a few aftermarket cautions

[NomadicD3]

Hi All, I have been travelling around Australia for the last year or so and during that time I have discovered a few problems with some of the aftermarket gear that alot of us have fitted to our D3/4's.
LLAMS- A few days ago a warning came up on the D3 "normal suspension height only available" .I have never seen this warning before. I am currently in around brisvegas and went to a local indi who plugged a hawkeye in and got a valve fault in the front left, the mechanics immediate question was "do you have a LLAMS installed?" Which I do. He then replied that on 3 other occasions in the past week they have had cars in with exactly the same warning and after the reported valve had been replaced the warning remained, all the vehicles had the LLAMS installed and once the LLAMS was removed the fault went away, so i decided to remove the LLAMS from the circuit and as reported by the mechanic the fault went away. Now please note the LAMS was still operating and the vehicles would raise using the LLAMS and the suspension was working normally at normal ride height, so it's not a show stopper.
Performance Wheels BB6 17 inch rims- I have also managed to damage, albeit slightly, one of the BB6 rims. The damage consists of one 50mm long flat spot on the inside lip of one rim. However, as a result of this impact the inside lip cracked, approximately 15mm long, at the end of the flat spot but more disturbingly, one of the spokes near the centre hub of the wheel cracked all the way through. On a brighter note though, I have spoken to the owner of performance wheels and he was very concerned about the cracking and had no problem replacing the wheel under warranty, which hopefully will be here soon. NB: the wheels are great and I would still buy them however in the event of any hard impacts would suggest a very close inpection of any wheels involved particularily the inside lip.

[400HPONGAS]

So you think the LLAMS system caused this Fault indication , even though that other than the warning it didnt do anything it shouldnt.Interesting ! So you disconnected the LLAMS and warning disappeared ! Of course you then re-connected the LLAMS and the warning must have re-appeared ? correct ?
Without the double blind test you have proved nothing !
I can take any D3 or D4 and with some quick repetitive raising and lowering get the same warning ,sometimes with or without the slow to raise warning as well.

[Nomad9]

Hi 400HPongas,
Just wondering if you got my PM message about the wheels and tyres you have, could you let me know what you have fitted. I remember the set up looked pretty impressive, would like to replicate if possible.
Thanks in anticipation.

[Graeme]

I've always recommended that if investigating a suspension fault that LLAMS be removed first because its an add-on. I'm sorry that LLAMS had a problem and then caused the workshop to unnecessarily replace a good part. In light of the workshop's stated experiences, I am at a loss as to why removing LLAMS wasn't their 1st action. To then proceed with the assessment that LLAMS is actually faulty without having refitted also astounds me. Reseating the connectors was all that was necessary, particularly ensuring that the grey ecu connector is pressed at both ends.

The sockets in the grey (front harness) ecu connector of the LLAMS looms that are used for the 3 front valves and the reservoir valve are now modified to improve their grip on the ecu connector pins. Some of those sockets have only marginal contact pressure. As the connector's clip is off-centre, the long end of the connector can pull away slightly if there's a load on its wires. The LR connector's wires are well supported having just come through the firewall whereas the LLAMS loom is not normally supported.

[drowell]

The only problem I have had since fitting my LLAMS was overheating the compressor by raising the vehicle too far too quickly. Eg I had the D4 in road +50mm and put it in off road, but in traversing deep ruts climbing big red, it went into extended mode very shortly after. LR "recalibrated" (whatever that means) the compressor and it seems fine now unless you really try to overheat it.
It's my favorite mod on the car and there's a few to choose from. I think the cargo drawers come second.
I was on a 9000km trip through SA NT Qld and NSW over the Birdsville, Oodnadatta and Strzelecki tracks as well as the Plenty/Donohue and had a "suspension fault" alarm as often as several times a day. It reset if you turned off the ignition. Problem was to do with the front hydra bushes. LR fixed under warranty no questions.
I love my D4!
Cheers
Doug

[oldsalt]

Hi All, I have been travelling around Australia for the last year or so and during that time I have discovered a few problems with some of the aftermarket gear that alot of us have fitted to our D3/4's.
LLAMS- A few days ago a warning came up on the D3 "normal suspension height only available" .I have never seen this warning before. I am currently in around brisvegas and went to a local indi who plugged a hawkeye in and got a valve fault in the front left, the mechanics immediate question was "do you have a LLAMS installed?" Which I do. He then replied that on 3 other occasions in the past week they have had cars in with exactly the same warning and after the reported valve had been replaced the warning remained, all the vehicles had the LLAMS installed and once the LLAMS was removed the fault went away, so i decided to remove the LLAMS from the circuit and as reported by the mechanic the fault went away. Now please note the LAMS was still operating and the vehicles would raise using the LLAMS and the suspension was working normally at normal ride height, so it's not a show stopper.
Performance Wheels BB6 17 inch rims- I have also managed to damage, albeit slightly, one of the BB6 rims. The damage consists of one 50mm long flat spot on the inside lip of one rim. However, as a result of this impact the inside lip cracked, approximately 15mm long, at the end of the flat spot but more disturbingly, one of the spokes near the centre hub of the wheel cracked all the way through. On a brighter note though, I have spoken to the owner of performance wheels and he was very concerned about the cracking and had no problem replacing the wheel under warranty, which hopefully will be here soon. NB: the wheels are great and I would still buy them however in the event of any hard impacts would suggest a very close inpection of any wheels involved particularily the inside lip.

