After getting pretty well acquainted with Disco IIs for the past several years, I saw a nice looking P38 for sale in someone's yard recently, checked it out, thought "why not?," and pulled the trigger on it - a '97 (4.6) HSE with 285K miles. It runs and drives well enough that I figured I'd drive it for a little while to develop a plan for the things I wanted to address and an order that made sense. (The air suspension has already been converted to coil springs.) It didn't take long before my first projects became apparent by way of hot air from the A/C vents, the testbook symbol on the climate control head unit, and saturated carpet in the passenger-side foot well.

The only code I couldn't clear from the climate control module was a fault code for the LH door blend motor, and a few minutes of research was all it took to correctly identify corroded heater core o-rings as the cause of the saturated carpet. So, at this point I've disassembled the dash, replaced the heater core o-rings and all of the blend motors. (Also replaced the temperature sensor on the heater-pipe.) While I was waiting for parts, however, it rained a lot, and I noticed the carpet on the driver-side foot well was becoming very wet as well. It seems the water is getting in at and dripping down from the pollen filters, so I've ordered a couple new covers for the pollen filters and am hoping that will do the trick.

My question, for those of you experienced with P38s and familiar with their normal issues, is, what other observations or repairs should I consider making before I put the dash back together? It wasn't absolutely terrible, but it was definitely a process getting it out, so I'd prefer not to have to pull it out again for a nice long while.

Thanks in advance for your help! Be well.

 

I have had my p38 for 6 months and haven’t had any issues with it, other than some light bulbs out in the center dash.

 

Warren: I would suggest you check the drains on the sunroof as well, blow them out with compressed air. That is another classic source of water in a P38.