5 Year Trip in an INEOS Grenadier Across the World towing a Patriot X3 Which We Live In
- Thread starter Matt P
- Start date
Rockyroad5023
Member
Awesome family trip! Safe travels!
Hightechcoonass
Observer
Still binge watching! Grenadier owner myself…
Matt P
Member
You get used to it after a while. I had some training in the military with much larger trailers and so this wasn't too bad but you have to be careful and have to think ahead, especially on narrow trails and in cities. As for build advice, we're largely standard although you may find this useful:
60,000km INEOS Grenadier Write Up / Review After Driving it Mainly Off Road Around Europe and Asia For The Past Two Years
I wanted to share our experience to contribute to the community, but also because everyone on The INEOS Forum and in the Facebook groups writing about their experiences has been incredibly helpful from our side. This is a new vehicle and so to see what’s going on around the world has been great! I hope people will find this useful.
We have an INEOS Grenadier Trialmaster Petrol with a few factory options. Everything else is pretty much standard. We’ve done close to 60,000km. About 75-80% off-road, towing a Patriot X3 Trailer
Conditions
- Temps: -10C to +55C
- Elevation: Sea level to 17300ft
- Conditions (Snow / Ice / Gravel / Rock / Sand / Mud / Clay / Swamp / Water to wading limit / Asphalt - Everything!)
- UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, India, Nepal
- 20000km in Sofia Bulgaria at INEOS Dealer
- 40000km in Almaty, Kazakhstan (BMW Garage) as no INEOS dealers for a very long way after Sofia (if you’re in Asia)
- Changed all brake pads at 47,000 km
- Next service in Mongolia
- 4 litres of extra oil required on top of normal servicing at 20k, 40k
- Max range on motorway / highway whilst towing a Patriot X3 Gen 1- 450km (with original AT tyres)
- Min range on tough offroad whilst towing 230-240km
- Fuel gauge is very conservative, becomes a little annoying after a while. Ours also stays around half full for a long time then drops off quickly.
- Have to carry additional fuel regularly ~100L to do what we do. Initially we used Jerry cans, then Jerry cans plus fuel bladders (not recommended) and now we have a LRA 90L aux tank which we’re very happy with. The LRA tank plus our two Jerry cans brings us to 220L.
- One major downside of the Grenadier is the range for the petrol version. Saying that, we can deal with it if it means it’s made of high-quality components, which it is. It's been extremely strong so far in everything we’ve put it through. We didn’t go for diesel because of DPF and AdBlue issues with where we’re going on our trip.
Matt P
Member
Issues
- Air con - Issue we all have. Better on the warm side of things, keeping things cool, it struggles a lot. We have been in some pretty hot conditions but I don’t think that should be an excuse - Better after filter change but then reverts back to how it was. No leak confirmed. (Because of this we have the windows down a lot and end up having more dust on the inside than the outside sometimes!)
- Trailer module - We had a PCB Failure (Trailer module replaced under warranty)
- Didn’t start once in Uzbekistan - Tried multiple times. Very strange. Waited 20 mins and started fine. No issues since. Apparently a known gremlin with no fix
- Sticky door locks after rain - Still waiting for full replacement. Will do in Mongolia
- Dashboard warnings - Many After we disconnected the battery we had the Airbag warning on and were told it should still work fine. The parking sensors also stopped working. (No drama) Still have a service light and also brake warning and TSA but we know why the last two are, we’ll get them reset and resolved in Mongolia
- Foot plates on half of the doors have come off
- Various bolts came loose over time. The back door handle actually came off in my hand but it went back on fine. (Happened twice) All of the others went back fine too. This was mainly after a lot of corrugated trails.
- Trailer stops charging at 84km/hr - we know why but it’s frustrating. The rear NATO is supposedly rear winch only. We’ve decided to rewire through an Anderson. It should be configured so that you can charge a trailer though. I’d say that it is a lot more common to tow a trailer than have a rear winch.
