New LRs and electronics

**JDNSW** · 29th June 2006, 09:11 PM

Landrover have always been short of capital, and their products have always shown it. As Phillip says, their first Landrover was a copy of the Jeep - but so was the first Landcruiser, and the first jeep was an even closer copy of the Bantam, which in turn was a sort of copy of the Austin 7. It turned out, by luck, that the first Landrover's construction method, chosen to use available materials and minimum tooling, made it far more versatile than anything else on the market.
The first Rangerover came with only two doors because they couldn't afford the tooling for the four door model - and I don't think you could call it a copy of the Bronco, although the concept was similar.
I think you have hit a nail on the head though, as I commented in another post, Toyota have been very good at changing the design to suit Australian requirements, where with Landrover we got whatever they thought was suitable for the rest of the world. And fuel tanks are a major point. In my view, any car sold in Australia should have a range of at least 1000km, and offroad vehicles should be more. But have Australians been all that good in the past? Who remembers that at the time Landrovers had a ten and a half gallon tank giving a range of 180 miles if you were lucky, the "pure bred" Australian Holden had an eight gallon tank with a range of 200 miles if you were lucky. This in an environment where most petrol stations closed from about 5.30pm, closed 1pm Saturday and closed all day Sunday, with, for example, only one all night service station between Brisbane and Sydney.
Landrover were hardly the first with air suspension - dates back to the early sixties for Cadillac and Mercedes for example, and oleopneumatic self levelling in Citroens from 1954, licenced to Rolls Royce from 1970.
But they did have some firsts or at least near firsts - first successful coil suspension offroad car, one of the first small turbodiesels in a mass produced car.
John

**drivesafe** · 29th June 2006, 09:52 PM

When push comes to shove, I’m a novice when it comes to off road driving but I can take my Range Rover and D3 places where you can’t get a toyota and be before you think other wise, at an off road training course last year, after taking loads of crap all day from the want to be toyota owners. On the last hill of the day, I had finally had enough so while all the want to be’s were having to get run ups and thrashing the guts out of there toys to get up this hill, I went for a Sunday drive and just strolled up the same hill never having to go over 10 kph because all the crap electronics you are on about, made me the expert the want to be’s reckoned they were.

And if the D3’s are so bad, why are they winning so many comps and getting all the awards under the sun.

It’s not a case of whether people in Australia want something or the other, you buy a Land Rover because you want that vehicle.

I have absolutely nothing against toyota’s it’s just that, in my opinion, a taxi cab has as much character as a toyota 4x4.

And As far as I’m concerned, Land Rovers are “ the best 4x4 by far “

One more point, toyota’s hybrid is nothing more than a copy ( as usual ) of VW’s 1980 dual power Golf. Plus unlike the Golf, the toyota hybrid is a crock of ****e because it is actually LESS fuel efficient on the open road than larger vehicles. In other words, it nothing more than a shopping trolly, come to think of it, that’s about as good as any toyota.

Cheers

**PhilipA** · 30th June 2006, 07:46 AM

No resist resist No I can't resist.

The P76 won car of the year.

In the US the Jeep Grand Cherokee beat the D3 in the 4x4 Magazine car of the Year. the Yanks reckoned that the D3 was too heavy to go well in sand, had poor fuel economy and power , and that it was far noisier than the Jeep. I have never seen anyone else say the D3 is comparitively noisy, but I bet it is .
Having had experience with motor journalists,as Distribution Manager of BMW and the Motorcycle Sales and Marketing Manager,( and National Distribution Manager of Ford Australia) I can tell you that journalists luuuurve "features" that they can write about. Mainstream journalists will rarely write anything negative about a new model. That only comes out when the next model comes, when they admit the old one was **** but the new one is great. If they write negatives , test cars are suddenly not available and that is their livelihood.
Only last week there was an article in Autospeed claiming that ABS was a great safety feature.I did a dredge of the literature and found that the NHTSA in the US had recently done a SCIENTIFIC study which showed in aggregate that ABS does nothing to reduce accidents overall . There were several other studies saying similar things. Yet Michael Knowling still wrote back saying that he thought it was worthwhile, against the evidence.

I congratulate you on your driving prowess. maybe you are better than the Toyota drivers . A "Natural Born Killer er Driver". But what if it all fails . Have you got the skills to then drive the track? If your traction control takes a holiday the limited travel of the all independent suspension will stop you pretty quickly.

The problem is not when everything works, its when it stops in the middle of a track, desert, wherever. eg the well documented D3 suspension collapse on beach. You can lose a car with that. The D3 is still new and these things are happening. What happens when they get old?

I remember a prominent 4WD politician went on a trip with the club. half way along the track his 38A went through a creek and the dash lit up. No traction control, ABS etc etc. He had numerous tries at a rock shelf ( which needed at least traction control and preferably lockers) until he blew a radiator hose.( another 38 A problem.) Went over the Simpson and his rear air bags fell out numerous times.

If the D3 is so good , how come it doesn't sell. Even the journalists in OZ say its good value compared to a Prado/Landcruiser. But the buyer is not buying it.
Regards Philip A

**spudboy** · 30th June 2006, 08:08 AM

I am 100% with Philip A.

This is the reason I've not updated my TDi 300 Disco 1 to a new D3. Don't get me wrong - they are fabulous cars and I really love that Diesel V6, but I live on a farm which is full of dust when it is dry and mud when it is wet. When something breaks, how does the average bloke fix it? Without a TestBook and a degree in electronics, you can't.

