Thread: D4 Reliability

Originally Posted by lpj

Irrespective, if you are going to do overland travel in Australia- no matter what car you drive, you will need to be prepared.

A) get a fault reading tool
learn as much as you can about the car- this forum being excellent for that.
C) many "faults" are not really faults. Low battery can cause issue as you have described. As can a dodgy brake switch or incorrect bulbs.
D) take spares of parts that are likely to let you down

LPJ

Probably the best advice you could give anyone who plans on touring their vehicle. Noted thanks.

Cheers.

The positive side of Wheel Bearings ..
We did the rear bearing in Armidale (NSW) and got tilt-trayed to Tamworth without the caravan (tilt tray couldn't take a Treg hitch). We stayed over night in the local "retreat" while the bearing came from Melbourne. Next morning, the lady from the retreat lent us her car so we could go to Armidale to recover the caravan and continue south once the bearing was replaced.
Every now and then you meet someone who is priceless and precious.
Thanks again and again to Felicity.

Maybe there are positives in unreliability.

Originally Posted by CraigA

The D4 seems to me a much better drive and I don't have to put up with the LCs fuel consumption nor the Prados gutlessness among there other "failings". However, if we are going to be non-anecdotal about this, Land Rovers remain the least reliable car on the road (US figures 2012) and for a luxury brand, that's appalling. To put it in perspective, LRs are less reliable than a Great Wall that costs about 1/4 as much.

I think Craig you read the JD Powers list on unreliability, i'd take it with a grain of salt IMHO.
And a Great Wall - mate c'mon, i know a couple of blokes that have them and they are happy because they were cheap, but they also comment that they are a piece of crap. But because they are so cheap, they love them.

Maybe time to go and buy the Tojo and then you can get on with things. I'm up to my 3rd Disco - series 1,2 & 3. All bloody great vehicles. A Prado in between was good too but Toyota let me down. So back to LR.

Originally Posted by Dirty3

I think Craig you read the JD Powers list on unreliability, i'd take it with a grain of salt IMHO.
And a Great Wall - mate c'mon, i know a couple of blokes that have them and they are happy because they were cheap, but they also comment that they are a piece of crap. But because they are so cheap, they love them.

Hi Dirty3
Actually I've read a fair few reliability surveys and all of them put LR at or near the bottom of the pecking order. Even the UK ones (with the exception of Clarkson of course)!
Perhaps you can argue that they don't sell many diesels in the US but if you look at the areas of failure, the engine generally represents only about 20% of the failures.

I have driven a Great Wall as a service loaner and it was not a pleasant experience. I reiterate, the Discovery is supposed to be a luxury vehicle and has a luxury price, the Great Wall does not. I would presume that the LR uses better materials, better engineering, more evolved design, and better construction techniques than a Great Wall. Why then do LRs inhabit the bottom of the reliability surveys?

Originally Posted by CraigA

Hi Dirty3
Actually I've read a fair few reliability surveys and all of them put LR at or near the bottom of the pecking order. Even the UK ones (with the exception of Clarkson of course)!
Perhaps you can argue that they don't sell many diesels in the US but if you look at the areas of failure, the engine generally represents only about 20% of the failures.

I have driven a Great Wall as a service loaner and it was not a pleasant experience. I reiterate, the Discovery is supposed to be a luxury vehicle and has a luxury price, the Great Wall does not. I would presume that the LR uses better materials, better engineering, more evolved design, and better construction techniques than a Great Wall. Why then do LRs inhabit the bottom of the reliability surveys?

I had a great wall once as a loaner to my god what a piece of crap i mean i know i could buy 5 of them for the price of a new D4 HSE but i think ill stick with my D4 thanks haha god it was bad.

I remember when the bush tucker man was plugging the D2 HDC and remember thinking how cool that was.


Is it possible that L/R has been at the forefront of technology in 4x4 vehicles and that the other makes have refined them with a bigger budget.




Cheers Ean

Originally Posted by CraigA

Hi Dirty3
Actually I've read a fair few reliability surveys and all of them put LR at or near the bottom of the pecking order. Even the UK ones (with the exception of Clarkson of course)!
Perhaps you can argue that they don't sell many diesels in the US but if you look at the areas of failure, the engine generally represents only about 20% of the failures.

I have driven a Great Wall as a service loaner and it was not a pleasant experience. I reiterate, the Discovery is supposed to be a luxury vehicle and has a luxury price, the Great Wall does not. I would presume that the LR uses better materials, better engineering, more evolved design, and better construction techniques than a Great Wall. Why then do LRs inhabit the bottom of the reliability surveys?

But you look at the UK ownership satisfaction survey 2013 and Jaguar is no. 1 with LR coming in at no. 6, ahead of Toyota.

So how can JLR do so apparently poorly in reliability surveys, yet so well in Satisfaction surveys?

In order for a company that manufactures premium off-road vehicles like LR to survive, the cars they build have to get noticed - you have to admit, they do. You bought one.