- Back door mechanism broke - the metal bit at the bottom of the door snapped in half. We have a standard tyre on the back and that’s it. (We carry kids shoes in the compartment in the spare)
- Back door lock of the smaller door got stuck several times and had to open from inside. It just needed cleaning but something to watch out for
- Back door rubber stops - both fall off regularly
- Paint on bottom sill of passenger door coming off
- Some protective film coming off on roof rack
- Rust on rock sliders - Now have Agile Offroad ones which are way better than the factory option. Lighter, more ground clearance and a footstep
- Automatic light function and car play sometimes on the blink but seems to self correct over time and then revert back.
- Very squeaky driver's window
- Temperature display remains on the previous night temperature for hours into the next day (esp when it’s cold). Eg It'll say 0 when it's clearly much warmer (20+)
- Stone chip on windscreen from lorry in China. It’s holding for now.
- Hit the rear bash plate, rear control arms and fuel tank guard several times, despite being as careful as we could
- Factory rock sliders took a big hit (slipped off a big wet rock) and did what they’re supposed to, no other damage. (This was after the rust began on the sliders)
- Steering wheel already starting to wear a bit in some places
- Driver's footwell (RHD). Not an issue unless you do many days over 5hrs in row or if you haven’t driven the Grenadier for a while and go straight back into long journeys. I'm 6ft 1.
- Steering - You get used to it. It’s not ideal in tight spaces (parking for example or having to turn around, especially with a trailer! )
- Annoying warnings that constantly come up. Tyre pressure mainly, despite resetting
- Didn’t start once - Tried multiple times. Very strange. Waited 20 mins and started fine. No issues since. Apparently a known gremlin with no fix..
- Pin falls out of transfer case lever (Still no fix) Unacceptable in my eyes, if you don’t take preventative action, like we what we’ve done with the zip ties, you could be in a whole world of hurt, depending on the situation you’re in. This didn’t happen to us as I zip tied the minute I heard about it happening to the first Grenadier. Since then, I know it’s happened to quite a few.
- Bit tricky to get diffs in and out and wading mode etc. Key to that from my perspective. When you go off road, put Off Road mode in straight away. Sounds obvious but saves hassle further down the line.
- Lock diffs- Straightforward just do in order. Rear then front.
- Unlock diffs - Easiest we’ve found is to take the centre diff out and then do a few full lock turns left and right and it all comes out every time. Then lock the centre diff again if you need it.
- Zip tie transfer case lever (Still no fix for the pin falling out)
- Bowden cables (get them replaced by INEOS or get the Agile Off-road Shifter bracket solution or put pipe insulation and zip ties around so no rubbing. Thanks Dave (Logsplitter for the heads up on these in the early days)
- Check all hoses/pipes/wiring in and around the engine bay and front light area - Lots of rubbing in various places. (Again, thanks, Dave for the heads up here too)
- Get the additional radiator and transfer case oil cooler brackets fitted if you haven’t got it on your Grenadier. A few people have had issues. You have to retrofit if you have plastic bumpers, as they’re metal bumper parts.
- Keep locks clean. You don’t want to not be able to open the rear door if you really need to and the only option is to unpack everything from the inside (Speaking from experience)
- Batteries run down quite fast over a few days with minimal drain. Just using 12v and charging a few things so be aware, you may need to run the car every now and again to keep them at a good state. (We have dual battery system from factory)
- Don’t drive fast with a petrol Trialmaster while towing, especially uphill, you’ll run out of fuel fast…
Matt P
Member
What We Love
We like to keep it as standard as possible but these are all due to our experiences to date
I hope this helps, especially the preventive stuff. We’ll do our best to answer any questions, keep everyone posted periodically and help wherever we can.
We’d also like to give a special shout-out to everyone at Denton’s in Skipton who have been there every time we have a question or concern. They’ve been great throughout. We’ve also received great support from Dragan at INEOS in Sofia, Charles at INEOS Kavango, Ariunbat and Matt at INEOS in Mongolia, Stu who runs the INEOS Forum and Dave (Logsplitter on the INEOS forum). We’d also like to thank everyone who has supported us through the challenging time we had with the fire in our trailer. We can’t thank you enough. It’s allowed us to continue this journey which means a lot, thank you.
