Hey all, I'm about 3000mi away from my factory warranty expiring on my 2020 110 HSE. I've been using a JLR dealership for service up until now, but post-warranty may start using a private mechanic. I love my Defender and plan to keep it for as long as I possibly can. Is it worth buying a decent OBD tool for the small things that may come up? For instance, I just had service on the vehicle because one of the proximity sensors in the bumper failed. I had a feeling that's what it was after research here, and it was confirmed & fixed at the dealer. My thought going forward is that there might be the odd thing I could possibly take care of myself if I can at least get a read on what the vehicle is telling me. The most repair I've done myself so far is to replace a speaker in the front passenger door, and swap the air filter that requires getting behind the glove box. I'm not scared to dig deeper, but I'm hoping for some honest opinions.

Thanks in advance for any input. Even an answer of "don't touch anything and take it to British Car Service every time" is a perfectly acceptable piece of advice 😂

 

Have @GavinC give you a pep talk on the GAP tool. The best scan tool you can buy, hands down. You can not only read/clear codes, but you can change car configuration files, activate features and adjust the ride height to name a few.

 

Off topic, but I clicked on your Instagram link and dude, you mixed some of my favorite songs and albums of all time. Wicked cool!!

 

Thanks! 30 years in the music biz, and still going. I'm one of the lucky ones.

 

I don't know how much money we're talking about for one these days but in my younger days I always bought one for whatever car I was driving. Seems to me if you're going to keep it then it's a good investment. Even if you aren't going to do the work yourself I think it's still worth it just to have a better idea of what's going on when you do bring it in.

Since I started buying new cars I haven't bothered with one because outside of my year and a half of Defender ownership I've never had a new car that was having any issues. The one thing I will say is the Defender did not always leave codes for stalling incidents it was having, in fact of the dozen or so times it would stall and not restart immediately only once did the CEL stay lit for several hours and for that incident the dealership said it did leave a code, something about not getting any fuel. They were never able to fix that issue or figure out the root cause.

So, long story short, it certainly might prove useful to have one on hand but I honestly don't know how many codes these things will log reliably even where there is an actual incident.

 

This is the scan tool you want. Like I said, you can read/clear codes, change car configuration files, activate features that you didn't originally have and so much more. It isn't cheap, but it pays for itself.

https://www.gap-diagnostic.com/shop/iidtool-bt/

 

The Gap tool is the only way to go especially if you plan on keeping your Defender for the long haul. I've had mine since my LR4 days and I was able to transfer it to my Defender. If you can wait a few months typically you can save some money during the black Friday deals. Got mine at Lucky8.

 

Thanks @CincyRovers @Chief65 and @Jbiggzs for the input. Def gonna grab the Gap tool, most likely around Black Friday like mentioned.