Land Rover Rescue! Can The LR4 Tow it 1500 Miles Home? (NOPE) 

Much appreciated. It was great meeting you and your family. Can’t wait to see what the future holds for Merlin as well!

Definitely, no regrets on the trip. Always love a little problem solving when your hand is forced.

I mean I do think I put mine through the paces haha. So I may make them look worse then they are in certain scenarios (and better in others). But in all reality I do love my LR4 and will probably always have at least one in the stable.

@@LostCauseRanchfair enough. May still break down and buy one eventually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It wouldn’t connect to the ecm, tcm, abs or the epb modules. So I couldn’t get in there with the scan tool and release it. I’ll have to figure out the communication issues. Funny enough I need to pull the switch on the silver one as well as it has been finicky lately.

Once I got the switch assembly out, I tried just an alcohol spray cleaner and it worked for a month and then it started to fail again (on a family trip, of course but the GAP IID saved the day). So back home, I disassembled the switch to clean it thoroughly. The hardest part is to take the plastic cover without breaking it. But then, you push out the 2 pivot stainless pins and it will come appart easy. I was able to diagnose that the previous owner was using 2 milk and 1 sugar in her coffee and most likely without a lid! ;o) Anyway, it was worth it, now it's running very smoothly.

I like that idea!

It was definitely not happy when it got down that far, was getting a little Bucky. But it was in the mid 8s voltage wise when I shut it off. I think the cluster went dead somewhere in the 9.5v range. Pretty neat that it would run that far down. It kind of gave a step of warnings. First the charging system warning. Then the next was the transmission fault. Then it popped abs/traction and everything else then a few minutes later came the dead cluster.

Thanks for those details! Wow, 8V! Means we could run this engine on a 9V toy battery ;o) Glad you could make it back!

I love the lone wolf stuff. There is always a way out of everything, just makes life more interesting when stuff goes sideways. It really was a fun trip even with the stuff that went wrong.

Par for the course with these things. Haha

@@LostCauseRanch the content makes itself.

I bet they are something special down there! They are definitely beasts. Thanks for following along.

yeah they are but its mostly deisel out here right hand drive great truck u take care of them they will last long @@LostCauseRanch

Stubborn is more like it haha. But I just like to turn problems into adventures, then they don't bother you as much. Appreciate you watching! This one was kind of fun to make.

It is! Super nice of them to make that.

It is somewhere on that scale haha.

Sasha is precious and do everything to give her comfortable places to lay around.

It did fantastic haha. It really was a fun trip still, I love the unexpected. Spices up life.

Good to hear! Trying to get back on a regular schedule again.

Everyone kept getting nicer and nicer the further south I got. I love it in Tennessee. If I ever move from Iowa the Chattanooga area is where I’m headed. Sasha had a great time hanging with Merlin’s family on the porch.

Funny how they can turn on you as soon as you officially own them. I'm usually 11-12 in town with this thing as well. The battery charge worked wonders, thanks again!

Sasha is pretty smart. (Ted may have had some of those ideas via phone as well). Merlin was still running, just in limp mode so there is a good chance the valves are good yet.

They are good looking in that aren’t they? It will be interesting to see what happens with Merlin, unsure yet. Trip was entertaining, it was a little stressful at times but I’m always up for something that makes a good story to tell years later.

@@LostCauseRanchthat was a hell trip!! At least you had Sasha. What are you thinking of doing with it 🤔

Yes, I’m kind of excited to see what happens with it. Not quite sure the direction yet. Appreciate you following along!

I really like Tennessee. I decided a couple years ago if I move it’s going to be to the Chattanooga area. Shoot me an email with the info on the LR4. Thelostcauseranch@gmail.com If it’s not something I want I always have others looking for/asking about them.

We are all just worn out around here aren't we?

They are quite the roller coasters aren’t they? Wouldn’t trade it for the world though.

It was a fun one! Sasha did all the problem solving so it was good she was along haha.

That’s too bad with Loki, Sasha (and Honey did) love being in the car. I think she was over it though as it needed up being quite a long time in there. Hey, I had wood stacked underneath the jacked up one this time haha. Not too often I can say I like Walmart, but all the workers there I interacted with were outstanding people.

Thanks for watching it, it was kind of a fun journey. On the decal. If the paint is decent quality it usually holds up fine as long as it’s a good quality vinyl. The one thing that can happen depending on the color is differing amount of paint fade between what is under and what isn’t. But typically a light buffing after pulling it off makes everything look normal.

It is multiple things that can lead to the failure. The 2010-2012's had a subpar tensioner guide rail that was updated in 2013. That extended the life quite a bit. Another problem is Land Rover recommended oil changes at 15k miles, so that coupled with the early poor design guides really didn't fair well. We've experienced an extended chain life on LR4's that had short (5-7000 mile) oil changes compared to dealer serviced. We've replaced chains on one owner dealer maintained vehicles as early as 60k miles and this one in the video was on the original chains until 183k miles. So there is a range. I have a video going up today on the complete replacement, it's kind of long, but if it interests you at all you can see a little more in depth what happens to them. Feel free to skip around in the video.

@@LostCauseRanch Appreciate the feedback. I've been looking at v6 models and came across your channel. Wondering if they have similar issues. I've been a Toyota owner but have been considering an LR4 for a bit more luxury. I I know I understandably will have more maintenance issues, just trying to get a feel for how much more. We use our Tundra on road trips to pull a small camper but also do a fair bit of off road trails and remote camping. The Tundra is unfortunately loud, not a great ride, and has terrible mpg, but it has always been incredibly reliable and that means a lot. We've thought about taking our Highlander on trips but it sucks off road.

The Classic would definitely be even harder to get parts locally. But yeah takes some extra precaution with these things going on trips.

That is nice when you can clear something up like that. I meant to show the alternator in this video. I’ll show it in the next but it something broke in the clutch/pulley.

I’m guessing you saw that it was the alternator. I was just using the batteries to make it until I got to the alternator to replace it with haha.

I didn’t mess with anything more until I got everything home.

I definitely can, the timing chain setup is the same on the 6 and 8 cylinder ones now. The big update which all of the 6 cylinders had was a steel button on the guides so the tensioner doesn’t wear into the aluminum. But there has also been several part number revisions on the tensioners which usually means some sort of change. How often are you doing the oil changes? In my experience the dealer service interval has been some of the issue on these. We keep them between 5-7k miles. Ditching the stop/start is probably a good idea if you are having symptoms. Typically you will see some timing deviation codes in the ecm before it goes catastrophic and that is a good time to get the fix done. But each case is different and hard to predict. All the ones I’ve had near failure make a fair amount of noise all the time before so if you are listening for it.

@@LostCauseRanch, Thanks this is soooo valuable info! Also brings down my stress level a lot! LR did oil changes every 12000Km (7500 Miles) or less but I'll certainly do it under 10000Km (6000 Miles). It's so easy with the tube and a pump! About the stop/start, when taking the battery out, you are left with a bright ECO mode off" yellow light in your dash. Lots of people are trying to find out how to get rid of that so if you ever find out... Tanks again!

We will see what we do with it. Where about are you located?

I am in Europe, Croatia.

I bet it felt sketchy with the lifted commander. The nice thing about the LR4 on that end of things is the air suspension so it didn’t squat it and make it feel all squirmy. It handled it decent, just couldn’t do 75-80mph like you can with a 3/4 or one ton. I may have said it was a Land Rover Discovery to make the online reservation happy.