- Most things to be honest. The way it has handled what we’ve put it through has been very impressive, despite all the very small things mentioned above. We’ve found that with 285/70/17 MT tyres and all the lockers, it’s unstoppable in some pretty challenging conditions. Testing is still underway..
- Build quality always impresses me
- The ZF Gearbox and engine are great.
- HDC is amazing
- Off-road capability using just L and centre diff is very impressive! We use rear diff when required and front diff rarely but we have used it enough to justify it.
- Toot horn is very useful in a number of situations - way less aggressive than the main horn
- All the switches - Very well laid out and easy to understand and operate
- Recaro Seats - Very good
- All in all, as we all know, very well built and over-engineered, built for trips like we're doing.
- Most things to be honest. The way it has handled what we’ve put it through has been very impressive, despite all the very small things mentioned above. We’ve found that with 285/70/17 MT tyres and all the lockers, it’s unstoppable in some pretty challenging conditions. Testing is still underway..
- Rubber on ladder steps
- Proper snorkel
- Higher ground clearance
- New air con system
- Shorter bumper
- Steering locks adjusted from factory to allow for a tighter radius
- Smaller footplate for RHD cars even though I understand why they can’t with current versions
- More USB C Ports
- 240V Inverter as was originally planned
- Warnings need to have an option to clear permanently, but have a recall option to check warning history and bring it back up if you’d like to (Can get annoying after a while)
- Fuel gauge levels need correcting
- Better way of connecting and powering trailer rather than turning off at 84km/hr (We now do ours through an Anderson plug)
- Auto dimming on the infotainment screen at night
- Illumination on ignition
- Better AT tyres from the factory, they’re not great in the wet or mud
We like to keep it as standard as possible but these are all due to our experiences to date
- REDARC Brake controller
- 285/70/17 tyres (Currently using MT tyres and they’re a game changer in terms of capabilities of the vehicle. We're still deciding on what we’ll use for the rest of the trip. Aggressive AT tyre, RT tyre or stick with MT)
- LRA 90L aux fuel tank with Edelbrock pump and uprated black OEM springs
- Melvill and Moon Black Seat Covers - Great for protection, fit and storage
- Diff breathers (From Agile Offroad)
- New Rocksliders (From Agile Offroad)
- Full Underbody protection - Engine and centre skid plate / Fuel Tank / Rear Control arms skids / Diff covers / Diff skid plates (All from Agile Offroad)
- Shifter Cable Support Bracket (Agile Offroad)
- Reservoir cap seals (Agile Offroad)
- Starlink Mini
- A slight lift, possibly. Needs to be proven in tough terrain over a long period of time due to the CV joint risk that’s been well documented. If anyone has any suggestions here, we’re open to them.
We’d also like to give a special shout-out to everyone at Denton’s in Skipton who have been there every time we have a question or concern. They’ve been great throughout. We’ve also received great support from Dragan at INEOS in Sofia, Charles at INEOS Kavango, Ariunbat and Matt at INEOS in Mongolia, Stu who runs the INEOS Forum and Dave (Logsplitter on the INEOS forum). We’d also like to thank everyone who has supported us through the challenging time we had with the fire in our trailer. We can’t thank you enough. It’s allowed us to continue this journey which means a lot, thank you.
Matt P
Member
Check out the reply I've just put above.
Matt P
Member
Glad you're enjoying the journey! Plenty more to come!
Matt P
Member
Caught up yet? Enjoying your Grenadier?
Matt P
Member
Glad you enjoyed the podcast with Scott, we'll do a part two soon.
As for the videos, they're all
HERE
Podcast here for anyone that wants to listen: https://expeditionportal.com/matt-prior-on-traveling-the-silk-road-with-a-family/
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