Joined
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84 Posts
A big HOWDY from Texas to the LRDS Forum!
I have had my LRDS since late May. Beautiful car, Scotia Grey with the almond interior. Drives like a dream rocket on the road compared to my previous Jeeps and so far all good out in the country. I am a little over 1,000 miles before my second scheduled service at 20,000 miles. You know what the British say: “That’s the difference between you Americans and we British, to us 100 miles is a long way and to you 100 years is a long time.” The car has been on five different major trips from Texas to Kansas (short first “sea trial” trip), Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia and the latest South Carolina (drove over 500 miles in continuous light to heavy rain on this last trip – really love the rear fog light feature). I have also done a modest amount of towing with the vehicle and it preformed surprisingly well.
While choosing options I unfortunately got talked out of the blind spot monitoring system – there is a very bad blind spot right rear (passenger side). Using the terrain response features is a little confusing - switching to a terrain feature while in Sport mode on the transmission puts the transmission into a manual shift mode. Probably a good idea but a big surprise the first time and something that I can’t quite remember every time I switch to a terrain mode. I installed a vault in the cargo space that is through-bolted to the luggage tie down tracks. It requires a special tool to remove which I keep in the vault. In about two minutes with this tool I can have the vault loose and pushed forward for access to the spare tire well.
Now for the juicy bits. I despise the fact that I cannot permanently disable the Eco Stop/Start since it is slow to respond when tooling around town. It shuts down way too often and way too soon as many traffic stops are very transient and the engine shuts down right when I’m ready to give the car gas again. A feature I can never remember to turn off at each engine start. The electronics seem very sluggish (slow to load) and somewhat unreliable. I have had the navigation card problem but not as bad as some have described here. Bluetooth frequently is slow to connect or fails altogether. The system can’t read all my audio files on the USB drive (there is nothing wrong with them on the computer and yes they are the same file type as everything else – please give me a CD player option, so much simpler).
Beyond these minor disappointments my GF says my car is “snake bit” (we’re from Teas after all) and it has indeed been a real saga. Since delivery the car has spent a total of about four weeks in the shop at the dealership. It all started with my extreme displeasure at the response of the transmission and turbo system at low speeds (I received one of the first cars here in Houston so had never been able to test drive anything other than an Evoque). One reviewer talked about how “…your passengers may feel that you are using the accelerator as an on/off switch.” I couldn’t agree more - this sucks. I hope they figure out how to fix this (maybe with the new engine?) because I find driving around town in traffic to be a bit testy a times (and yes I use Sport mode which is helpful but doesn't solve the problem).
I was having so much difficulty with this when I first got the car I took it into the dealership and they basically said “get used to it” since they couldn’t find anything wrong with the car. I complained so much I got the General Manager involved. He asked the more experienced head of the Service Department to take a test drive with me so I could show him the problem. Basically the Service Manager accused me of child abuse. He said my “adaptive transmission” was a baby – it was still trying to learn how I drive and I kept trying to adapt my driving to the car. Obviously we were not getting along – maybe I should have gone to a LRDS birthing class? Anyway I stopped trying to adapt myself to the car and while the transmission and I still don’t get along very well at times I am pleased to report that things between us are much better now.
About a week after receiving the car and my “sea trial” trip to Kansas, the car went in to the dealership to install roof rails, a trailer hitch and undershields. The dealer dented the roof installing the rails, broke the cover on the rear bumper installing useless and purely cosmetic "undershields" and they couldn't tell me where to plug in the electrics after installing the trailer hitch. The dealership replaced the ridiculous undershields with parts from another car and I figured out that the electrics swing down from under the bumper for use when towing (quite nifty but I guess only the installer knew that and he wasn’t around when I picked up the car). They couldn’t figure out how to fix the dent so the car had to go over to the Aston Martin dealership for repair (thankfully on LR’s nickel). I would have liked to have seen the disdain on the Aston Martin body shop guys faces while having to repair a lowly LRDS.
The factory did not adequately tighten the drain plug on the rear differential but thanks to my car savvy GF we caught the fluid leak before any damage was done. Later the dealership popped a tire when bringing it around front for pick up after my first 10,000 mile service and subsequent to that my tire service guys managed to destroy a different tire while trying remove a small screw from the tread.
About 200 miles into my last 2,000 mile road trip a warning light popped up alerting me that I am now in two-wheel drive mode and have lost all-wheel drive traction. After researching the problem this means the transmission software has disabled the rear differential due to some internal error message or a fault indication from the rear differential. The warning light immediately went away when I stopped to investigate and restarted the engine. I have gotten the warning light one other time, right at the end of my return on that trip, same thing, a stop/start immediately reset the system. I should go in for the 20,000 mile service in about a month’s time. Unless the warning returns permanently I’ll wait until then to have it looked into.
In spite of all the difficulties I have persevered and the honeymoon is not yet over as I am still in love with the car. Not sure about the timing of delivery in the US of the new models with the new engine but I look forward to test driving one soon. If they are any improvement over my current “adaptive transmission” you can bet I will upgrade at the earliest opportunity and get the blind spot monitoring system too.
