Thread: Hello from a newby and a few questions

Steering Vib is easy to find. Jack up one wheel at a time and check for excessive play in camber toe, castor ECT. You will probably find the Radius rod, steering damper, and possibly the pitman arm rod end and bushes are all worn out.
Particularly if it hasn't been well maintained. These vehicles do cut through Rubber Bushes quite heavily. Especially if its worked off road a lot.
Won't be an issue for vib's but my guess is you will find the Engine Mounts delaminated as well. Need a pry bar to take weight off them to check them out.

I would only use poly bushes on the shockers, everything else just use standard Rubber Bushes.

As for the tail gate.....Well don't get me started on those pieces of crap.
My Rangy is now 22 years old and on the original upper tail gate with no rust. Prob is obvious the water runs down the glass and sits in the bottom channel trapped, the result is obvious. The only reason mine is still in good condition is because I've sprayed Tectyl in that bottom channel regularly every few years. Hope this helps.
Keeping a a 20 year old British Vehicle serviceable requires constant maintenance. Anyone who says they have had little or no expences and problems with there 20 year old Range Rover is either running the poor thing into the ground or lying. Things I have had to replace in the last 6 months are.

radius arm Bushes
Rear trailing arm bushes.
4 Door lock actuators
Voltage regulator
2 X Idler pulleys

In the next 6 months the list will be just as big just different.
Anyone who thinks they can properly maintain a Range Rover for less than 2 grand a year in maintenance is dreaming. You have already owned plenty of these piece of crap vehicles so you know what you are in for.

Cheers Buzz

2; No experience with these specific air springs, but with regard to ease of fitting, this is quite a simple task. You do need to depressurise the system, download the free software EASunlock and build yourself a cable. The necessary connector for the cable, that others have had trouble locating, can be sourced from the electric mirror connector on a wrecked RR.

3; Swivel preload seems a likely culprit.

I've got the Arnotts Gen III at both ends of my '95 Vogue SE Classic ('94 build)
Not hard to fit, but, and a very big but, the locating pins on my front pair were set into the billets a bit toooo far, making it very difficult to slide on the clips. Apart from that, easy to fit. I used a trolley-jack and a sturdy jack-stand, long bladed screwdriver to push on the clips and interesting words when I did the front pair.....

I'm not impressed with the softness (?) of the ride, as compared to the 89 I used to drive, but that one steered better 'cos it had a full-sized steering wheel. Nor did it have sway bars like the '95.

Being a bit older, my method of de-pressurising is differant from recommended proceedure... I gradually opened the DRAIN bung in the air-tank, till it started hissing... One or two turns....went off and enjoyed a coffee...came back and another half-turn...another pause... till all air had leaked out.
Check your handbook/workshop manual, my bung has leakeage channels cut into the end threads to let the air/water out without removing the bung.

I will probably get pilloried for suggesting such a crude and unsafe method, so for legal niceties lets just say that I don't recommend anyone else use it.

Advice given to me is to stick with rubber/original if you like the ride. Poly is great for life.. Only.

Regarding the EAS, best advice is.... If its working properly, leave it alone !
- Clean/change the air filter for the pump.. MOST important.
- If you have slow leaks anywhere... find and fix them yesterday, as this is what generally kills pumps.
-Howzat for starters !

James in WA

The Event Horizon, '95 Vogue SE classic, with working Cruise Control and slow-leak air suspension....

Thank you gentlemen for taking the time to answer.

As far as I can tell, the EAs is working well and appears to have no air leaks. I am just thinking of the future. I am one of those people who carry a full tool kit and anticipated spares just to go to the local shops.

I appear to have another fault yesterday. As I mentioned, when I got the Rangy, it was all OK but the next day had electrical faults and would not run on petrol. Flick the switch and it would surge, buck and pop. Undrivable.

The dealer fixed it and I tested for maybe 20km on petrol and all was good. I have been running it exclusively on LPG just to see the fuel economy but when I switched back to petrol last night after getting just north of 350km out of about 60L of gas - same thing.

To be fair to the dealer, they said they replaced a resistor in the ignition coil circuit and told me that seems to have fixed it but also said "we may not have got on top of it".

Am I doing something wrong?

Nice of them to fix your ignition when you have a fuel system problem. One of the wonderful things about dual fuel systems is that, when you have an engine problem, you can work out whether the problem is in the fuel system or the ignition system by seeing whether it exists both on gas and on petrol. If the engine runs fine on gas, the problem is not in the ignition system, cos you use the same ignition system on LPG as you do on petrol. This is really the most basic of basic diagnostics.
I wonder if the engine has been run exclusively on gas for too long. My 1991RR had had a 'gas only' conversion done by the previous owner, and when I reinstalled a petrol tank and made it dual fuel, the injectors were all completely blocked up, along with all the injector o-rings being perished and hardened.

If your car has a system that starts on petrol then automatically switches to gas, this should keep the injectors reasonably clear; if not, the injectors may need to come out and be cleaned.

Hi POD,
Thanks for the advice. You may be on the right track as my "problem" seems to be a work in progress.

As I mentioned I ran an entire tank of LPG through it and I switched to petrol at highway speed and it bucked and popped and was basically undrivable so back to LPG. Yesterday I switched to petrol again while in town to see what would happen and it ran quite well.

The current status is that it seems to run around town OK on LPG or petrol. Takes off from the lights well and goes pretty well when you stomp the accelerator. What it is now doing is running "OK" at 100km/hr but it has a hesitation if you lightly open the throttle. It happens if the cruise control is on and you travel up a slight grade. It is there on LPG and worse with petrol. Sort of a hiccup and shudder.

I don't really know the previous owners habits but it is possible that it was driven only on LPG I guess. The system is a manual switch and does not start on petrol,

Just an update.
I spoke to the technician who appears to be pretty good and familiar with these vehicles. He said they had checked the bushes and they should be all good. He said the swivel pins tend not to cause problems in this vehicle but certainly do so in the earlier ones. he suggested it may be simply the steering damper has lost its strength and only Bilstein units are suitable replacements.

Anyway, the vehicle should go back in to have the fueling checked next week.

Originally Posted by TimOz

. He said the swivel pins tend not to cause problems in this vehicle but certainly do so in the earlier ones.

I had a steering shudder in my 1994 RR that was due to insufficient swivel bearing preload. Symptoms sounded similar to yours. Preload was corrected by removing the thinnest of the shims from each swivel pin.