Thread: Murphy's Law, catastrophic failure in a very bad place

I guess that we have to face reality and that is the top end Landrover products while they have good offroad credentials there are a number of components and design that are more geared to boulevard cruising.

I am sure the shockies are designed for onroad cruising and comfort rather than the outback corrugations. Now this is not a critiscim of Landrover as most larger 4wd OEM shocks would fail in similar circumstance - but this air suspended vehicles probably not helped by the shockie being inside the airbag so limiting airflow

Maybe an offroad shockie with a remote oil reservoir with cooling fins would be the go but not sure whether remote reservoir shockies are suitable for strut suspension systems.

Certainly highlights on strut type suspensions the need to endure offroad shocks are fitted - on my 101 I doubt there would be much difference with the shock connected or not but if in my RRS I guess the result would be the same as the Fat RR.

Garry

I wonder if anyone has developed a bolt on external helper shock set up. Another pair of rear shocks to carry the load would help.

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

isnt the shock inside the airbag?
is it anything like this?

not much chance of cooling there---

As already mentioned that's the front. But the air-bag covers the top of the shock with the shaft, not the lower body which is still out in the cooling air.

Originally Posted by garrycol

I guess that we have to face reality and that is the top end Landrover products while they have good offroad credentials there are a number of components and design that are more geared to boulevard cruising.

That's not a fair assessment of the failure. You can overheat the shocks on almost any vehicle in the situation of rough roads at the worst speed.
If you do intend on doing a lot of this driving, there are modifications you can make to help keep the shocks from over-heating. Keep them cooler and they don't explode.

Originally Posted by rar110

I wonder if anyone has developed a bolt on external helper shock set up. Another pair of rear shocks to carry the load would help.

That would just make for a harsh and over-damped ride. If you want to modify it to keep the heat down, then fit cooling ducts or heat-sink fins. If you still think that's not enough, fit aftermarket shocks with aluminium bodies and bigger, remote, reservoirs which again can be mounted in a location to get more cooling breeze.

The easiest way to prevent failure is simply to be aware of what's happening, drive at different speeds if possible and take breaks to let them cool if you think they're getting too hot.

You guys are much more aware of technical specs and the general physics of it all than I am, but I think I'm fairly typical of the average owner who wants to to simply turn the key and give it a burl.
I think the story is more interesting for that reason. Most owners are like me, average kind of guys who don't spend their lives obsessing about off road adventures, who do it as an occasional thing.

Greg, I assume from your comment that the left and right rears are different that your vehicle has the CVD feature with the extra canister attached to the rear of each rear shock. I wonder if LR's CVD algorithms don't cater for the particularly bad conditions of that road and have set the shocks too hard for the corrugations. I'm contemplating fitting CVD shocks to my D4 but would build my own controller to manually set the firmness which would allow them to be set soft for bad corrugations to stop the oil from overheating.

Edit. There might be a demand for a CVD manual override system to allow the driver to determine the setting if needed. Another Llams project?

Originally Posted by Graeme

Greg, I assume from your comment that the left and right rears are different that your vehicle has the CVD feature with the extra canister attached to the rear of each rear shock. I wonder if LR's CVD algorithms don't cater for the particularly bad conditions of that road and have set the shocks too hard for the corrugations. I'm contemplating fitting CVD shocks to my D4 but would build my own controller to manually set the firmness which would allow them to be set soft for bad corrugations to stop the oil from overheating.

Edit. There might be a demand for a CVD manual override system to allow the driver to determine the setting if needed. Another Llams project?

Graeme, I get what you're talking about. I have noticed the CVD canisters attached to the shocks, didn't know what they were for. Now I understand. I learn a little bit more each day.
Either way, this stuff is way more advanced than 99.9% of LR buyers will ever have to consider. Perhaps this exercise is an opportunity for LR to sell a normal 'suburban' full fat and a more detailed, hard-edged 'off-road' full fat?

FOOTNOTE: has any full fat ever been put through the same exercise in Australia as I've just put mine through?

That's a sad story, and looks like it is going to be expensive for Land Rover

Reminds me of the story of the 5 or 6 Luxury Mercedes G-Wagons doing a similar trip, and every single one of them died from shocks failing. Only the one base model (like the army has) didn't have shock failures.

Hope you're back on the road real soon.

Cheers
David

I understand that the extra oil canisters are only fitted to the CVD version of the shocks to increase the oil volume because LR know they can get hotter than the non-CVD versions. I assume that you wouldn't have been using dynamic mode.