Reliable 4x4s

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chil6ep

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Just logged out of my hotmail account to be presented with this:

The most and least reliable 4x4s and SUVs - Most and least reliable used 4x4s and SUVs - Photos - MSN Cars UK

Shame they don't take account of the fact that no-one in their right mind would use a warrenty company for a "Real" Landrover.

To be fiar they do say the last 8 years so Series are not counted but where do Defenders and Discos (I'm thinking 1&2) come? and reliability isn't the only thing, when a 300Tdi breaks you hit it with an increasing size hammer till it gets you to a garage (or home), a Honda CRV probably refuses to move until its had a computer pluged in as however reliable a car it will break one day if "used".
 
The biggest problem with modern cars, including RR's is that they rely too much on electronics/sensor's etc., which inherently means there is more to go wrong. Personally imo any LR's after the 300TDi Disco's/Defender's are just way too fiddly to own. Give me a basic car any day, unless you've got very deep pocket's for a new one.

Take my wife's 98' Corsa for instance, engine management light comes on, I plug it into diagnostics, give's me a reading on which sensor/part is faulty, I change part and reset ECU. This led to even more "fault's" showing up under diagnostic and an ever rougher running car. Took me a lot of dosh and sweat to sort that lil' git of a car, just glad I saved garage fee's and fitted the part's myself.
 
goonarmy said:
landrovers are not and never will be reliable.
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I disagree, most mechanical failures are due to poor maintenance, or vehicle mods. If people bothered to do things other than a basic oil and coolant change every few years then there is no reason for the vehicles to break down. Also, when you modify a vehicle from standard, you have to take into account the effect those mods will have on other components. Especially bigger tyres & suspension lifts. I frequently check and replace the oil in my gearbox & diffs, I also use the grease nipples on my prop shafts for what they were designed for! I change the coolant at the start of summer, and again at the start of winter, and the oil is changed every year, or 10,000 miles. I also presure wash the chassis and underside of the car whenever I go off road, or get the vehicle particularly wet. I know this may sound a bit silly, but the time I spend making sure my landy is not going to break down unexpectedly, is probably less the the time some people on here spend fixing stuff that breaks because of lack of maintenance.
 
goonarmy said:
martin1512 said:
I disagree, most mechanical failures are due to poor maintenance, or vehicle mods. quote]
quite simply untrue. JD power does not lie.
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I'm sorry, but to generalise that land rovers are unreliable is not true, I have owned 3 differnet land rovers over the last 15 years, and while I have had to replace worn parts on all of them, I have never been left stranded due to a mechanical failure. You quote JD power surveys, but customer surveys have never been the most accurate way of gathering data, as the data gathered by these surveys is very rarely verified, they can never be relied upon to be truly representative.
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martin1512 said:
goonarmy said:
I'm sorry, but to generalise that land rovers are unreliable is not true, I have owned 3 differnet land rovers over the last 15 years, and while I have had to replace worn parts on all of them, I have never been left stranded due to a mechanical failure. You quote JD power surveys, but customer surveys have never been the most accurate way of gathering data, as the data gathered by these surveys is very rarely verified, they can never be relied upon to be truly representative.
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:confused:ive owned and used lr too and come to the decision that they are unreliable(this is me opionion and means absolutely squat) however jd power is the most famous hence i refrence it.Dunno who the microsoft page used but suspect it werent their own work. If the data is unverified how would you rate LR in terms of reliablity? They by reputation (of owners and drivers known to me) are not reliable. So thats independant, personal and anecdotal eveidence to say they are unreliable. What do you have to counter that?
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Going by my own personal experience, and that of my friends who also own land rovers, I have found them to be 100% reliable. Part of the problem may be that people rarely fill in surveys to say how great their land rover is. It is well known that people who have a problem are far more likely to complain, than people who have no problems are to praise.
 
martin1512 said:
Going by my own personal experience, and that of my friends who also own land rovers, I have found them to be 100% reliable. Part of the problem may be that people rarely fill in surveys to say how great their land rover is. It is well known that people who have a problem are far more likely to complain, than people who have no problems are to praise.
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so you too have anecdotal evidence-which by its nature is wholly unverified. The issue is that from surveys compared to other cars the land rover marque is unreliable. The same surveys which do not get "my landy is good" probbably dont get " my citreon/seat/merc/bmw/ford/any other car brand is good" either. They just get less "this is ****" from other car manfacturors.
Lr is an unreliable car manafacture when compared to others.This is fact.
 
