So i test drove a Defender today…. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter stonepa
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No, the failures seem to all occur at the top of the shock main strut, which when you look at it is extremely thin when you take the grooving for the threads into account. the lift rods only move the stock sensor mid pin location up by 1" in this guys case. This is an inadequate parts problem. A solution is being developed by the after market but its still in the works.... really he best thing to do would be to program the shocks out of the system and just replace them, but you need to LR programming tool for that, and its unclear if it also disables other aspects of the system. Anyway its being worked on by an east coast shop.
The fact that anyone is surprised at Land Rover releasing another car that is a piece of junk, even with the nameplate Defender, is silly.
Got it. Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought in addition to the 1 inch rods, he also had an additional "body lift". Not sure on the details of that though or if any influence on the failure. Hope they fix it. There is just so much to fix it with those cars.
Its actually a sub-frame drop kit, basically only way to lift these since they are full unibody and it keeps the driveshaft angles sane.
Pretty common now, there are a couple of manufactures.
It has no effect on the shocks. The shock mounts are in the stock location with this kit but the rest of the truck is higher.
Out of the new defenders that I do trails with the only ones that have not suffered some type of shock failure is the Coil spun 90. It uses normal shocks and in fact he just replaced the OEM ones with longer bilstien off the shelf ones to match his new extended length springs.
It's an R&D truck by Sarek Autowerks in Richmond VA.
It has also broken CV's like the rest of them.
I'm a Defender Owner (Classic one I guess now), and I have no interest in the new defender... literally nothing..
Which is sad, I so looked forward to it coming out and was so disappointed when it was finally shown.
They are selling bucket loads of them right now.,,
Pretty common now, there are a couple of manufactures.
It has no effect on the shocks. The shock mounts are in the stock location with this kit but the rest of the truck is higher.
Out of the new defenders that I do trails with the only ones that have not suffered some type of shock failure is the Coil spun 90. It uses normal shocks and in fact he just replaced the OEM ones with longer bilstien off the shelf ones to match his new extended length springs.
It's an R&D truck by Sarek Autowerks in Richmond VA.
It has also broken CV's like the rest of them.
I'm a Defender Owner (Classic one I guess now), and I have no interest in the new defender... literally nothing..
Which is sad, I so looked forward to it coming out and was so disappointed when it was finally shown.
They are selling bucket loads of them right now.,,
Yeah to SF bay software bros who wear Patagonia and want to “connect with the outdoors”.
Seeing them everywhere in the PNW also. They do absolutely nothing for me in the looks department and knowing how poorly built they are is disappointing.
greynolds
SILVER Star
I see some around here in the Boston metro area, but not very many. Lots of new Range Rovers. Looks wise, my feeling is that it looks more like the direction they should have gone with the Discovery. They really should have done what Mercedes did with the G-wagon and kept the look nearly identical to the original Defender.
I owned a 1995 Discovery for a number of years and then later a 2014 Range Rover (full size, not the Sport) for about 6 months.
The 1995 Discovery seemed like it was well engineered for the most part, pretty good materials were used, it seemed to be heavy duty where it needed to be, and so on. The quality control, of course, was typical Land Rover. But I enjoyed it immensely while I had it and it never left me stranded.
The 2014 Range Rover, however, didn't feel as heavy duty and was over-engineered in stupid ways. The best example I can think of was the gear shifter, where they used a rotary knob. While I prefer a traditional shifter like we have in our Land Cruisers, the knob itself was fine. However, some dope decided it would be really cool to retract the knob down flush with the center console when the engine was shut off. The problem was that there was a flaw in the design where the knob sometimes wouldn't come back up when you turned the ignition on. With the knob in the down position, you could not shift the transmission out of park. After a few software update attempts were made that didn't seem to fully fix the problem, I got rid of the vehicle after about 6 months. There were numerous other issues as well, but that was the most concerning one. Fortunately I never got stranded anywhere, but that was the obvious concern. At the time, Range Rovers were hard to get and people wanted them, so I pretty much broke even when I traded it in.
Sort of real Defender……..
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- Thread starter
- #211
Series 3 LWB / 109. My first car was a Series 3 109 station wagon. Great vehicle, always needing some kind of major maintenance. Not much different than current Land Rovers.
greynolds
SILVER Star
But way easier for a DIYer to work on and the parts weren't as crazy expensive...
CharlieS
GOLD Star
Santana is a manufacturer that assembled knock downkits in earlier years and later made their own defender copies, so kinda, not quite, a "real" Land Rover to the purists, depending on who you talk to (and which "generation" of vehicle). Real ones were built in Solihull, for better or worse.
I owned a 1963 & 1969 Series 2A, a 1971 Series lll as well as a 1995 D-90. From my experience, Land Rover did “simple” as good as anyone. They however have failed to grasp “complicated” with their newer offerings. I wouldn’t, even for a second, consider owning any of the newer vehicles.
Some of the first promo vids for the new Defender were shot somewhere in Africa. Tanzania, Algeria can't remember. They stop on this road with a bunch of big rocks. Then they get out and rock the truck back and forth - basically 2 wheels not in contact with the ground. It looked like it had less than 6" of flex and they were somehow promoting this as an off road feature.
CharlieS
GOLD Star
For the 99.99% of people that will buy these (or a new Land Cruiser) that's probably more offroad capabilty than they'll ever need. It looks the part at school pickup, soccer games and the mall/grocery store. Land Rover doesn't sell vehicles by virtue of their reliability ...
And before anyone gets excited that I'm being sexist or anything, I pick my kid up from school, went to soccer games when he played, and drive my 4x4 to the grocery and mall too. The difference is that I actually use my 200 offroad too, unlike most owners.
To old defender was more of an agricultural implement and just about as sophisticated as your average 60's farm truck.
I absolutely love them, and would like to own one (D90 diesel, please), but there's a good reason they stopped making them.
And before anyone gets excited that I'm being sexist or anything, I pick my kid up from school, went to soccer games when he played, and drive my 4x4 to the grocery and mall too. The difference is that I actually use my 200 offroad too, unlike most owners.
To old defender was more of an agricultural implement and just about as sophisticated as your average 60's farm truck.
I absolutely love them, and would like to own one (D90 diesel, please), but there's a good reason they stopped making them.
Never owned a LR, but I like the look of the old ones. Honest question; have Land Rovers ever been reliable? I mean realistically, it seems like they have been high maintenance nightmares to own for decades? Weren't they owned by Ford at one point?
I owned a Ford once. ONCE. Worst vehicle I have ever owned. I'll never venture away from Toyotas/Hondas again.
I owned a Ford once. ONCE. Worst vehicle I have ever owned. I'll never venture away from Toyotas/Hondas again.
- Thread starter
- #218
Yeah - it was amazing how many of the gaskets were just simple leather. And you could rebuild just about anything yourself. But, growing up on a farm, i was already fixing machinery every day and this was just one more item on the list. I have zero time for that these days.
- Thread starter
- #219
No, Land Rovers have never been reliable. But, up until the late 1980’s, they were easily repairable. Not so today.
I am new to this forum and have been a "land rover guy" since childhood, but the new defender missed the mark for me along with the direction LR has been going over the last several years. I put 70k on my built '16 LR4 and didn't have a single issue (did not run lift rods due to several failures I've seen on trails), but didn't want to test my luck so I punted and was was fortunate enough to have bought a 21 LC HE last summer. I sent it to Slee earlier this year for the works and have decided I will be buried with this truck.
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