plainjaneFJC
Deplorable
Does the vehicle have to be in production? I am thinking the Bronco, TRX, or Gladiator.
New Defender News
- Thread starter blackangie
- Start date
Corgi_express
Well-known member
Please do! I subscribed to this thread because I want to be notified of news, seeing as how the title of the thread is "New Defender News" - not hear a bunch of keyboard warriors crying about how they are being oppressed.
naks
Well-known member
Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Nah, I'm old school. Not on instagram or twitter. Haven't been on my facebook page in years.Come over to Instagram, that's where all the action is these days...
Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Maybe? Or as I have read elsewhere parks etc.. seem to be busy. Maybe everyone is just out and about? I said about. Not aboot.....
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Todd n Natalie
OverCamper
Lol, thank you. But, I won't be signing up for Instagram. I have zero interest in it.
Here, I'll make it easy for you....just click on these links.
T-Willy
Well-known member
Land Rover continues its legendary reliability with TFL's new Defender. "A" for service effort, but still an "F."
TFL has owned this Defender for two weeks and a few hundred miles; it's been at the dealership for all but two of those days. JLR flew in an engineer last Monday to help; it sounds like the problems, which persist, have at least been diagnosed. We'll see. Obviously, this level of service (one's own engineer) exceeds what an average consumer would enjoy; this is a best case service scenario for Defender.
- CEL code is back - diagnosed as needing new injectors, coils, wires
- Camera malfunction - diagnosed as a broken computer module, which is backordered
TFL has owned this Defender for two weeks and a few hundred miles; it's been at the dealership for all but two of those days. JLR flew in an engineer last Monday to help; it sounds like the problems, which persist, have at least been diagnosed. We'll see. Obviously, this level of service (one's own engineer) exceeds what an average consumer would enjoy; this is a best case service scenario for Defender.
- CEL code is back - diagnosed as needing new injectors, coils, wires
- Camera malfunction - diagnosed as a broken computer module, which is backordered
ChasingOurTrunks
Well-known member
EDIT: T-Willy and I were posting at the same time but I’ll leave mine here with my comments.
Update this morning on the TFL Defender. In summary, it’s great that JLR and the local dealer has been very responsive — even going so far as to fly out an engineer — but lets face it, a guy like me doesn’t have a 300k subscribers on YouTube, and I’m not sure if everyone gets this level of treatment but I suspect they probably do not.
There appears to be two problems - the camera module is bad, and is back ordered by quite a while. And, the engine is throwing a trouble code on two cylinders. Let me rephrase — I HOPE there are two problems. Their experience has me a bit worried — a few pages ago, I commented that I was curious as to “how it breaks“ and we’re starting to see that now. I don’t mind complexity and features, but I need the basic functions of the vehicle to work even if my cameras or heated seats go on the fritz in the middle of nowhere. I don’t expect things to never break, as repairs are part of life with any vehicle, but my concern was and is that these systems are too integrated so if one goes wrong, it has an impact on other systems and prevents a basic function from happening (i.e. triggering a limp home or similar). There are two scenarios I’m seeing with this one:
1) The TFL Defender really flubbed on the QA/QC, and the camera module and engine trouble are unrelated. A car with 300 miles on it with two totally unrelated failures that requires two weeks and counting at the dealership is concerning. Imagine being on a tour somewhere, and having a similar issue — most of us are lucky if we get two weeks off to do an adventure any given year. The real question is how common is this experience, because at the end of the day, even Toyota makes lemons from time to time — anecdotes do not equal data. So the question for this scenario is, out of the XX,000 they have sold, what percentage are seeing failures like this? We likely won’t know for some time, but I can live with this scenario.
2) If it’s not two separate failures, then that means that somehow, and much more troubling, the complex computer systems that control the cameras have caused the vehicle’s engine to malfunction. This shouldn’t happen and if this is true, it’s bad design — these systems should be isolated so that if one ancillary system (cameras) fails, the engine will still work. I don’t know if this is the case but it’s in the back of my mind as something to look out for.
They are swapping injectors and some wiring, so we’ll see if they are unrelated.
T-Willy
Well-known member
All good commentary, this point ^ especially.
I generally agree that anecdotes do not equal data and that everyone makes occasional lemons. I think it's also fair to say that JLR's history of poor reliability is a data context making this example more worrisome. Despite these early failures, I'm eager to see if these problems prove to be isolated early glitches or the first in a parade. Defender's reliability statistics in two or three years from now will be interesting.
I hope they did a leak down test on those two troublesome cylinders. Even being a new engine there’s still the potential for valve or ring issues. Obviously that’s less likely than a injector or wiring issue but still a possibility. Having been around JLR products a long time I highly doubt a bad camera module is causing the engine issues but oven been wrong before. Historically if I’ve ever had a fault on a component it would only screw with the system it’s a part of. Like for example if the suspension glitches out it wouldn’t affect anything but the suspension and terrain response.
T-Willy
Well-known member
Yeah, I was wondering about valves and rings too. I hadn't considered the possible connectedness of the camera and cylinder problems until Chasing raised it. It seems unlikely, and I would expect engineers to silo systems to preclude domino cross-failures, but it's still something to watch.
plainjaneFJC
Deplorable
Love the TFL guys, about as honest as you can get.
ChasingOurTrunks
Well-known member
Couldn’t agree more. If this was a new Toyota product, everyone would be shocked — I know I would immediately assume “Lemon” and “Bad Luck”, but with JLR’s reputation, it doesn’t feel that way at this stage. But, feeling that way doesn’t make it true. I am beyond impressed by how little they had to modify the James Bond Defenders before throwing them through the air over and over again — so the vehicle seems well engineered, and I’m hopeful that these are just first-year growing pains.
Cheers fellas - it’s hard to know the design philosophy/trends from a marque I’ve not owned or used extensively myself, so I appreciate that context of other potential causes from folks who have lived with this brand for a while. It does seem unlikely that the engine and the camera issue are connected if systems in other JLR products are seperate, which suggests that Scenario 1 is the most probable.
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Unfortunately I'm not sure the TFL Defender is an isolated incident. As some may have seen from my post back in June "Rovid's Trial Run", I was the first customer delivery in CO and now have 5,000 miles on mine. In my 5 months of ownership, it's been to the dealer on 6 separate occasions for a total nearing 5 weeks of shop time. Haven't had their issues, instead a lot of other electrical faults and also the auto-collision warning come out of nowhere while driving on I-70. Also have had a lot of QA/QC issues related to the A-Pillar known issue but multiple squeaks and rattles in the B & C pillars which they continue to work on. These issues transcend simply being 'the first run' of a vehicle and directly point to LR's continued QA issues.