Oops, didn't mean to start a row!

I look at it form the numbers still in service point of view, any car that generally makes it over the 200k mark with general maintainance and service is doing OK.

The point I was trying to make that the survey only looked at newer cars and that in relation to the "winter weather" to which it refers I would rather have a car can be fixed if it breaks that one less likely to break that is stuck when it does as extreme conditions cause even the most reliable to suffer.
 
martin1512 said:
I disagree, most mechanical failures are due to poor maintenance, or vehicle mods. If people bothered to do things other than a basic oil and coolant change every few years then there is no reason for the vehicles to break down. Also, when you modify a vehicle from standard, you have to take into account the effect those mods will have on other components. Especially bigger tyres & suspension lifts. I frequently check and replace the oil in my gearbox & diffs, I also use the grease nipples on my prop shafts for what they were designed for! I change the coolant at the start of summer, and again at the start of winter, and the oil is changed every year, or 10,000 miles. I also presure wash the chassis and underside of the car whenever I go off road, or get the vehicle particularly wet. I know this may sound a bit silly, but the time I spend making sure my landy is not going to break down unexpectedly, is probably less the the time some people on here spend fixing stuff that breaks because of lack of maintenance.
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Sorry,but you are wrong - I run a LR garage fixing them for both my own customers and other garages customers so I see a big range of "Issues"
Most are electrical or fuel problems,not related to servicing.Electric fuel pumps on TD4,5 and 6,injectors on TD4 and 6.Camshaft sensors on TD4 and 6 etc,etc. I could go on and on.This afternoon I repaired a wxyz switch on a DII as I resent paying LR the stupid sum they want for yet another replacement.(Retail is around £340 + Vat)
Changing your coolant that often is quite simply a waste.
Just my opinion too,but it is a subject I feel vaguely qualified to dribble on about,esp as the scars on my wrist heal from changing a fuel pump belt on a RR sport TDv6.:mad:
 
There is no row, just a difference of opinion. I think that part of the problem is that cars are becoming more complex. All of the Land rovers I have had, have been very simple and basic, and simple basic maintenance has kept them 100% reliable. However, while Land rovers have become more & more complex, the environments and tasks we use the vehicles for have not changed all that much. So we are finding vehicles with complex engine management systems and other electronic systems are failing more often due to the harsher working conditions they are exposed to. While many more vehicles may fail less often than a Land Rover, most vehicles are not exposed to the same environments and hard use that land Rovers are. A Land Rover that is driven purely on the road, is probably no more likely to breakdown than a normal car that is driven in exactly the same manner. Whereas if you expose an normal car to the sort of working environments many Land Rovers are exposed to, then I suspect that the car fails long before the land Rover does.
 
martin1512 said:
There is no row, just a difference of opinion. I think that part of the problem is that cars are becoming more complex. All of the Land rovers I have had, have been very simple and basic, and simple basic maintenance has kept them 100% reliable. However, while Land rovers have become more & more complex, the environments and tasks we use the vehicles for have not changed all that much. So we are finding vehicles with complex engine management systems and other electronic systems are failing more often due to the harsher working conditions they are exposed to. While many more vehicles may fail less often than a Land Rover, most vehicles are not exposed to the same environments and hard use that land Rovers are. A Land Rover that is driven purely on the road, is probably no more likely to breakdown than a normal car that is driven in exactly the same manner. Whereas if you expose an normal car to the sort of working environments many Land Rovers are exposed to, then I suspect that the car fails long before the land Rover does.
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More like cheap **** components that are badly made or designed.And I have to say that a large proportion of the parts that fail are Bosch or BMW supplied - two companies that trade on a name of German reliability.
I wonder how different it would have been if Honda had been given a chance to buy LR ?
 
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