LR build the most enjoyable overlanders you can get, bar none! It is their niche. No other vehicle can claim to be as good on and off road as a modern Discovery or Range Rover. Look at what you get:
-cabin luxury that puts many German luxo sedans (and any jap car) to shame with loads of room and 7 seats for the disco. Kick ass sound is standard!
-Strong and refined engines and transmissions.
-Excellent handling and ride quality, on and off the road
-truly a 'go anywhere' vehicle straight out of the box
-Looks great out front of a country pub or a city art gallery
-Always a technological masterpiece, if that appeals to you (it does appeal to me)

At what cost though? In short, you cannot achieve all that without some pretty serious innovating. You need a car that can raise high enough to tackle serious obstacles, yet can sit low enough to ride and handle well on the road. You need engines that can generate peak torque at low RPM, yet also remain tractable at higher RPMs, all the while out-performing the competition in fuel economy and refinement.

The truth is, Toyota can't build that car - they tried it with the LC200 and that was their best effort - and people still criticised it because they didn't get the engine right, or because they thought it was 'too technical', yet it has nowhere near the level of tech that a modern LR has. Nissan's Y62 has suffered a similar fate - they couldn't develop a worthy enough diesel engine to put in it, so they put an enormous 5.6L V8 petrol in it. Both these cars are worthy competitors to the LR off the road, but the suspension technology they use is still decades behind LR's, so they both feel like trucks on the road, and neither is any kind of a match for the elegance in interior and exterior you get with the LR.

Most of the time our LRs deliver what they promise. Simple technology such as may be found in the Asian stuff may be more reliable - noone is arguing that - it is more mature technology. This is the point you seem to miss again and again and again. Simple is generally more reliable. You don't need sensors to monitor everything, you don't need controllers for each function of the vehicle that are, as any integrated circuit is, sensitive to voltage. You don't need a transmission with 5 seperate clutch packs, three epicyclics and a converter that locks in any gear, to drive the car smoothly, because all you have is a basic manual or auto trans. You don't need clutch packs in your centre or rear diff to ensure it locks up progressively when demanded to. Every one of those things can go wrong. Complex/Cutting edge = more variables to go awry. You didn't think your LR used magic to do all those things, did you?

Simple also means you miss out on the advantages the modern tech has to offer. What other company uses high tech stuff like adaptive air suspension on the vast majority of their vehicles, and so successfully? The majority of modern LRs are extremely complex vehicles - in terms of average complexity of vehicles sold, very few if any car makers can compare with LR - just look at one aspect - the powertrain - a high tech engine, state of the art transmission, dual range locking transfer case, two diffs and six driveshafts. That is before we go into the controllers for every function of the vehicle. Compare that to a typical modern Mazda or Toyota or Hyundai which has a rudimentary engine, rudimentary transaxle and two driveshafts.

Craig, comparing Great Wall and Land Rover over and over again does not make any sense. It is a stupid comparison. On one hand you have LR, a company that manufactures the world's most complex mass production vehicles. It is the world's most innovative off-road car company. On the other hand, Great Wall, who copies everyone else's successful designs then builds them badly, and on average have some of the most simple tech vehicles around.

You made the choice to buy the LR, you seem to have made the wrong choice. You should've bought a high tech, capable four wheel drive that seems to have no weaknesses at all, but one that also never has any problems ever. Let us all know when you find that car! Realistically, you had a rear wheel bearing let go, which was bad luck to be honest, but it happens. The battery is also bad luck. I had and have the same battery and wheel bearings as you - the batt was five years old when I replaced it - and I only replaced it because a mate broke the terminal off it; and the wheel bearings are still going strong at 205K. The electrical problems you didn't have to stop for, but you might not have known that. So three problems in 70K and you think that's unreliable? Have you owned many cars before this??

Craig, you have been given good advice here. None of us wants to waste our time trying to convince you that you have a good car when you apparently have already made up your mind. Reliability is a mindset. Accept that modern high tech cars can sometimes have issues, or sell it and take the plunge and buy that Great Wall - if you have only three issues with it in 70K I would genuinely fall out of my hammock! That's if you can stand to drive it that long.

My experience isn't so much the reliablity of any vehicle, but what can you do when something does go wrong.

I took the Merinee Loop road a couple of months back and hit a pot hole. The Copper Zeon was drivable, but the side wall bulged meaning I needed to get it replaced before hitting Oodnatdatta 10 days later. I had to wait a week to get the tyre express delivered to Alice Springs. Not just the Zeon, but any 255/55/19.

Then leaving Alice, the car kept overheating all the way to Marla. I couldn't risk taking it down the Ood (which I'm still sulking about) incase it got worse. (Turns out it was a cracked turbo pipe which would've caused a problem in any other vehicle too)

But for me it comes down to - where can I get support? Any of the larger brands are more likely to have a support network, or a semi-capable mech who can look at the vehicle, but LR are too far apart, and mechs are scared of them. Yes there is their roadside support, and I've used them for a battery replacement in the first 12 months, but if I broke down on the Ood, how long before they come to my rescue? A few days I am led to believe.

I'm not saying I'll be getting rid of my great D4 because of it, but I do have that concern in the back of my head when traveling a little more remotely....