This whole saga smells like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.

 

It certainly appears this design flaw will affect 100% of P400 engines, most, if not all, within the warranty period.

Most folks will never be aware of it as the broken bolts will vanish to the roadside, or be caught under the shielding, hidden for so long that the vehicle warranty will be long gone.
LR can continue to do nothing about an issue, I have no doubt they have been long aware of. There's just no way the engineering dept. aren't seeing these failures.

Most dealerships won't see it as the bolts are so well hidden. O2 readings will be passed off as a sensor glitch and addressed accordingly, mystery broken bolts on skid plates will be ignored or missed entirely.

It is a fleetingly rare owner who will actually ever find an errant bolt, figure out where it's from, and bring it to the attention of LR before the warranty is up.

It's a shame LR dealerships or LR USA don't employ someone to monitor these user groups. They'd glean so much useful knowledge. Perhaps come up with some special tooling to get the bolts out or redsign a new bolt.

Maybe the P400 and it's overcomplexity will be phased out.

 

The P400 engine is also used in the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, and the Range Rover Velar as well as the Discovery. I have not seen any reports of broken bolts on the related forums.

 

Thats what I’m saying. Few will know it’s happened despite its ubiquity

As failures go it’s too costly for LR to admit to.

 

This would align with what the shop told me. They haven't gotten to many defenders lately but a lot of the other ones you mentioned and those are the ones they are seeing the random bolt. To Gavin's point I didn't know anything was wrong until the rattle noise. The O2 sensor thing was just thought to be glitches, though I knew something wasn't right as they shouldn't all fail that quickly. And the thing is you probably need a lot of bolt failures before see excess air being pulled into the exhaust system.