Diesel Injector FAIL

[CharlesGC]

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on what happened recently to my freelander 2, totally unexpectedly in a car with few km's and very well looked after.

My 08 TD4 SE was driving as usual, I noticed what seemed like white smoke, small puffs coming out from the edge of the bonnet and pulled out and could smell diesel but couldn't see anything wrong - thought it may have been the filter or a fuel leak somewhere, took it to the dealer and it was eventually diagnosed as a failed no. 1 diesel injector and leak off pipe. Total damage was $1300+ and car off the road for 2 weeks waiting on the part. Yep, she was out of warranty but only has 62,300 km's and always serviced. Local dealer had never seen one fail before and I was pretty angry, contacted Land Rover who were no help at all and brushed it aside, pretty much told me tough **** and offered not even small technical details re: failure of this part in cars elsewhere.

The local dealer on the gold coast was excellent and helped me out with a car and did their best to ease the pain, but has changed my viewpoint on whether to buy one again considering their warranty is actually pretty ****!

[schuy1]

Mate, While I feel for you and your problem, Spitting the dummy over what appears to be an isolated happening would seem to me like you will be forever changing cars in your life! :) To find ANY make or model,yes even the mighty JAP brands, that do not give problems sometimes is really a mission impossible. Just have a look at the Motor Vehicle Recall website to see that. And just try to get sympathy from toyota after warranty is over!!:P So yes change but be prepared! PPS I have room in my garage for an unloved Freelander that is Free!!! :D :D

[CharlesGC]

Yeh wouldn't say I spat the dummy, more the bloke who I spoke to at Land Rover was a tool and couldn't offer any information at all, but thanks for your input and will check out that website, didn't know of it, will be interesting!

In some respects I agree with you, be nice though to have a car that doesn't slaughter you with servicing costs and land rover to join the other big manufacturers with capped service costs and a better warranty.

[Hoges]

The exVAT price for an OEM injector is about $500 from Rimmer Bros + say $50 postage... but there may have been other bits required as well...would be interested to see the price of the replacement parts... $1300 seems an extraordinary amount to pay... Then again they probably charge $150+ per hr for labour...:(

[sporran]

I sympathise with your predicament as I had a similar problem with my previous car, a Passat. In my situation the car came to a complete stop and I had to get VW Assist & a tow. Fortunately I had forewarning of this problem in my car through info provided in a VW Forum which I had subscribed to. This was not an isolated problem in this particular run of car, and was identified to the injectors manufactured by Siemens in Germany. When i presented @ the dealership where I had the car serviced I alerted them to the info I had @ my disposal, and instead of a $4500 replacement of all 4 injectors and the wiring loom, it was covered under VWA's goodwill. My advice to you is to research the problem (Google) and see if this not an isolated problem to your particular run of vehicle. If so you may get some satisfaction from LRA, if not you may have to wear it as an isolated failure.

[mikehzz]

I regularly read the freel2.com forum for the Freelander 2 and this is the first I have heard of an injector failure. Bad fuel containing water can make crd injectors fail due to lack of lubrication. I wonder if that is the case? I do think that the car should have a water warning installed for the fuel system. Many others have it as standard. Sorry to hear of your experience.

[koalakruiser]

I think Charles that you must have spoken to the same young twerp at so called Land Rover Australia Customer Care. After explaining the saga of the total failure of my 2007 Freelander TD4 engine with 65,000km due supposedly to water getting into the engine from the street (it had not rained for 10 days), he said that it was not LR responsibility and that they only design and build the vehicle to those specs. It is then the dealers problem technically and he is not a technician. As the car is 4.5 years old, no warranty despite the low km and no goodwill. In the words of the twerp at LR, "If you expect to get anything from LR, you will get nothing". I think that LR Customer Care needs to be renamed Customer Dare!! You can be sure that I will be shouting from the rooftops in every way possible after a $17,000 invoice to replace the engine and still no explanation from anyone which is acceptable or realistic. Another thing was at 3000km in the first month, there was water in the EGR plus scrap metal and the whole cooling system had to be replaced. Did I get a lemon and not know it?? In the words of the dealer service, they had not seen anything like this before and the Freelander engine isn one of their most reliable!! :mad: