Long term plan for the LR4

[Elinders]

Sort of a questionnaire/poll/tips post. We have a 2011 LR4 Lux with 60k miles on it. I love the truck and so do my sons (3.5 and 10 months, admittedly the young one doesn't quite know how much he likes it yet). It is garaged every day/night and we only drive it about 5k a year. We are in the northeast so it does see snow.
We were driving it a while back and I joked to my son that he could drive it to high school (2028 or whatever) and he thought that was cool.
And then I got thinking and with the design change and being one of the last few models with the v8, I would love to keep this thing forever. Does anyone else feel that way, have plans to do that, tips for caring for it, etc.? We bought it a year ago with 55k on it and my local mechanic loves it and said we made a great buy and has taken it under his wing. So it's in good hands (not mine!) and if we continue our driving habits it won't even cross over 100k for another 8 years.
I just feel like the design will hold up and the fact that there isn't a whole lot of fancy gadgets and electronics* will make it easier to keep it going (manual tail gate, manual seat folding, etc.)

*disclaimer added; not as much as other modern vehicles or the new lr5 haha. sorry!

 

[mbw]

I am going to keep mine long term. Hard to say for sure how long, because things happen. I do think you need to be somewhat willing to DIY the maintenance on these for long term ownership. Using a third party would just be more expensive I guess.

We are at an interesting time in cars. I don't want to say "peak motor" necessarily, because the power trains will continue to advance in various ways, but for the V8 and the heavy square land rover... that is probably about it. Emissions and pedestrian safety and other things will have a pretty permanent impact on vehicle design. I do have high hopes for a new defender and I think the new LR products will be nice, but just different.

 

[mpinco]

Hmmmm ....... not a lot of electronics? I now need to clean my keyboard.

New vehicles, which include the LR4, are loaded with embedded computers for just about ever feature. Maintainable? Sure. Easy to fix, not so much. Don't get me wrong, I love our LR4 but we do use it and it will be maintained. There is no reason a vehicle should not be able to hit 400K+ miles with all the usual upkeep. In fact low mileage vehicles will probably have more issues from lack of lubrication than ones that are used.

Tell your kids they are getting Scouts and hand them wrenches. If you can't fix it, you can't drive it. Also, give any vehicle a few years in a high school parking lot and it will look like someone took a ball peen hammer to it.

 

[Elinders]

Ok ok I will take that part back about the electronics. Not as many gadgets as other modern vehicles; how about that? I feel like it's a good balance of being a modern vehicle but clinging to it's utilitarian roots in some ways. And I know it's not like an suv from the 80's but in 2028 maybe it will seem like it is compared to what it is available then. I have no clue.
And I guess that's a good point about the parking lot and just a teen driver in general haha. If I'm able to keep this thing going for ten more years, I might not let him drive it at all haha. Maybe I can drop him off at high school in it once a while.

See, this is why I like to talk things out.

 

[jpjp]

I agree with you, we really love the way this thing drives and looks and my wife and I want to keep our '11 LUX for as long as possible. Something tells me that it's not going to last like my family's 1 owner 400K mile '81 Diesel Mercedes S-Class (t-***** in '05. We took it to a body shop just for sh*ts and giggles. Estimate was $14K to fix, obviously it went to the junk yard)

My current indy says the transmissions in these things are very difficult to fix and that I should get rid of it before it needs a new one. We only changed out the transmission once, rebuilt of course, on the Diesel Merc. This transmission is probably not lasting 200K+ miles. No one here probably has too much over 100K miles to tell us how long these things last and how much they cost to fix. I'm pretty sure you DIYer's might be able to install a new transmission but rebuilding? That's probably going to take a few man hours I don't have.

We travel in ours and put about 12-15K miles on it a year, we are at 75K now...
At some point things are just going to break or stop working and if it's $1,500 to fix some random computer part that operates "x"... It might just stay broken like I'm sure a lot of things are on D2's, D1's and Ranges that have computer related issues.

My wife and I have even discussed that her next truck would be a '13 V8 with somewhat low miles and keep the '11 because it probably wouldn't command much money in 5 years with 150K miles.

 

[Pfunk951]

I'm planning on owning mine forever.. Or until something major starts rearing it's head.. I've already made some SIGNIFICANT sacrifices to keep the miles off of it (I now drive to work in a Prius with Hello Kitty stickers on it), and I'm trying to be very proactive on the fluids and general maintenance. But, this is a unique vehicle as there are certain cumbersome repairs that can, or will soon be able to, challenge the value of the truck itself and require serious equipment.. My jacks aren't quite tall enough to lift the truck off it's frame, which some of the major repairs can require..

I remember going through this process on the Rennlist, and it's interesting to see over the years how long the life of certain components are. Around year 10 is when the conversations were 50/50 mechanical and electrical- DIYs on re-soldering circuits and changing lower engine bearings were starting to manifest..

I've seen other lists with threads that are dedicated to high-mileage vehicles, and how they got there.. The heroes of this list (Umbertos, MBWs, RyanJLs, etc) have been keeping us up to to date with fixes and maintenance that should get us well past the 100k mark, but it's the items that lie at 200k+ that are both ominous and murky to my feeble mind..

 

[PaulLR3]

I still check back on the Audi allroad forum from time to time. I owned a 2002 then a 2004. I know my 2004 is still going strong with a fellow forum member that bought it. The allroad came out in 2001 and the last year was 2005, so these are now 12 to 16 years old. When Audi stopped importing the A6-based allroad and switched to the A4-based version, most owners decided to keep their old allroad going forever.

It's amazing to see how much money people have spent to keep these iconic vehicles going well past 200K miles. And the knowledge base on that forum is just insane. Someone knows how to repair any issue that comes up. I can see the same thing happening with this LR4 forum.

 

[JWA33]

The LR4 tranny is the same as the LR3 and there are plenty of them with over 200K on them. I'm not sure how many had tranny work done, but given the cost to value I'd assume that most are in the original tranny.

 

[mbw]

I am no expert on the ZF trans, but from what I have read, if you keep the fluid in decent shape and watch for leaks, they do pretty well. I would also imagine that a good transmission shop could work on the ZF gearboxes as they are fairly common stuff. We did recently do that thread on the metal pan swap and I am going to be doing that soon here.

My 13' is still at about 52k miles and I have my 2006 Infiniti G35x that I am driving more. Can't imagine driving a prius.. man.. ouch. I put new Potenza S04 summer tires on the G and that thing is a freaking blast to bomb around with.

I think once these trucks have some more age / vintage to them they will be even cooler. I have always thought that an "old" land rover is much cooler than a new one. The character of these things is in their utility and class. And the trouble with the LR brand is they push the lifestyle and what they think is the 'class' but any idiot with money can have a shiney new range rover. To drive one when its 5+ years out of warranty and has some stories in the paintwork... is true class. They also get a bit more rare, and where I live they are already pretty sparse.

I just wish I lived near more of you guys so we could get together and wrench on them. We would learn a lot more and be less afraid of figuring it all out, but we will do our best via the forums.

 

[Quijote]

I ordered my 2013 new and the plan remains to keep it forever (barring ti turning into a lemon overnight). We don't drive it that much (7.5k miles/year) and that's because it is the one nice, roomy, family car. Next year I'll get a nice sports sedan and the LR4 will see 5k miles per year tops. So I currently envision being "that guy" with the well-maintained, 20+ year old Land Rover. I love the V8, it's optioned exactly as I wanted it, and I suspect that as a low-mile, LUX+HD+black pkg '13 LR4, the longer I keep it, the more I'll get to drive it "for free" as far as depreciation.