Thread: Ineos Grenadier, do you reckon it'll take off?

Holly crap.... I figured "a thread about that french 4wd this could be interesting reading".... 'Cos who in there right mind would buy a crappy french car, let alone a 4wd made in france..... Wow ... 170pages of messages They are either really good or really crap ..... But I don't have time to read 170 pages and find out

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

Holly crap.... I figured "a thread about that french 4wd this could be interesting reading".... 'Cos who in there right mind would buy a crappy french car, let alone a 4wd made in france..... Wow ... 170pages of messages They are either really good or really crap ..... But I don't have time to read 170 pages and find out

They are ok, and probably getting better if you've got the budget for a "premium niche brand". Who may have pretty limited support.

Originally Posted by Tombie

A new Defender is literally a beefed up, now OTA updated Discovery 4 with some design cues to the old.

D4s are proving incredibly resilient (ok some 3.0l aren’t) but the body, suspension and basic electro/mechanical are holding together just fine.

I can remember when I purchased my Tomb Raider TD5 seeing multitudes of them in the workshop having niggles and problems rectified. Now nobody thinks twice about a few maintenance items and off they go.

My D4 as an example is about to roll 230k, its total maintenance bill would be sub $15k for its entire life.

Hi mate,

I have a new Defender. This week I clocked over 163,000km and have had zero issues. But the traditionalists don’t want to hear that.

Cheers,
GG

Originally Posted by grey_ghost

Hi mate,

I have a new Defender. This week I clocked over 163,000km and have had zero issues. But the traditionalists don’t want to hear that.

Cheers,
GG

That's great to hear, and I'm happy for you.

However quality is not about making one good car. It's about making all of them good. It's no point making 8 perfect ones and 2 raging disasters. In quality surveys around the world, land rover is perennially in the sin bin.

Personally the oldest the "Defender" can be is five years .. So still under warranty. Let's talk when it's ten, if it's still on the road.

Cross fingers for a good outcome for you!

For me... I don't drive my car around town. I only use it for remote touring. Where a failure to proceed could result at best being stuck somewhere at best, or at worst an expensive recovery or even a life threatening situation. Would I be game to take 80 computers and a whole bunch of sensors, plumbing and actualtors out to the bush when 10, or 15, or 20? The saying "are you feeling lucky, punk" is making an appearance in a corner of the brain.. From what we've seen of the predecessor.. the D3 and D4.. I've not seen anything to give me any confidence. Whenever I'm involved with one on a remote trip it ends badly.

My old defender .. it requires a lot of maintenance. But it's simple, and it's even possible to fix with basic tools and amateur mechanic skills.

Having thought about this over night. Electronics has been in cars since forever. My Lotus from the 60's has a substantial amount of electronics which has been really trouble free in the 25 years I've owned it. Remarkable hey!.

My defender has an ECU, a body computer and an alarm module, and an electrically controlled engine. But this level of electronics is similar to cars from the 80's and 90's. In my 20 years of ownership, this has also proven trouble free except from one time when the door wiring shorted. But again - this was something that could be sorted by myself in the bush.

Meanwhile - modern landrovers have many many times this amount of electronics. On a recent trip, we had a D3 whose alternator and ECU failed to negotiate that the alternator should charge although apparently the alternator was not in fact broken. So this thing kept going flat. In the desert. So we could swap batteries with a car with a working alternator and get a little while off the car.

If we swapped a battery out of a hilux the only impact on the car was the clock lost the time and trip meter reset. If we swapped a battery out of a range rover you had to have a scan tool to reset the faults to get the car to start, and then for 20 minutes you'd be clearing the cascading faults stopping various car systems from functioning.

I wish the people with modern LR's well but for whatever reason LR are flying too close to the sun and I don't want anything to do with it! If I go bush it's to go bush, not to deal with this rubbish.

There are multiple reports of Ineos Grenadiers failing to proceed and people on forums "Lock it and leave it for 20 minutes then try again". I'm going to need some convincing.

Changing a battery does not result in cascading faults - if you do it correctly.

Sounds very much like a case of “old school thinking without new school process”.

You can have the exact same issues in an electronic Defender if you don’t let the alarm module go to sleep.



This hubbub about life threatening is laughable.
A plane at 30,000ft is fully electronic, depending on 2 engines, over water for hours and nobody gives it a second thought.

The worst a broken car can do is fail to proceed and cause inconvenience. It’s the operator’s failure to plan for contingency that can then add the additional factors.



It’s well documented that an electrical failure in your EV can result in you being trapped inside the vehicle as the doors won’t disengage. That has potential to escalate, and it has in the USA, fatally.

Engine ECUs are critical hardware, and very robust. Of those “80” ecus (which by the way include such minimal items as Bluetooth module, antenna module, seat control module, window module well, you get the idea) only a handful are actually required to keep forward motion. And the system will shut down defective components to maximise this.

Your defender, it breaks one axle and it’ll need another. Does one diff centre and you’re a 2wd. Loses the CAS and it’s done. Drops an alternator and you’re going a few km before you need to swap out and repeat (been there, done that in my TD5).

What is statistically significant is this:
Modern electronically controlled vehicles have reliability far exceeding those before them. By a large factor. Breakdowns are far less frequent. It’s only that when they do, it becomes a challenge for those Ill equipped to deal with modern vehicles.

Want to take a guess how many spares I take on serious off road expeditions?

