Thread: New Defender reliability?

Sorry guys, can't agree with you totally, I run 4 defender utes for my earth moving business...in the last 12 yrs the only time one of them stopped was a stripped rear axle on a tdi with 425,000km...locked centre diff and he drove home. We do a lot of forestry/ nat parks and rural works often with no phone coverage. My employees arnt land rover people, but the utes surprise them when they go up tracks that most people do on weekends with lockers and a lift kit...they do it in a bog standard ute with mud tyres, 600l of diesel on the tray and around 300-500'kg of tools and crap on the back. I've driven land cruisers, patrols and hiluxs off road with national parks in a previous life, in the bush, the defenders as an overall investment are hard to beat... As for breaking diffs, I've tried bloody hard and never had an issue.

Originally Posted by BilboBoggles

Warwick - I think the KEY thing is to find the right dealer, I reckon my experience would not have happened if I'd started with a competent dealer. I've now tried every dealer in Melbourne and have found the only one left I would trust. If it was not for this one dealer I would not have gone back. Since switching to this dealer my experience has been COMPLETELY different. That's why I went back.

It's not so much the issues, I think those exist on any new car - including japanese cars. IT's how the dealers fix them, and how many times it takes them. (What sort of retarded mechanic would swap a slightly clunking diff for one with a damage crown wheel, that makes a huge knocking sound, and then hand it back as fixed?). I know many people who have bought holden HSV's or Utes and have been driven insanse by silly little problems too.

All of the issues I have had have been minor and non terminal - just needed a mechanic who was capable of fixing it without breaking 3 other things, or using silastic to glue shut flappy vents etc....

Once you've driven a defender or indeed any proper Land Rover product with a decent chassis - you'll understand - you cannot consider any other vehicle. My old TD5 defender has character, very few other vehicles out there do. The basic vehicle itself is fantastic, I reckon there is little out there that can compete with a defender.


So that's why I went back.

I think your right Bilbo, my 130 hit 16000 kms yesterday and to date I've had no problems beside an axle seal that let oil out to the hub. (That's a good problem in my book ) I booked mine in at 10,000 kms to the dealer in Millicent S.A. (who I bought it from) and asked them to fix a couple of things I had noticed. When I went to pick it up the mechanic had found a number of other little things that needed attention (bolts that needed retensioning, etc) but they were all done without being asked. I had thought that my rear diff was developing a problem however the issue was the flange bolts at the end of the drive shaft didn't have the correct tension and were allowing some movement. I had been so worried about the diff because of all the comments on AULRO that I had concentrated on that and hadn't noticed what I should have further up the system.

Hayden (the head mechanic down there) said that he sees it on all the new defenders at about 10,000. It doesn't matter how tight they do the bolts up at pre-delivery there is some bedding in that occurs between then and the first service. I do wonder how many of these issues people have wouldn't be there if Landrover did a 3000km checkup on the new vehicles similar to what Toyota do.

Interestingly I asked Hayden if they had had any diffs that needed replacing, his comment was that although they were aware of issues across Aus with the diffs they had only replaced one and there was nothing wrong with it. A customer was experiencing vibration through the vehicle and on the advice of LRA they replaced the diff. It turned out to be a harmonic issue caused by some sliders that were on the vehicle.

My experience with the local dealer so far from sales through to follow up service has been excellent. To the point were if I didn't service my other vehicles myself I'd take them down there to be serviced as well.