinder liner found its way through a head gasket. All this in the space of 14 months and 8000 miles.
Nevertheless, I’ve come to look back on owning it as a pleasant experience. Events that appeared terrible at the time, I now remember with fondness: manoeuvring a laden trailer off a ferry with the suspension on its bump-stops; getting locked out with the engine running in a car park in Coventry; bypassing the suspension air reservoir on the hard-shoulder of a Dutch motorway in heavy snow. It was the least reliable car I’d ever owned – but I've never quite managed to shake the idea that it might be nice to own another.
What could possibly go wrong?
Thus, when Practical Classics contributor Ian
Tisdale suggested at the NEC Classic Motor Show that his 1996 4.6 HSE might be for sale, I struggled to talk myself out of thinking that I should buy it.
Ian and his wife Kirsten had campaigned it as daily transport for seven years. They’d achieved this through regular servicing, intelligent preventative maintenance and a realistic eyes-wide-open approach to the expenses involved. ‘You simply have to consider everything to be a service item,’ said Ian, ‘up to and including the transfer box.’
Ian suspected that one of the head gaskets had sprung a leak. Coolant was slowly and mysteriously disappearing when the engine was running and his mechanic could find no evidence of external leaks. Ian reported that he’d never allowed it to overheat, so I saw no reason to suspect warped heads. I figured that if a cylinder liner had been angling to go on the march, it’d have done so earlier in its 172,000-mile career. Thus, I reckoned that there was every chance it required nothing more than an old-fashioned head gasket change. I bought it for £750 – plus a gasket set, a water pump, an oil filter, a serpentine drive belt and a set of spark plugs.
Back at my workshop, it didn’t take long to recall the full horror of working on a P38. The Sixties pushrod V8 might be small and svelte, but it’s buried deep in the cavernous engine bay and guarded by an aggressive thatch of ancillaries, belts, cables, pipework, sharp edges and slimy, invasive tendrils. Getting a clear look at it took some hours of pruning and burrowing. This done, a blossom of pink OAT antifreeze crystals across the front of the engine attested that the water pump had been leaking for some time. Play in its pulley was significant.
The engine oil was uncontaminated, the coolant didn’t smell of exhaust or combustion gases and a compression test showed a healthy 150-160psi across all cylinders. I therefore simply set about changing the water pump and serpentine belt. Wrestling the old pump off was a swine, involving burning, grinding, cutting, swearing and Helicoiling. The pump, incidentally, is secured by five metric setscrews and three UNC bolts – a feature of British engineering that others might find charming.
Move over to Austin Rover
I’d set aside a weekend for the head gasket change, so killed the remainder of it by treating the Range Rover to a basic service and replacing its manky rear brake calipers, discs and pads. I’ve since been using it daily. I like the juxtaposition of airy modern luxury and the anachronism of live axles, a heavy chassis and a steering box. It makes weird noises that I don’t understand, the interior is decomposing and the dashboard displays faults that do not – but sometimes do – exist. It's even less watertight than my first P38. Electrical items reset themselves and move of their own accord, as if sentient and trying to communicate. At present, though, I’m viewing all this as enjoyable. Let's see how long this lasts…