If you said about 5 you’d be on the money.
2 height sensors and 3 filters. And a small bag of basic tools inc a multimeter and GAP tool.

And the vehicle has only coded on me twice in 14 years. One for the alternator ceasing to charge (dropped diode) in my driveway and the other for a faulting compressor relay.

Alternator was 170k old and the new one already sitting here to fit (3 hours) and the compressor was sorted on the side of the road in 15 min.

Since owning it’s been serviced every 10k. Transmission every 40k
Had belts done once - due again now.
Alternator replaced
Mid life suspension refit
New compressor - old one working and sitting in shed.

It doesn’t leak, it’s had 4 wheel alignments in its life and drives perfect and no uneven tyre wear. Everything works as designed.

Suspension was the big ticket item at around $4k



Family D3 now owned by BIL is still going strong at 370k and just showing signs of needing a transmission sorted - he’s nowhere near as mechanically considerate and ran his maintenance times out considerably.
It’s had 1 alternator at 220k and suspension replaced.


I’d trust them as much as your well maintained Defender and would take mine anywhere at the drop of a hat - oh that’s right, I do!

Originally Posted by Tombie

Changing a battery does not result in cascading faults - if you do it correctly.

Sounds very much like a case of “old school thinking without new school process”.

You can have the exact same issues in an electronic Defender if you don’t let the alarm module go to sleep.



This hubbub about life threatening is laughable.
A plane at 30,000ft is fully electronic, depending on 2 engines, over water for hours and nobody gives it a second thought.

The worst a broken car can do is fail to proceed and cause inconvenience. It’s the operator’s failure to plan for contingency that can then add the additional factors.



It’s well documented that an electrical failure in your EV can result in you being trapped inside the vehicle as the doors won’t disengage. That has potential to escalate, and it has in the USA, fatally.

Engine ECUs are critical hardware, and very robust. Of those “80” ecus (which by the way include such minimal items as Bluetooth module, antenna module, seat control module, window module well, you get the idea) only a handful are actually required to keep forward motion. And the system will shut down defective components to maximise this.

Your defender, it breaks one axle and it’ll need another. Does one diff centre and you’re a 2wd. Loses the CAS and it’s done. Drops an alternator and you’re going a few km before you need to swap out and repeat (been there, done that in my TD5).

What is statistically significant is this:
Modern electronically controlled vehicles have reliability far exceeding those before them. By a large factor. Breakdowns are far less frequent. It’s only that when they do, it becomes a challenge for those Ill equipped to deal with modern vehicles.

Want to take a guess how many spares I take on serious off road expeditions?

If you said about 5 you’d be on the money.
2 height sensors and 3 filters. And a small bag of basic tools inc a multimeter and GAP tool.

And the vehicle has only coded on me twice in 14 years. One for the alternator ceasing to charge (dropped diode) in my driveway and the other for a faulting compressor relay.

Alternator was 170k old and the new one already sitting here to fit (3 hours) and the compressor was sorted on the side of the road in 15 min.

Since owning it’s been serviced every 10k. Transmission every 40k
Had belts done once - due again now.
Alternator replaced
Mid life suspension refit
New compressor - old one working and sitting in shed.

It doesn’t leak, it’s had 4 wheel alignments in its life and drives perfect and no uneven tyre wear. Everything works as designed.

Suspension was the big ticket item at around $4k



Family D3 now owned by BIL is still going strong at 370k and just showing signs of needing a transmission sorted - he’s nowhere near as mechanically considerate and ran his maintenance times out considerably.
It’s had 1 alternator at 220k and suspension replaced.


I’d trust them as much as your well maintained Defender and would take mine anywhere at the drop of a hat - oh that’s right, I do!

I'm very happy for you!

I think you're overestimating the ability of most people to do any mechanical work.

One the last couple of desert crossings we had two failures.

1. The UHF aerial base broke. The three toyota drivers watched in awe as we did a little disassembly to fit the new aerial cable I brought (nearly left it home).

2. The mechanic who worked on my car left the bolts that hold the axle cap loose. So towards the end of the first crossing it started pumping oil out of the hub onto the wheel. One toyota owner watched with interest (even had some tools) the other two just glazed over. They had no idea what was going on. All we did was remove the wheel and do the bolts up. They said "we would have called for a recovery".

Most people have no idea. But they drive toyotas. Its unreasonable to expect everyone to have supreme mechanical knowledge. It's not how it pans out.

PS FYI I've worked in IT my whole life. I'm pretty ok with the computer thing.. even passable at electronics. I start to glaze over when we pass "mesh theory". Anyway I like and mostly get electronics but I don't expect other people to be the same.
PPS reading on FB one of the tour groups talking about insurance. D4 on the last trip had some failure (can't remember) but then destroyed the engine. Whoopsie!

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

I think you're overestimating the ability of most people to do any mechanical work.

Not only that,but many also have limited mechanical knowledge and don't keep a good eye on their vehicle.

It gets serviced wherever,so everything "will" be fine.

Our D4 had many issues over the years, but never let us down on the side of the road,or track.These issues were either noticed by myself or the Indi i used for servicing/repairs.

If i had not noticed the problems,i am sure it would have let us down.Murphy plays his part as well,for sure.
And we did numerous remote trips in that vehicle,including two desert crossings both ways over the years.
No issues,and we generally travel solo.

We like solo travelling,then there is only two of us to make decisions,and argue....
Although on occasions we do go with some good friends.