Thread: Discovery 2 Propshaft Court Case - Help Needed

About 3 years ago, at just 17,000km the DC joint failed on my D2. It happened at about 100km on the highway and the result was extensive damage to the auto transmission case.

There was no prior indication of the failure until about 2 sec before it failed when I got a huge vibration through the car.

Unfortunately LR would not warranty my failure either. The car was towed to my dealer and they were going to do all the repairs under warranty, but before they did, LRA sent out someone to audit the job. I had installed Heavier spring to help with load carrying and when they measued the car, it was 4mm higher than specifications so that voided all warranty. I spent a lot of time looking into legal options since both I and the dealer knew that the lift had not caused the failure. Unfortunatly, they way the LR warranty is worded, it doesnt matter whether the modified part caused the failure or not, as soon as you go outside LR spec then anything which is related to that area is not under warranty.

I did spend a lot of time voicing my complaint to LRA (I had the email address of the managing director of LRA) but in the end, they just got very nasty and threatened legal action against me as I had tyres on the car which did not meet the specified speed rating (32" MTR's) and I ended up backing down.

Luckily for me, Range Rov in Victoria came to my rescue and did a great job repairing the auto and helping me out but it still cost me about $5k to get it fixed.


My belief is that it is a design fault. I believe that (on the V8, not sure about the TD5) the air conditioner drain hoses drip directly onto the DC jont which causes the grease to be washed out. The exhaust on the V8 is also very very close to the DC joint which does not help.

If you google it, you'll find it is a well known problem. Try Discovery double cardan.

Also do some searching on this forum for "cardan"

See http://www.aulro.com/afvb/discovery/...t-problem.html for example.

I seem to recall that water from the air con drains (or similar) drips onto the joint - or was that onto the XYZ switch on the transmission?

best of luck to you but I think youve got bucklies for a couple of reasons.

1. Its a serviceable item as theres a blanking Allen key fitted to some of them and its a service agents responsibility to check it at service time.

2. its rebuild able when it wears out you are supposed to replace/rebuild it

3. They will blame whoever did the servicing for not doing it correctly, If you do your own servicing that would be you.

4. if they find one bit of evidence that one part of the shaft failed well before any other part then they may go... "it would have been displaying these symptoms you didnt pick up on them so its your problem. we suggest in future turn the radio down while driving so you can hear these things"

as a 21 year old Im guessing you bought it second hand, if you bought it second hand then all bets are off and you also have bucklies

ID be very surprised if someone somewhere hasnt done it before and given landrover (or ford) the opportunity to set a precedence, if thats done your screwed and any money you spend on lawyering will be instantly wasted

If you get it to court and loose you get to pay landrovers legal fees as well.

IMHO I reckon you should just bite the bullet buy the new bits needed and put it in or claim it off on insurance, (which Im also guessing that you didnt have comprehensive that covers this kind of thing) as you'll live longer and have less ulcers.

as I said in the beginning best of luck to you

The DC failed on my '99 TD5 at 40,000 kms. The shaft dropped onto the road at a very slow speed as I had just taken off after having been under the vehicle searching for the source of a vibration. LR replaced the shaft under warranty and the dealer's mechanic thought it must have been assembled with no or insufficient grease. My vehicle was the 1st D2 sold by the dealership and as it travelled nearly 1,000 kms per week (including unsealed and thus sometimes muddy roads), the dealership had not yet seen this failure in other D2s.

The grub screw is for the grease nipple for the sliding joint, not the DC. The DC is not servicable according to the LR workshop manual, being sealed for life. But how long is life? Until it ends!

be carefull what you drag up using a thread on a public forum.......from memory there was a guy blueing with landrover over the oil pump bolt problem and because a thread on here they withdrew the support they were going to give him...........it was a while ago and i cannot remember the details but they were going to foot part of the bill

good luck however

This is kinda heading off your topic (I'm sorry) but also ironic.