Safe travels to all.
I have had my LRDS since late May. Beautiful car, Scotia Grey with the almond interior. Drives like a dream rocket on the road compared to my previous Jeeps and so far all good out in the country. I am a little over 1,000 miles before my second scheduled service at 20,000 miles. You know what the British say: “That’s the difference between you Americans and we British, to us 100 miles is a long way and to you 100 years is a long time.” The car has been on five different major trips from Texas to Kansas (short first “sea trial” trip), Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia and the latest South Carolina (drove over 500 miles in continuous light to heavy rain on this last trip – really love the rear fog light feature). I have also done a modest amount of towing with the vehicle and it preformed surprisingly well.
While choosing options I unfortunately got talked out of the blind spot monitoring system – there is a very bad blind spot right rear (passenger side). Using the terrain response features is a little confusing - switching to a terrain feature while in Sport mode on the transmission puts the transmission into a manual shift mode. Probably a good idea but a big surprise the first time and something that I can’t quite remember every time I switch to a terrain mode. I installed a vault in the cargo space that is through-bolted to the luggage tie down tracks. It requires a special tool to remove which I keep in the vault. In about two minutes with this tool I can have the vault loose and pushed forward for access to the spare tire well.
Now for the juicy bits. I despise the fact that I cannot permanently disable the Eco Stop/Start since it is slow to respond when tooling around town. It shuts down way too often and way too soon as many traffic stops are very transient and the engine shuts down right when I’m ready to give the car gas again. A feature I can never remember to turn off at each engine start. The electronics seem very sluggish (slow to load) and somewhat unreliable. I have had the navigation card problem but not as bad as some have described here. Bluetooth frequently is slow to connect or fails altogether. The system can’t read all my audio files on the USB drive (there is nothing wrong with them on the computer and yes they are the same file type as everything else – please give me a CD player option, so much simpler).
Beyond these minor disappointments my GF says my car is “snake bit” (we’re from Teas after all) and it has indeed been a real saga. Since delivery the car has spent a total of about four weeks in the shop at the dealership. It all started with my extreme displeasure at the response of the transmission and turbo system at low speeds (I received one of the first cars here in Houston so had never been able to test drive anything other than an Evoque). One reviewer talked about how “…your passengers may feel that you are using the accelerator as an on/off switch.” I couldn’t agree more - this sucks. I hope they figure out how to fix this (maybe with the new engine?) because I find driving around town in traffic to be a bit testy a times (and yes I use Sport mode which is helpful but doesn't solve the problem).
I was having so much difficulty with this when I first got the car I took it into the dealership and they basically said “get used to it” since they couldn’t find anything wrong with the car. I complained so much I got the General Manager involved. He asked the more experienced head of the Service Department to take a test drive with me so I could show him the problem. Basically the Service Manager accused me of child abuse. He said my “adaptive transmission” was a baby – it was still trying to learn how I drive and I kept trying to adapt my driving to the car. Obviously we were not getting along – maybe I should have gone to a LRDS birthing class? Anyway I stopped trying to adapt myself to the car and while the transmission and I still don’t get along very well at times I am pleased to report that things between us are much better now.
About a week after receiving the car and my “sea trial” trip to Kansas, the car went in to the dealership to install roof rails, a trailer hitch and undershields. The dealer dented the roof installing the rails, broke the cover on the rear bumper installing useless and purely cosmetic "undershields" and they couldn't tell me where to plug in the electrics after installing the trailer hitch. The dealership replaced the ridiculous undershields with parts from another car and I figured out that the electrics swing down from under the bumper for use when towing (quite nifty but I guess only the installer knew that and he wasn’t around when I picked up the car). They couldn’t figure out how to fix the dent so the car had to go over to the Aston Martin dealership for repair (thankfully on LR’s nickel). I would have liked to have seen the disdain on the Aston Martin body shop guys faces while having to repair a lowly LRDS.
The factory did not adequately tighten the drain plug on the rear differential but thanks to my car savvy GF we caught the fluid leak before any damage was done. Later the dealership popped a tire when bringing it around front for pick up after my first 10,000 mile service and subsequent to that my tire service guys managed to destroy a different tire while trying remove a small screw from the tread.
About 200 miles into my last 2,000 mile road trip a warning light popped up alerting me that I am now in two-wheel drive mode and have lost all-wheel drive traction. After researching the problem this means the transmission software has disabled the rear differential due to some internal error message or a fault indication from the rear differential. The warning light immediately went away when I stopped to investigate and restarted the engine. I have gotten the warning light one other time, right at the end of my return on that trip, same thing, a stop/start immediately reset the system. I should go in for the 20,000 mile service in about a month’s time. Unless the warning returns permanently I’ll wait until then to have it looked into.
In spite of all the difficulties I have persevered and the honeymoon is not yet over as I am still in love with the car. Not sure about the timing of delivery in the US of the new models with the new engine but I look forward to test driving one soon. If they are any improvement over my current “adaptive transmission” you can bet I will upgrade at the earliest opportunity and get the blind spot monitoring system too.
Safe travels to all.
