I'm bringing this thread back from the dead because I've seen conversations about brake job prices on the Defender, and I still enjoy doing some of my own maintenance, so it's a valid discussion. Is there anything special with doing a Defender brake job? I've done brake replacement on a newer Ford that has the electronic parking brake, hill assist, and some collision detection / brake pre-loading, and it seems all of that is handled at the master cylinder side of things - the brakes were still the usual caliper + rotor setup and the job was the same (remove caliper, pull off old pads, push / crank back pistons, replace rotor, put caliper and new pads back on). I assume the Lucky8 caliper swap is the same as any caliper replacement as far as swapping and then bleeding the lines...

 

I haven’t done a brake job on a Defender but have done brake jobs on an LR4 and pre-gen Range Rover Sport, it was pretty easy. Have done complete brake jobs on Porsche and Mercedes and it wasn’t too difficult. The Porsche was most complex but teachable. I’m going to assume Defender is easy as well, as long as you follow factory procedures including new bolts and torque settings. I love doing our own brakes. It’s fun and rewarding. I’m sure you’ll be fine.

 

No, it is not dependent on having TR2.

TR2 is kind of like an off-road “cruise control” which automatically controls the throttle/speed to proceed based on whatever terrain that you are tackling with.

To my understanding,

electronic active differential (torque vectoring by braking) which is part of the “off-road pack” provides both ON road and OFF road benefits.

ON road benefits would be in the form of eliminating or significantly reducing under steer when you are making turns in high speed. The result is sort of like “driving on rail” with remarkable traction. Hence, many high performance sport cars are equipped with brake based torque vectoring (e.g. jaguar F-TYPE & F-Pace, Audi RS5, Mercedes AMG CLA45 and VW GTI to name a few etc).

OFF-road benefits would be the obvious which probably don’t need to be repeated here.

The brake wear due to torque vectoring in this case would/should depend upon driving style. As you can imagine, if you are not entering a turn in a “spirited” manner, the sensors would/should detect not much under steer and as a result would/should not apply much braking to the inner wheel during such turn.

 

I, too, would love to see a video re: someone changing the brakes. Love that India forced the issue and would be interested in seeing how it works in the US. However, for now, you need what appears to be a very proprietary diagnostic equipment to unlock the Emergency Parking Break controllers.

The Defender Workshop manual states that Step #1 for changing the brake pads is: "Use the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) approved diagnostic equipment to activate the Integrated Power Brake assembly mode. Refer to Integrated Power Brake Assembly Mode (206-00 Brake System - General Information, General Procedures)." Basically it goes on to tell you how to use the JLR equipment to set/reset the EPB before / after changing brakes.

 

The old Mortal Kombat button sequence doesn't work anymore?

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@_Allegedly - I raise a pint to you! Only wish I could buy you a pint at a pub. Well done for the public contribution and personally appreciated.

 

Unfortunately the "Integrated Power Brake assembly mode" is a procedure that affects the ABS module and has nothing to do with the Electric Park Brake service mode (which can indeed be manually activated and deactivated in the Defender as in the LR4, although the step-by-step procedure is a bit different - see attached.) As far as I know, you can activate / deactivate Integrated Power Brake assembly mode only via approved diagnostics. Whether or not that's a mandatory step for a successful brake job remains to be seen, since that would mean indy mechanics / DIYers unequipped with LR's diagnostic software may not be able to ever perform simple brake jobs on this vehicle, and that kind of proprietary BS by car manufacturers is normally frowned upon by all sorts of consumer protection agencies here.

PS: Just picked up my 2020 from its first (21K-mile) scheduled service. FWIW, both front and rear brakes are still fine according to the dealer - which kind of surprised me as on my old LR4 the rear brakes especially would last me no more than 15-17K miles, the front ones maybe 20-25K miles, max. With my Defender being equipped with rear locker and torque vectoring by braking, I expected similar numbers - if not worse. I have 22.5K miles on it currently, a mix of roughly 60% highway, 30% miserable city stop-n-go and 10% off-road driving.

 

Here in Massachusetts they passed the “right to repair” bill that says all Indy shops have to have access to the tops and diagnostics needed to service oem new cars, so theoretically any Land Rover diagnostic software required by the dealer is actually available to the public to also use.
when I looked into it for the Volvo of my wife two years back. It was a ~$2000 box that plugged into obdii and a laptop to give you access. The internet figured out how to create an emulator and was selling it online for like….400? If I recall correctly.

so the software HAS to be publicly available. At least here in mass, but the question is what would it cost an Indy shop or the private owner.

 

Thanks for reporting and i am glad to see that torque vectoring by braking didn’t contribute “significant” additional brake wear. Out of curiosity, do you typically drive sedately, mildly spiritedly, spiritedly, or Dakar rally style?

 

Depends on you you ask. Me? Mildly spirited. My wife? Dakar rally style.