My Range Rover P38 ALREADY Broke Down on Day 3! 

The P38 benefits from the biggest possible heavy duty battery you can fit in that space. The completely dead symptoms are exactly what I had with my V8 when the under bonnet fuse box started failing. Take the cover off and smell it, if it smells of burning you should take it out and strip it to investigate. I replaced mine and it's been perfect. Very underrated vehicles which less intelligent people love to be rude about.

I drive my old 1971 range rover everywhere. Never had a problem. Take a look it's very tatty but reliable. BEST 4wd ever

This car will make your Jaguars seem super reliable in comparison! ;)

Welcome to the P38! I love these landrovers but couldn't own one as I couldn't afford the mechanic bills 😂😂 But in your hands it should be a great car

Don't forget to check those three cables the problem is going to be right there.

Any Range Rover is best for learning how to repair cars coz you always have something to fix.

Adam, you may have enough information to diagnose the issue. 1. The fact that the temperature gauge is effected by the heavy electrical loads, and reading about 30% high would indicate that there is a bout a 2 volt drop between the gauge and the dash. 2. The removal of the radio seems to have effected the occurrence of the faulty condition. (Did the temperature gauge read normally with radio removed?) Would this point to the grounding point in the central dash? Which may have a common tie between the temperature gauge and the radio? All the best in sorting this issue out.

Hi buddy 😊 This is going to be an awesome 👏🏻 LR series’s fir is all too enjoy 🤣 Loving what I’ve seen so far 👍🏻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Hope you find it 3 red cables each going to battery post . I had same issue had to make small power strip to join them away from the post. Put 1 cable from battery , join them at the powerstrp where then you endure peak volts to each power cable.

British vehicles are notorious in the USA for having very bad grounding connections for their electrical systems.

Oh, I did not realize until I saw the Biltema battery that you were in Sweden. You sound American to me. As a American living in Norway I cannot imagine owning such a vehicle, here the costs of maintenance are sky high and where I live I am not even allowed to work on my cars. You probably do not have that problem, looks like you are on a farm! 😃

i had to laugh as you do exactly the same as i do whenever i am working on my p38 i never close the door without opening the window :)

I love the original wheels. Would be sad to see them go.

You have a few niggles but what a beautiful car, it looks in perfect condition 👍👍

You’ll get this sorted I am confident.

Check and clean all the connections on the starter motor, Adam, I think you'll find that's the problem. Make sure the teeth on any serated / shakeproof washers are making a good contact and replace if not. I've had similar issues on several V8 Rover's. The blip in the rev counter reading when switching on a high load is the giveaway. The main feed for the vehicle electrics and instruments usually feeds off that connection point on the starter. That will affect the rev counter feed, too, as it will sense there's a moment of high resistance. On the P6 car models, with a boot mounted battery, there's a similar issue. There's a double-ended, insulated brass connector in the r/h/f footwell. That's where the main battery cable passes through the floorpan to the starter, and all the main electrics pick up on that connector. They dereriorate and give the same high resistance issues, especially if the car has water leaks, wetting the carpet and insulation when the sill and floor edge structure corrodes.

I really hate, hate, hate electrical issues! Good luck.

Mate, it always looks so cold up there. Need to move to the southern hemisphere. Also very calm with those electrical gremlins, must be all that jag blood in you. Great work!!

There is a way to get the code from the original radio. You have to write to Land Rover and show proof of ownership. I did it for my P38 years ago.

The fact that other gauges work, makes it apower connection on possitive léad. There is a problem where 3 red cables connected to 1 battery post. Use volt meter between ground each cable separately while its running there shouldnt be a difference. Intermittent connection. Do a wiggle test on each one while lights on if light flickers.

My p38 had this temp gauge issue, it was a grounding issue, we ran an extra ground between the body and engine and cleaned all contacts. There were grounds in footwells. I had the dash out to replace blend motors. Mine was HSE. I loved it and it had an awesome factory sub. I also had to clean all the connections on that to get channels working on sub.

It looks like the instrument pod has been removed at some point. Big gaps around the surround.

Temp sensor is good. Check for voltage between sensor wire and sensor terminal. Wire to sensor probably broken in loom. Good luck.o

Having a DC clamp meter is handy for checking how many Amps are being drawn on the battey leads etc. cheap enough on ebay. There are grounds in the pillars you pointed to, along with other models, these areas are also prone to water ingress from numerous points, first thing to check is if your carpets are wet in the foot wells.

Lovely car, might be worth doing a voltage drop test between battery and components I suspect an earth that can’t handle the current.

The immobiliser was a big headache on my friends P38, he was having similar issues because of it.

If it was mine, I'd probably think about rewiring the whole car.. but I'm a bit odd and the idea of doing that seems great fun to me..!

I love the colour of this car. Lovely engine too. I don’t like all the beeps when you start it up. I had a Saab that used to make me worried every time I turned it on because it just loved to beep at me. I managed to turn most of these off, so if it beeped at me, it was something serious lol!

Voltage regulator on the alternator

I must say your seats look very neat - I'm planning to refurb mine to get it to its once glory again.

Check the battery pos ( red ) cable for voltage drop. stupidly the alternator output is connected to the starter solonoid. on my old P38 this cable was internally corroded green for the first few CM at the starter connection. I cut it back and ran it directly across to the battery, and a much shorter route, this cured a 2 volt drop under load. My car was the same colour as your one ( willow ) but was a 4.6 HSE..

