6 Months with LR4 - my observations

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Thomax

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20,000 km and 6 months in the LR club.

I love this thing! It is beautiful to drive in all conditions. I am experienced offvroader who now is middle-aged and lives in the city so I bought this to go do some of the territory just slower and not wreck anything while take pictures and tweet.

First big trip is planned!

Good:
- gas mileage not bad but I am coming from a full size crew cab.
- engine, transmission are work seamlessly and power adequate
- air suspension works very well
- love the square body and I think it is timeless

Meh:
- the electrical sometimes is... let's say English.... as in you need a stiff upper lip because sometimes weird things happen; like windows stop on occasion; everything seems to pause, collect itself and then work like the rear view camera. It is Sloooowwww as is any action in the sound and phone system.
- stereo good sound but nav is useless
- headlights suck
- I believe that 70 plus percent of LR4 are driven by soccer moms - cool but still an adjustment for a truck guy.

Wow
- dealers ers are knowledgeable in my area but very pricey and poncie except for a handful of enthusiasts - makes me worry for the brand in the long term. When you talk the off road game in all your marketing but they mostly look at you like you are on glue when you want to ask an all terrain tire question at the service department that is a problem. Yes I know the economics of it all but dang that defender re-do better stay aligned with history.
- did I say pricey ? when a service that is essentially an oil change and a few checks is quoted well north of $600 dollars - yikes.

None of you wave.
 

ryanjl

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What year is your LR4 and what headlights do you have (halogen or HID)?
 

TLB

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You must have halogen headlights.
HID headlight on my 2013 LR4 are excellent. The best headlight I have ever had on any car.
I remember that there was a discussion on this forum regarding a change which was made for 2014 MY (?) LR4 with HID headlights. You may have to do some search. Try to search posts made by Umbertob. He is a walking Land Rover encyclopedia.
 

ryanjl

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Yeah, in 2014 the headlights were changed such that, when the high-beams are on, the low-beams are off. Prior to 2014, the low-beams remained on all the time, including when the high beams were also on.

I have the halogens in my 2012. Replacing the standard H11 bulb with a slightly modified H9 bulb has made the headlights great, with the caveat that the bulb has to be changed approximately every 6 months.
 

Thomax

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Yup halogens on mine! I will look seriously at this H9 mod --- any other details on this, ryanjl? Any other options I should consider?
 

ryanjl

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There is a headlight thread on this forum that, in my opinion, has some misinformation.

So here's my take. You can also read on reputable online forums regarding lighting, such as candlepowerforums or danielsternlighting, and they will say the same thing:

If you have halogens, don't try to "upgrade" them with LED or HID retrofits, as the halogen housing was designed for halogen bulbs. LED and HID bulbs have a different kind of light source and will have that light source be in a different location than the halogen bulb. Using them would be like borrowing someone else's eyeglasses to see better, and the light they produce will not be focused in the correct places and, even worse, may blind oncoming drivers.

Additionally, there is no real H11 bulb that's an upgrade. Most, if not all, are just standard H11 bulbs with a blue tint on the outside, and that blue tint actually degrades the performance of the bulb the same way that wearing blue tinted glasses would make things seem a little dimmer.

The beauty of headlight upgrades is that you can go by lumens, which is a certifiable, measurable way to determine how bright a lightsource is. And, based on that, the only real upgrades are to either (a) find some genuine, "non-adaptive" version HID housings from a wrecked LR4 on eBay or at a salvage yard, put them in, and use the IID Tool to tell your LR4 that you have the xenon headlights; or (b) use H9 bulbs.

H9 bulbs are much brighter than H11 bulbs. The tradeoff is that they use 65 watts (as opposed to 55 watts), which I have not found to be a problem, and they have a shorter lifespan (H9 bulbs are intended to be for "brights," and therefore not intended to be used as long as the lowbeams). The Phillips brand H9's purportedly last the longest. I just order mine from Amazon.

The only modification necessary is to trim a little bit of the plastic on the inside of the plug, like this:


For the LR4, you don't need to modify the metal prongs at all; the unmodified metal prongs of the H9 bulb will still click right into the LR4's headlight housing.

The beauty of the H9 bulb is that, when installed, the filament is the exact same shape and in the same position as the original H11 bulb, which the LR4's headlight housing was designed to work with. The H9 bulb is just much brighter. That means the H9's light will project more light in all the right places.

I posted more information in the aforementioned headlight bulb thread, including the putative lumens this upgrade gets you:

http://www.landroverworld.org/posts/164796/
 
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cperez

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So here's my take.

Ryan, thanks for boiling it down. I remember that other thread very well. I came away from it the way I come away from a lively oil or tire thread..."Huh?" I'll just go with this recommendation the next time I tweak my bulbs.
 

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