I had an air suspension Rangie for a few years and the damn height sensors were very sensitive to dust/mud, so that went.

So - instead of a D3, I ended up buying an ex-Telstra 130 TD5 (Still with electrics, I know....) and kept the D1. So now I have two LRs for half the price of a new D3.

**Scouse** · 30th June 2006, 08:08 AM

Originally Posted by PhilipA

I remember a prominent 4WD politician went on a trip with the club. half way along the track his 38A went through a creek and the dash lit up. No traction control, ABS etc etc. He had numerous tries at a rock shelf ( which needed at least traction control and preferably lockers) until he blew a radiator hose.( another 38 A problem.)

Was that the one where the coolant caused an engine bay fire?

**PhilipA** · 30th June 2006, 08:46 AM

No, just a lot of steam.
Luckily , the son of the then club president is a Land Rover Mechanic, and shortened the hose , as it had blown just at the stub of the heater outlet.
But our friend was pretty ****ed off by then.
Regards Philip A

**PhilipA** · 30th June 2006, 09:37 AM

Gotta share it.
Page L10 Financial Review.

Land Rover LAST in JD Power 2006 Initial Quality Survey with 204 faults per 100 vehicles!!!!!!!!
For the first time design features are included in the survey.
Nuff said.
Brave new world of D3 .
Regards Philip A

**drivesafe** · 30th June 2006, 09:59 AM

Originally Posted by PhilipA

I congratulate you on your driving prowess. maybe you are better than the Toyota drivers . A "Natural Born Killer er Driver". But what if it all fails . Have you got the skills to then drive the track? If your traction control takes a holiday the limited travel of the all independent suspension will stop you pretty quickly.

The problem is not when everything works, its when it stops in the middle of a track, desert, wherever. eg the well documented D3 suspension collapse on beach. You can lose a car with that. The D3 is still new and these things are happening. What happens when they get old?

First off, most of the toy drivers were instructors so yes it was my vehicles electronics that made the day and by the the way, it was great to see those watching me, call their mates over to see how easy the RR was doing the climb.

As for failure worries, my MkIII now has over 150,000 and the one and only time it has failed, was on road so I have no hesitations about taking it or the D3 off road.

Cheers.

Ain’t jealousy a bitch.

**gghaggis** · 30th June 2006, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by phillipA

I congratulate you on your driving prowess. maybe you are better than the Toyota drivers . A "Natural Born Killer er Driver". But what if it all fails . Have you got the skills to then drive the track? If your traction control takes a holiday the limited travel of the all independent suspension will stop you pretty quickly.

The problem is not when everything works, its when it stops in the middle of a track, desert, wherever. eg the well documented D3 suspension collapse on beach. You can lose a car with that. The D3 is still new and these things are happening. What happens when they get old?

A D3 without traction control will still retain the use of it's air suspension, and I believe that, contrary to what you post above, this still gives at least an equal amount of wheel travel when compared to the older model LRs. Perhaps you meant "... if the compressor takes a holiday"??

Whilst I somewhat agree with what you say, I don't think the inability of the average individual to repair these cars will remain a problem forever, and I don't think it applies to just the new Landrovers. Almost all of the documented failures with the D3 are software-related. Other than faulty air compressor valves, the mechanical side of these beasts seems to be pretty reliable. Obviously, with the right software and a laptop, a lot of these types of faults that may occur with a new D3, Landcruiser, BMW etc can be either rectified or temporarily got around. More and more people are looking at the software issue (I know I am), and once these cars come out of warranty, I think you'll see more stimulus to develop open software for just these sort of problems. CANBUS is a pretty open standard, after all.

I keep hearing the phrase "I don't want to have to be an Electrical Engineer to fix my car", and "I could fix anything on the old one". But think about how long it took you to become an adept DIY mechanic. It will take a fraction of the time to become an adept lap-top user. You will just have to adapt ......

And I don't think drivetrain reliability is really a strong suite to hold when arguing for the older Landrovers!

Cheers,

Gordon

**Jamo** · 30th June 2006, 01:33 PM

Lets get a few things striaght here.

My wifes step-father has the latest model Jeep Grand Cherokee with the 3.0CRD. It is Definitely noiser than the D3, so I think the yanks may have been a little parochial in coming up with that one.

I have had my compressor fail whilst on a very sandy beach and had the car drop onto its belly from 'Extended mode'. I was still able to drive off the beach and back home (albeit with lots of ploughing and belly scraping).

As for 'surveys', they are all designed to enable specific data manipulation to produce a desired outcome (ie. we know what the answer we want is , so we design the survey to deliver it!). Anyone whose ever worked for the Public Service (as I did for 12 years) knows this one!. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I've been through dust and mud and there's been no problem with ingress to any electronics. Remember that theses are electronics and not electrics (there is a difference!).

Anyone who heads off into the bush believing his toyota won't break down is a moron!

I consider myself to be a reasonably easy going person, but I get really ****ed off with folks who slam something that they don't own, have no experience in, and gather all their 'reliable' info from magazines and hearsay.

Oooohh! Beware the evil D3 electronics!! They'll fail on you!! Everyone who 'knows' says so!! All those journos who've driven over 40,000km over all types of terrain in one.... hang on a minute....what's that you say... you're right.. there aren't any!

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