We took a little trip in our P38...

SteveMfr

Supporting Sponsor
...and spent 2 weeks in the Peloponnese, Greece. Had a great time - hit several of the bigger archaeological sites, numerous trails, and several beaches on the way.

The P38 lived up to its reputation. Before we left:
- the exhaust rusted through over the rear axle. No change in exhaust note but the hot exhaust melted the 2 air lines on the rear crossmember. My fault for buying a cheapo exhaust 3 years ago - though LR could have routed the EAS lines in a better spot...
- while repairing the air lines I had the TC in low (I was backing the trailer around the yard right before I started the repair) and after the repair, I get in the RR, shift to high, and beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, for like 60 secs and no "High" message from the cluster (for non-P38 owners, the RR beeps while the TC motor is shifting from low to high. Normally takes about 3 beeps and 5 secs to shift). So back under the RR and pulled the TC shift motor. It was fine. Checked online and it seems the TC ECU is known for going bad. Good thing P38 parts are cheap these days: went on ebay.co.uk and bought-a-used-ECU-now for GBP15. It arrived a couple of days later and all was fine. I had finished prepping everything else for the trip and drove the RR to Freiburg, Germany (55kms from home) one last time
- where the oil cooler popped. The captain of the Exxon Valdez would have been proud. Got on the phone to Britpart (as we know them well because they sell our products...) and had them overnight me an oil cooler. We had less than 40 hrs to make the ferry from Italy to Greece (with a 10 hr drive) and it was starting to get tight. The installation was a huge PITA because the steel lines had fused themselves with the cooler (shoulda ordered lines too...) but everything turned out OK.

I made our departure time without any divorce threats and we headed to Italy and on to Greece.

We arrived in Patras, Greece 24 hrs later, the RR was running great, the weather was great, temperatures were in the low 90's and I was happy. Till we hit our first mountain (going to Delphi). And the engine temp started climbing faster than the altitude. Seems we had a partially blocked radiator which didn't manifest itself till we started climbing steep mountains in 90°+ temps with a fully loaded car and RTT's. So we planned our route to make any climbs in the very early morning or in the evening when the ambient temp dropped to below 80° or so - and this was enough to keep the RR happy. Even so, I boiled the water out of the temp sensitive DSE motor 4 times while attempting to force my will on the P38...

All in all it did not hamper our trip in a serious fashion and we had plenty of good times. Camped in some very remote spots in the mountains and on some not quite so frequented beaches.



The 4wd BiMobil made our last 2 nights somewhat less removed from the world (we saw several Unimogs converted to expedition vehicles and one very unique converted VW LT45 as well). Seems that many travelers use Greece as a proving grounds prior to high season.

All in all I can't complain, though. The P38 had all of its serious hiccups before we left and it passed the 360,000km mark on the trip. It's allowed to break down a couple of times.
 
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spikemd

Explorer
Good times. You got give some credit to the P38, that is over 220, 000 miles. Hope mine lasts that long. I only have 114k right now. A guy in another forum just bought a P38 with 364k miles on the original engine. Just a head gasket job and valve refresh and lots of oil changes.
 

SteveMfr

Supporting Sponsor
TBH, mine is on its second motor, second trans, 3rd set of air bags, and many other miscellaneous bits and pieces that have been replaced at least once. Despite it keeping me busy before we left, it's quite a solid car and it has never let me down to the point where I couldn't get back home (knocking on wood heartily as I type).

It remains our travel vehicle.
 

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