p38 dhse suspension woes

Hi all,
today i was waiting with my little girl at school bus stop, when she wanted to see the car lower down. i selected lower and it lowered fine but when i pressed up only the rear went up, i lowered it again and the back went down but when i pressed up nothing went up. i am getting no warning lights or messages on the dash, only the low ride height light on constant and the standard height light flashing. ive checked all related fuses under the bonnet all ok.With engine running and bonnet open i cant hear or feel the compressor running, but the lights say its trying to pump up. im new to all this so a point in the right direction would be appreciated, have i done something wrong or is somthing broken.
cheers phil.....

Its run out of air.

The light flashes at the height it is trying to reach. It will always raise the back first and then the front so as not dazzle cars at night. The fact that it raised the back but not the front the first time tells you it most likely doesn't have enough air. When you selected it to go down again it just dumped the air little air it had out of the rear ones so now you had no air at all left.

Chances are your compressor has started to wear out. Next time you turn it on press the inhibit switch beside the height selector and manually select motorway height. Then leave the car alone for about 10 minutes with a door open (this prevents the valve block doing anything but allows the compressor to fill the air reservoir). When you then close the door the car should immediately come up to motorway height. If it does and it hasn't faulted out then you're in luck and you've got a bit of time to educate yourself about the P38 EAS.
Do a bit of research here (invariably someone will post something everyday about an EAS problem, if you plan on keeping your P38 long you'll likely experience quite a few of them and soon you'll be advising the next newbie who posts the same issue to do exactly what I've told you) and on rangerovers.net under the P38 section. Also go to roverrenovations.com for parts and instructions. Either download the free software from RSW solutions or buy one of the blackboxsolutions.com EAS kicker if DIY is not your thing otherwise give your LR Dealer your Credit card and Pin number and tell him to stop when the ink on the letters changes from black to red.

Best of luck and stay awaaaay from the height button until you get it sorted

disconected the compressor today and hooked it up to a battery, it ran fine but couldnt blow a candle out, putting my finger over the outlet pipe didnt build any pressure up. i took off the compressor head and it looked like the piston seal had worn through and would have been lucky if it was actually touching the cylinder wall. How do you go about replacing the seal on the piston ?
cheers phil...

Go to roverrenovations.com, he's got everything you need and is a great guy to boot.

I had the same prob on my P38 DHSE. I went on Ebay and bought a kit and re-set the EAS myself. LR charge about £70 for this. The whole kit cost me about 25 quid Ithink. Its well simple, put the disc in a laptop, select the com port you want to use and follow the instructions that are supplied. I live in Germany and the weather has been as low as -19 a few times, (the EAS doesn't like this temp) so I've had to use it 4 times to re set it. Money well saved. Just type in summat like range rover suspension or something and the seller id is newdawn2200. Good luck. Andy

You only need the seal. I got mine from a guy in Holland that does upgraded ones - about £20 I seem to remember. Full instructions on how fit are over on Rangerover.Net. I would post a link but it's a little tricky as I am posting from my phone.

Thanks All,
I've just ordered a seal of e-bay from the guy in holland and got the info on fitting. (he has 3 links on the item description page that gives you a step by step account and around 18 photos so proberbly stevie wonder could fit one.) hope to have it put in next week so thanks alot for all the advice. One more thing if i put tempory valves on the air pipes what pressure should they be pumped up to?
Cheers Phil....

From memory the normal operating range is between 80 and 130 psi, so aim for the bottom end of that, then adjust to suit, dependant on what height you want.

My tip is not to use a ball end Allen key to undo the grob screw that hold the pump crank onto the shaft. The screw is quite tight and needs a fair amount of torque to undo.

rewmer said:

My tip is not to use a ball end Allen key to undo the grob screw that hold the pump crank onto the shaft. The screw is quite tight and needs a fair amount of torque to undo.

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I second that!

You may also find that the seal clip does not come off as easily as in the description. When I did mine I used a small flat bladed screwdriver to carefully prise it off (doesnt matter if you damage the old seal as you will be binning it anyway).

Another tip is file down the excess casting flash on the piston. When the seal wears the flash cuts a groove into the side of piston wall meaning its useless.

Just to let you all know i've now got sorted, all seems to work ok. Got a new seal off www.landroverwinkel.nl and followed his online instructions and pictures only deviating to using a plumbers copper pipe cutter to take off the piston crown rather than prise it off with screwdrivers ect. the whole job was very easy. Thanks to you all for your advice-no doubt i will need it again. cheers phil....

Thanks for posting the result, always good to know of a problem sorted.

phil13 said:

Just to let you all know i've now got sorted, all seems to work ok. Got a new seal off www.landroverwinkel.nl and followed his online instructions and pictures only deviating to using a plumbers copper pipe cutter to take off the piston crown rather than prise it off with screwdrivers ect. the whole job was very easy. Thanks to you all for your advice-no doubt i will need it again. cheers phil....

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Good advice on the plumbers pipe cutter,my wife will be very happy with you since I won't mess up the kittchen table again from hammering at it with a hammer and wood chisel, my previous favorite method