Could you give us some details of the hard impact ...... ?

[Nomad9]

Hi Graeme,
When did the modified looms come into being? I bought mine maybe three months ago after seeing 400HPONGAS's installation. Just wondering......

[NomadicD3]

Hi ALL,
400hp - The LLAMS was disconnected, connector grease applied and reconnected, fault immediately reoccured, disconnected and reconnected after checking all the pins a 2nd time, fault immediately reoccured. The LLAMS was removed and the system was returned to it's original set-up to check that it actually wasn't a valve fault, no fault recorded. LLAMS was then reinstalled, fault recorded immediately, LLAMS removed and 24hrs later no fault, all that combined with the 3 other vehicles that had the same issue I consider that to be conclusive!!
Just reread your post, and no the suspension was not working normally as it would not change heights unless done with the LLAMS which means no access height or offroad height using the vehicle controls. When I said the suspension was working normally I meant that the ride was as per the way it should be.

Graeme- Could you PM me a contact number please as I would love to get the LLAMS back on as, like Drowell, it is one of my favourite bits of kit and I have used it extensively over the past year. I'm not bashing the product, I think it's great however if people are getting this warning it just may stop someone from having a valve installed that they don't need by a less than honourable service agent and save them some time. The mechanic didn't install a valve on my vehicle, that was a previous vehicle and I believe that once they realised it wasn't the valve the original valve was replaced.

Oldsalt- Hmmm good question,I have been pondering about when the impact occured. The only really heavy hit the car took was near lake Eyre, large deep steep sided pothole doing approximately 40k/hr with tyre pressures in the high 20's PSI. That's the only time there has been an impact that was so hard I felt it necesary to stop and inspect the car. However that was over 10000k's prior finding the cracked wheel and in the interim the car had a major service including wheel rotation and alignment done in Melbourne and that was about 4000k's after the Lake Eyre incident. The only other time I can recall was in Barrington tops but whilst it was certainly a heavy jarring bump on a stony road with tyres pressures in the mid 30's PSI and also only doing about 40k's I would not have thought that was the incident but it was less than 1000 k's before I found the cracked wheel. NB: I have a TPMS and at no time has there been any loss of tyre pressure not even a slow leak.
So my best "guess" is the damage had occured at Lake Eyre and over time the continuing stress on the wheel developed the crack in the spoke some time later. It seems unlikely that the guys doing a wheel alignment etc would have missed this crack but the flat spot on the inside of the wheel, maybe. I have a few more photo's of the flat spot and crack on the inner edge if you want I could post them.
I am still in contact with performance wheels regarding the cracking as they were going to test the wheel to see if there was an annomally in the metalurgical structure of the wheel etc.
HMMM so much for keeping the post short:p

[101RRS]

I am now becoming concerned about the safety of these wheels being used on Discos. There have been a few reports posted up here about issues with these wheels. They have the right load rating but do not seem to be holding up when pushed.

LLAMS - I get suspension faults when I play around with heights a lot but this is not LLAMS but simply the air supply getting exhausted and the air compressor having to work on its own to lift the vehicle - in real life however LLAMS takes the load off the air compressor when offroad as the suspension is not being raised and lowered all the time as you go through 50kph.

Your fault is not common - (despite your repairer saying otherwise - they tend to exaggerate and I expect your car was the first they have seen with the issue on a LLAMs fitted vehicle - as someone has said if they have seen all this before why did they replace a part and not disconnect LLAMs first).

I am sure Graeme will followup and investigate as clearly LLAMs in this case is part of the problem but not necessarily the sole cause.

Garry

[400HPONGAS]

Thats fine NomadicD3, sometimes its what you dont say that makes all the difference ! The bit about the mechanic saying/asking about whether LLAMS was fitted and he knew of 3 other occasions/incidents which he thinks involved LLAMS. I wonder how they were resolved , and if the (GRAEME) designer was involved ?

[Psimpson7]

Your fault is not common - (despite your repairer saying otherwise - they tend to exaggerate and I expect your car was the first they have seen with the issue on a LLAMs fitted vehicle - as someone has said if they have seen all this before why did they replace a part and not disconnect LLAMs first).