I just traveled down to Newcastle (from Darwin) and picked up a 97 300TDi disco for the missus. Spent a couple of days doing a pre-trip check and service for the 4000 odd km trip back. Now I've been a mechanic for 11yrs now so I checked it out pretty well. The trip went all rather smoothly untill the fourth day we were leaving Three ways and I heard a noise that sounded like it was heading terminal, after climing underneith I found that the uni at the t-case end of the front propshaft was on it's way out. Not having any tooling in the car to remove the shaft compleatly I made a risk decision and decided to keep going. Well by the time I got to Mataranka it was pretty much shot, with a nice clinking sound coming out of it. We pushed to Katherine where I decided it was too much of a risk to keep going. Now being a Premium AANT member I decided to give them a call and get the local mobile mechanic to come out an help me remove the prop.
What proceeded after this has appauled me to say the least! The on call mechanic turned up in his Tickford XR8 lowered fully sick ute with his girlfriend in tow. No uniform, No TOOLS and an attitude to boot!
He took a look at the shaft, emerged from underneith and proceeded to tell me there was plenty of life left in the joint (I thought he was joking) and that since the car was still drivable he wasn't going to help me. Needless to say I was getting a little ****ed off at this point, he wouldn't pull the shaft off for me, he wouldn't give me a 9/16th spanner so I could do it myself. He started to lip off to me about the uni untill I filled him in on that fact that I was a mechanic. He did a lot of back peddeling then flat out refused to help me. After telling him to hit the road, I phoned a friend in Darwin to come down with the appropriate tooling (I did try to buy some but being a Sunday and the N.T...........yea) Eventually I got home, no thanks to roadside assistance.
Ironicly there was no problems with prop until we started using the aircon........ hard to say if it's related.

And yes I lubed all the unis before I left newcastle.

In all my years the most common uni that I've replace on LR's (of all varients) has been the one at the t-case, front shaft. I think it's a much larger problem than just the D2's

Good luck with it anyway

The manufacturer's warranty is nice to have - BUT, and I cannot stress this enough, if does not dictate whether you have rights above and beyond the warranty. The manufacturer's warranty does not disturb your rights under common law and statutory assistance provided by the Trade Practices Act for consumer items (the TPA does have limits though). At the end of the day you might be better off, if the total repair costs are low enough to bring the proceedings in the small claims jurisdiction. Certainly in Qld that keeps the costs down to a VERY low amount - but the trade off is an umpire who may have little experience, and no legal representation generally unless on agreement and with the Court's leave.

Good luck.

PS. Not enough people challenge car manufacturers - I have had success out of warranty against GMH and LR with pre-litigation demands.

Cheers

PS. Get a very good mech engineer and mechanic to assist you

Originally Posted by David Hallworth

Hi Guys,

I have commenced legal proceedings against Land Rover following their refusal to accept liability for failure of the front propshaft on my Disco 2.

I urgently need all the help I can get from people who know of experts in this field, have experienced similar failures or engaged in legal proceedings against LR.

Also need to identify experts in metallurgy and joint design in driven shaft technology.

I am interested in peoples opinions of the prop shafts fitted to the front axle of the Discovery 2.

Also interested to hear of other makes of 4X4 shaft failures if you know of any?

The Hookes joint on my shaft ran dry and as a result failed on the motorway at high speeds.

Land Rover claim the Hookes joint on these shafts to be lubricated at manufacture and sealed for life.

Questions I have to ask:

1. Has your propshaft failed? Was it the Hookes Joint? Was there any warning e,g. noise, vibration, clunking?

2. Did you contact Land Rover regarding this? If so, what was the outcome?

3. Did an accident occur as a result of your propshaft failing?

4. If your vehicle was inspected by a mechanic/engineers or specialist what were his comments?

Any help you can provide me with would be appreciated! I am a 21 year old fighting Land Rover

Please reply to discoverypropshaft@googlemail.com as this email address is for all correspondence on this matter.

Regards

David.