My first car was a mid 90s Honda Ballade (Civic sedan). Had a similar issue - every time I stood at a red traffic light for a while (with my foot on the brake), the dash would die briefly. Occasionally the engine would die too. Eventually the garage figured out that someone spraypainted over the earth wire where it was grounded to the body.

Nearly always an earth problem , you have an engine to earth which is near the back of the engine . Okus the battery you've got on is to small , the battery just fits in the tray on that model . I have a P38 and battery drain can always be a problem

On my 3rd freelander 1 between the freelander and p38 you need to at points have things to repair natureof the beast

Surely when you engage the high current items like heaters and headlights you are engaging a relay, and when they kick in that’s when you get the load spike / voltage drop. So look around the relays / fuse box ? Pull them and clean / spray them… like you said it might be linked to the damp condition. Plus as has been said, someone has been doing stuff on and off with the car. Good luck…

Adam I have the feeling that you are looking straight at the problem area,as you will see someone has had the clocks out of the dash housing right in front of you ,and not done The best job of putting it back together again,that aside I would start by removing the speedometer unit and go for The printed circuit plug on the back of the gauges clean the connections and carry out a drag test on the terminals in the plug ,also test the earth/ground lead from the plug to the body ground point,do this test with a test lamp rather than a ohmmeter,to make certain that the cable connection will carry a decent current, Good luck finding out.

If anyone can get to the bottom of the issues here, you will. You have way more patience tham I Adam.

I'd check all the earthing points as a first call. JLR products of that era are always notoriously throwing faults because of that. Working in the extremely extremely cold weather is horrible. Hope the weather improves soon.

Hi Adam, it does sound like you have a grounding issues also from experience like some other people pointed that battery is a bit small for it had similar issues with the car randomly going completely completely dead with a battery of the size you have I recomend an 100ah 900CCA battery. Also it sounds like your brake pump is running too long and the fact the tracrion control light takes while to go is symptoms of a bad brake accumulator

Your grounds appear to be well feared. :-)* Do you have electrical schematics for the car? They're a big help for thinking out electrical bugs indoors.

Should with no load on battery read 14.3 volt charging

Should have spent more money ... First rule ....buy the best out there x

Why didn't you re-connect the radio to see if the fault returns? You may need to switch the red and yellow on the radio supply.

Get a 90Ah Battery 😊

I had an issue similar to this on an e38 bmw. When it dropped below zero outside it would be dead when turning the key. I nearly scrapped it but my Dad pointed out the main ECU was could and the ABS computer was warm. I opened up the ecu and followed the power connections on the PCB and found when I pressed on a solder joint the car came to life . I soldered a link wire to the other side of the pcb and the car was fine for years after that.

When off, is there any current drawn from the battery? (Different with the new radio plugged in). Yeah really annoying as its not obvious why its doing it.

The red battery cable right there where it splits into two right from the post one of them goes to the power box and the other one goes to the starter check for a bad connection right there that's where it usually happens it'll be corrosion between the two and the connection one will get full voltage and the other one won't that'll be an issue with your computer it won't get a steady voltage just enough to start it keep the accessories on until that connection goes bad with the two come together guaranteed that's the problem

Why have you got the "Slow 55 kph" showing on your dash? Is it because of the spring susp? By that I mean didn't the person who fitted the springs in not connect the bypass loop on the EAS system? By the way, that "slow" warning has nothing to do with the windows/sunroof not being set, they have to be reset after every time you disconnect the battery.

Is there an Idle control valve on it?

Thanks Adam. Slightly annoying but l think it will be a cheap fix. Cheers !

The P38 was designed with breakdown trucks in mind - a true LR product.

På min p38 så var elbakrutan på,om det berodde på att reläet klibbade i becmen vet jag ej brukar ta ur säkringen. Kolla även om den somnar,släck innerbelysningen öppna dörren med nyckeln i då varnar den att nyckeln är i när varningen slocknar då somnar den annars får du koppla ur antennen

I noticed that the battery you have in there is only 700cca. My 2005 4.2 S Type has a 950 cca battery. i don't know how this might affect the RR But on V8 S Types they frequently get spurious electrical faults if the battery isn't absolutely 100%

Beep bop bop bop beep :)

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Its a rover the plan is simple sell it.

I have owned about 50 cars. One Land Rover Disco. Easily the worst mechanical car ever. Looks great though, doesn’t run. Dealer who rebuilt the engine wouldn’t even take it in trade. Flipped me out.

This edition of Range Rover will give you a mountain of RU-vid content as you struggle ti keep it operational. That model Range Rover was an engineering and production disaster of the highest magnitude. You should have been paid to drive that thing away from the previous owner's home!

That battery is nowhere big enough for a p38.

The P38 is without argument the most unreliable Range Rover ever made. Personally, i wouldnt own one, again.

That old Range Rover will give you a lot of brain teaser problems to solve if you keep it around instead of scrapping it. It will prevent you from doing repairs and videos about your collection of Jaguars.

Ive got the exact same p38, 4.0 green with tan interior. Replaced the engine a couple of years ago, took out the engine with blown head gasket. Need to rebuild and put the engine back in. Let me know if you have any questions, I’ve been through a lot of issues with this thing and would be happy to help you keep it on the road

broke down on day 3? that's 2 days and 23 hours behind schedule