Garry, where does the original post say that they changed the valve first on his car? It says that they changed it on one or more of the first ones (at least that what I think he is saying), but that the first thing that they did this time was disconnect the LLAMS.

One of us is reading it wrong!

[101RRS]

Garry, where does the original post say that they changed the valve first on his car? It says that they changed it on one or more of the first ones (at least that what I think he is saying), but that the first thing that they did this time was disconnect the LLAMS.

One of us is reading it wrong!

Your right - my bad - was influenced by a post that implied the valve was actually replaced.

Garry

[Graeme]

The LLAMS was disconnected, connector grease applied and reconnected, fault immediately reoccured, disconnected and reconnected after checking all the pins a 2nd time, fault immediately reoccured. The LLAMS was removed and the system was returned to it's original set-up to check that it actually wasn't a valve fault, no fault recorded. LLAMS was then reinstalled, fault recorded immediately, LLAMS removed and 24hrs later no fault, all that combined with the 3 other vehicles that had the same issue I consider that to be conclusive!!
Sorry, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I understand that your kit is being replaced. DPL hopefully will receive a few kits today that have looms that have undergone a new testing process.

A loom problem has been discovered whereby pins may not be properly locked, almost entirely in the connector into which the vehicle's front harness plugs. There is only 1 connector that does not use a locking plate that ensures all pins/sockets are fully seated. This problem was discovered earlier this week as a flow-on from having received new looms with an obvious number of these improperly assembled connectors. Suspension faults caused by this assembly fault are unlikely to be overcome by just reseating the connectors as once a pin is pushed back, its likely to stay there. Its contact may have been sufficient initially but with vibration over time, the pin can slip back. The fix for this fault is simple - push the wire in properly!

The socket improvement was co-incidental with the use of modules that have 2 ICs rather than 4 which were sent to DPL in early December. These kits have the larger knob and are fitted with a large washer. Anyone with Llams who has suspension faults is most welcome to send their loom to me to have the contacts improved.

[Graeme]

I now have a test jig to check all LLAMS loom connections using a LED for each wire. Testing a few new harness shows that the sockets that I've been tightening do sometimes need tightening, as wriggling unmodified connectors sometimes causes some LEDs to flicker. Pulling on all wires together in the grey female connector doesn't cause any lost contacts but pulling on wires on the long end only will pull the end of the connector out enough to cause loss of contact on the wires at that end. A returned loom that caused an unspecificed fault that seemed to be OK showed a loose connection on the earth wire socket to the left rear height sensor. These sockets are normally good but poor connections can now be identified and fixed.

Edit: No poor contacts were found in 4 new looms that already had the improvement done.

[NomadicD3]

Hi Garry, re: the BB6 wheels, I too have similar concerns however I'm still confident that they are capable of handling almost all situations they are put in however, as stated in a previous post, in the event of any heavy impact I believe that they need to be inspected more closely and rechecked more regularily than other wheels. Now, as I have been travelling, I miss alot of posts but I was wondering if you recall any other posts that you referred to that have mentioned the wheel cracking similar to the photo I posted? I'd be interested as to how much damage occured and what sort of impact it took to create the damage.
Re: LLAMS Yep Garry you were spot on, Graeme, was incontact straight away and as you can tell from his post is all over the issue he was having with connections. As I said earlier the LLAMS was in place for ever a year and used extensively so it's certainly not something that is a major issue.
PS- Thought i'd add one more photo of the damage for interestes sake:)
cheers
Brian

[101RRS]

Brian - I cannot recall the specifics and a search does not throw up anything but I thought there were maybe two posts within the past 12 months where people had problems with their wheels - now there are plenty of people who have no issues as well - but then a decent whack will wreck any wheel.

Garry

[~Rich~]

Was it this post?
http://www.aulro.com/afvb/d3-d4-rrs/143243-some-times-holidays-just-aint-worth.html

[NomadicD3]

Hi All, Just a quick note re: BB6 wheels. I had a long conversation with the owner of performance wheels a couple of days ago and he has just run another batch of the wheels and has taken several out of that batch and tested each of them extensively. The results have consistently shown the only time the wheels may crack was when the nuts weren't tightened to the specification as per the wheel which, according to him, is 200nm or about 147ft/lbs. This seems rather high but that is what he recommends. Interestingly the landrover recommendation is 95ft/lbs.

Hey Garry, yeah I did a search too and couldn't find anything specific but thks all the same.

Hi Rich, yeah that was one of the stories I read however I think that was a different issue. I notice that there was never an outcome on that posted either??

regards
Brian

[jonesfam]

NomadicD3
That's because it has NOT been resolved yet.
Sent the wheels &tyres back to Mt Isa, then it started to rain, no trucks, no driving to Mt Isa.
Maybe in a couple of weeks.
Jonesfam