Firstly I would like to say good luck and to also look into DC joints on Jeep Cherokee's failing, plenty of threads on them on Ausjeep Offroad forum.

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I have to say though, the sealed for life is the thing you really have to watch out for here as said before, what is the expected life from this part.

You will also have to prove that you had the car checked out by a LR approved repairer and show written proof from that repairer that within an acceptable amount of time the DC joint had been checked and said to be in serviceable condition.

IMHO, you will have bucklies of getting anything but headaches from LR on this one, the D2 is too old now for them to worry about it and unless you had just replaced the shaft with an original LR part and had one of their service guys fit it and you can prove it was done by the book then again I doubt you will be successful.

Sorry about that.

Originally Posted by Larns

This is kinda heading off your topic (I'm sorry) but also ironic.

I just traveled down to Newcastle (from Darwin) and picked up a 97 300TDi disco for the missus. Spent a couple of days doing a pre-trip check and service for the 4000 odd km trip back. Now I've been a mechanic for 11yrs now so I checked it out pretty well. The trip went all rather smoothly untill the fourth day we were leaving Three ways and I heard a noise that sounded like it was heading terminal, after climing underneith I found that the uni at the t-case end of the front propshaft was on it's way out. Not having any tooling in the car to remove the shaft compleatly I made a risk decision and decided to keep going. Well by the time I got to Mataranka it was pretty much shot, with a nice clinking sound coming out of it. We pushed to Katherine where I decided it was too much of a risk to keep going. Now being a Premium AANT member I decided to give them a call and get the local mobile mechanic to come out an help me remove the prop.
What proceeded after this has appauled me to say the least! The on call mechanic turned up in his Tickford XR8 lowered fully sick ute with his girlfriend in tow. No uniform, No TOOLS and an attitude to boot!
He took a look at the shaft, emerged from underneith and proceeded to tell me there was plenty of life left in the joint (I thought he was joking) and that since the car was still drivable he wasn't going to help me. Needless to say I was getting a little ****ed off at this point, he wouldn't pull the shaft off for me, he wouldn't give me a 9/16th spanner so I could do it myself. He started to lip off to me about the uni untill I filled him in on that fact that I was a mechanic. He did a lot of back peddeling then flat out refused to help me. After telling him to hit the road, I phoned a friend in Darwin to come down with the appropriate tooling (I did try to buy some but being a Sunday and the N.T...........yea) Eventually I got home, no thanks to roadside assistance.
Ironicly there was no problems with prop until we started using the aircon........ hard to say if it's related.

And yes I lubed all the unis before I left newcastle.

In all my years the most common uni that I've replace on LR's (of all varients) has been the one at the t-case, front shaft. I think it's a much larger problem than just the D2's

Good luck with it anyway

Mate your the forst ever mechanic that doesnt travel with tools.

Your damn game traveling 4000kms in any LR without a tool box and spares

The moral to this story is to travel with at least basic tools and not to have to rely on road service guys, most of whom are normally just trained to jump start cars and much more than that they get a tow.

Originally Posted by ozscott

The manufacturer's warranty is nice to have - BUT, and I cannot stress this enough, if does not dictate whether you have rights above and beyond the warranty. The manufacturer's warranty does not disturb your rights under common law and statutory assistance provided by the Trade Practices Act for consumer items (the TPA does have limits though). At the end of the day you might be better off, if the total repair costs are low enough to bring the proceedings in the small claims jurisdiction. Certainly in Qld that keeps the costs down to a VERY low amount - but the trade off is an umpire who may have little experience, and no legal representation generally unless on agreement and with the Court's leave.

Good luck.

PS. Not enough people challenge car manufacturers - I have had success out of warranty against GMH and LR with pre-litigation demands.

Cheers

PS. Get a very good mech engineer and mechanic to assist you

In small claims you only have a max of $5k dont you ?

What is a good Mech engineer/mechanic in your eyes may be a joke to them so make sure if you go that way the person you use is experienced in litagation and preferably has worked on the side of these companies before so they cant argue their qualifications.