Hi everyone,

I have a '10 HSEPLS LR4

I got some unpleasant car problems on the NY eve and I am curious if anyone had similar experience. Not really sure weather to take it to the shop or not and what to tell them.

So here it goes:

Drove to Manhattan for the NY night, raised the car and parked on top of one of those snow banks. Few cars could probably park there...

Was ready to leave at 3am, got in the car and was getting some slippage on my way out of the snow bank. I have no snow tires. Put the **** in the rock crawl, the screen asked to select low. Got out of the parking right away!

Tried to shift TC back into high (on the fly) according to user manual. TC gets stuck and I get all the suspension, traction control lights on the dash. The HI/LO switch is blinking. The display says "suspension error" blah blah

Lucky me gets to drive 30 miles home in LO keeping RPM around 36-3800 and accompanied by the smell of burning oil. Stopped twice to cool things just in case.

Next morning disconnected the battery, tried the TC switch again and heard the actuator click. All the lights on the panel are still on, but it is in high now. Disconnected the battery again and all the lights are off now.

After several hundred miles everything works like it is supposed to, go wonder!!!

Any thoughts guys?

Thanks, Igor

 

Ouch, reading this makes me sad.

Igor, best advice to you, try and avoid driving 30 miles on pavement stuck in low for that period of time. Call a tow next time – even if it’s 3 AM. My assumption is it took you about 1.5 or 2.0 hours to get home, right?

Driving that distance in low, on non-resistance pavement, probably caused irreversible damage to your LR and God knows what else. Not sure if the ECU records stuff like this (BMW does), but nonetheless, if LR does record the data, the dealership may not warranty certain parts that break prematurely.

Since the issue has gone away just keep driving and hope nothing crops up. You may get lucky – this things are built like tanks.

 

Why didn't you put it in Snow mode which uses high gear? Anyway, rock crawl and ruts require low gear, which the car let you know but you would have needed to put the car in neutral to invoke it, which the car asks you to do also. Until you do, the high/lo button will blink.

Low gear is only meant to be used for certain situations and then turned off. You should have stopped, put the car back in neutral, turned the **** to snow and hit the high gear button. You should also consider lowering the car to normal too but that would happen automatically once you start driving past a certain speed. Once the blinking terrain response and high gear goes away, then put the car back in drive and go. BTW, normal and snow/gravel are driven in high gear only so you could have left the car in snow/gravel and drove home.

You may consider asking the dealer about their Wheels event that takes the customer out for a day of off-roading and learning how/when to use the system. It's a lot of fun and a huge help on learning a highly-computerized system.

Good luck and I hope your truck is ok after all that it went through.

 

I just returned from a dealership WHEELS event and spent some time talking to the instructor regarding Hi and Low range. I specifically asked about driving around in Low range on regular pavement, when not towing and he indicated you can drive the vehicle in low range as often as you want. No issues driving from California to NY. He said the same help true if you had a vehicle with locking diffs - you could lock them for the entire trip. He did note with locking diffs, if you were doing any serious turning, you should always turn the diff lock off as that combination could be really bad.

While we were playing off-road, he walked me through changing the low/hi range while in motion. Worked without an issue!

 

In response to:

"just keep driving and hope nothing crops up. You may get lucky – this things are built like tanks"

Well, yeah, that's the stuff that keeps us all coming back. I once drove my NAS D90 from central New Jersey to Philly with low engaged with 14 inches of snow on the ground. What can I say, I was young.

A week later, my third gear wouldn't engage and I was thankful for the (Paul Miller, NJ) dealership "powertrain replacement" options . It was a miracle that I didn't leave my transmission on I95 (arterial Maine-Florida N/S highway). I don't agree with the assurance you were given.

Low range's uses are clearly spelled out in the manual (the same manual for the D90 that suggests "tightly packed Savannah grass" as a reasonable replacement for an air filter.

Essentially, we roverphiles need to exercise a bit of common sense when utilizing low range.

Perhaps, the take-away here is learning what the driver and the rover are capable of, individually.

I'm still adjusting to seeing posts saying, "you should have turned the dial to X!"

I have a sensor that is telling me that my SPARE tire has low pressure.

My oil is checked by a computer I can't even find.

I love my LR/Disco/4.

RoverOver,
Ben

 

Ben,

Looks like you have had a few rovers in your day

Maybe you can point all us LR4 owners to the correct page(s) in the manual which spells out when to use low range. I didn't have much luck finding anything specific, so all my knowledge is from talking to the LR Techs and the folks that lead the Dealer Wheels events.

Thanks,