Thread: What to expect as a D4 ages

Andy,


The drums are inside the disk rotors and as far as I know the rotors must be removed to clean them. When my EPB started squealing for the second time I took it straight to Rovertech and they found the drums full of mud, which would have been dust that got wet during a water crossing in Albany behind Muttonbird Beach. They cleaned it and it has been fine since with multiple uses on a daily basis.

Excuse my ignorance, but how much do all these things cost roughly, and what's covered under warranty etc?

It all sounds rather expensive.

Originally Posted by BobD

I just replaced the lower control arms for the second time, the upper control arm and a lot of other suspension bits on the left front after the original shock absorber failed internally and let the suspension hyperextend downwards. I'm on my third set of rear struts and the fronts have just been replaced, which was well overdue as per above. We also did most of the wheel bearings at that time.

Hi Bob

Are the other three shockies / airbag units all original given this treatment? Have read some discussion about them needing to be replaced after 100,000km especially if given harsh treatment. As always, you don't notice the decline in performance till you change over.

Originally Posted by rar110

With the Km you do I would buy another. Simply because of value drop once you hit really high km.

Think we may have already incurred the drop in value - was quoted $28K as a trade in on a new D4 because of the mileage. Good thing is that should now drop as we've moved into the 'burbs and our last kid now has his licence and car.

Perhaps the step up to a newer D4 will be less once the D5 is released.

Originally Posted by PerthDisco

Hi Bob

Are the other three shockies / airbag units all original given this treatment? Have read some discussion about them needing to be replaced after 100,000km especially if given harsh treatment. As always, you don't notice the decline in performance till you change over.

I replaced the rears at around120,000 but they were D3 Delphi after market shocks (not what I was after) and they were actually worse than the original worn ones. The fronts always seemed OK to me.


I finally decided to replace the fronts and at the same time fit proper D4 rears. That was when they found the issue with the front left. When they lifted the car on the hoist the front left just dropped way down. Then they found all the damage this had caused since I do a lot of 4WDing at full articulation.


The suspension issues and maintenance cost me around $7000 and this was shortly after spending over $7000 on the cracked inlet manifold repair, so not a cheap year last year. The EPB costs around $2000 if cleaning doesn't fix it. Much better to clean it at least once per year.


None of my stuff mentioned was under warranty. The only warranty items I had were the brake switch and the starter motor but the previous owner had half the front end replaced due to the brake shudder issue that seemed to be a common problem on the 2010 model.


These repairs are nothing compared with the cost of swapping my car over to a newer one in my opinion. I would have to spend a lot of money on repairs to get rid of the off road damage and then the mileage will kill any resale value anyway so it will be almost the full cost of the new car that I will have to pay. I usually get another car when it is time to take mine to the wreckers or pass it on to another member of the family that wants it. Not worth taking the massive depreciation hit. At least I only paid $60,000 for it, including all my extras, when the car had done about 55,000km.

Originally Posted by ghoti

Think we may have already incurred the drop in value - was quoted $28K as a trade in on a new D4 because of the mileage. Good thing is that should now drop as we've moved into the 'burbs and our last kid now has his licence and car. Perhaps the step up to a newer D4 will be less once the D5 is released.

$28k is not bad as a trade in IMHO, given the cheapest 2010 D4 SE with similar km on car sales is about $34k.

About $50k depreciation (not incl rego, stamp duty etc) is a big hit. However, $10k per year or 25 cents per km is not too bad. My RRV depreciated at about twice that rate.

Hi
In addition to bobs comprehensive list, we had to replace the Gaskets between the turbos and the manifolds. The vehicle was making a squealing noise and was traced to these gaskets leaking. Whilst going through the long process they found the same bolt on each turbo had cracked and sheared off requiring them to be drilled and re threaded. anyone else heard of this?

At the same time we had to replace the intake manifolds (cracked) had the 180k major belt service done and replaced our leaking steering rack

Cost just over 15k by the time we go the car back, but, with 210k km on the clock our D4 still craps on standard new vehicles of lower quality.
well worth the investment

PS we also tow a 3 tonne full size 24 foot caravan and the 1.6 tonne boat. have been around Australia twice and through Tasmania all towing the van.

Originally Posted by wcody01

Hi

Cost just over 15k by the time we go the car back, but, with 210k km on the clock our D4 still craps on standard new vehicles of lower quality.
well worth the investment

Well said. My sentiments exactly. Other than the crappy manifolds which should never have been produced in the first place the stuff that goes wrong is related to wear and tear and maintenance issues I reckon.


I just spoke to my service man re the crank seal popping out and gave him the info from Topix in the cracked manifold thread. He didn't know about it but said he put seal retainer goo (forget the exact name) on the new crank seal when they did the timing belt and other stuff on mine. This should be as good as having the modified oil pump I'm hoping.