$4000 per diff sounds like hogwash. I had both mine done, and the cost wasn't even $4000 for BOTH of them. The failure mode of the differentials is a lot different than the air suspension; not that I'm recommending waiting, but I drove on whiny diffs for a long time. I'm not even sure that it would've resulted in any kind of functional failure; just noise. I've heard it depends on its nature.
As for being stuck in Access Height....was that a full-on compressor failure? Usually you can weasle your way out of Access Height, especially if you have a Faultmate or IIDTool. Unless it's a full-on failed compressor.
Houm_WA, the compressor was replaced twice in just over one year. Due to work requirements (travel out of country routinely) I never had the time to spend on learning how to do the mechanical repairs myself, subsequently relegating me to use the dealer. In my area, there is literally only one single independent mechanic that was even willing to service an LR3 and he was so swamped that the waiting period was about 3 weeks for a fix! Anyway, what I was told by the dealer was there were multiple air leaks due to corrosion amongst the fittings for the EAS system... this apparently caused the compressor to eventually burn out due to running overtime. We started getting suspension faults through the info center, but the system was able to be reset by turning off ignition and restarting, then setting the desired EAS mode. We did this for a few months, not considering it could eventually fail to come out of access mode. Didn't understand at the time this was anything more than electronic gremlins as it would reset each time... however it progressively got worse until one day it would no longer raise out of access mode, effectively stranding us in the garage. Given we were not going to drive the freeway for 50+ miles to the nearest dealer in access mode, we had to have it towed. For those who do not have the time or expertise to diagnose and fix problems such as the EAS, or other major mechanical issues that could strand you, I recommend just getting these problems fixed when they present themselves, versus waiting until ultimate failure. That's all. Absolutely, if I had the time and know-how to fix it myself, I would have, but being it was the primary driver for the family, it had to get done ASAP.
Regarding the differentials, as I was saying, there was no apparent problem indicated to us driving it daily. It may have been such an insidious progression that we didn't notice it getting worse, but when the dealer supposedly took it for a test drive, maybe it stood out to them. I agree, I would never had paid $4K for each differential either, but the dealer posed this was the case on the phone and after the story strung along revealing they already replaced them for free with the cost of repair supposedly being covered by LRNA, then it was a moot point. As the conversation was going, I told them to not fix the diffs as they presented no apparent indication of imminent failure and we were selling the vehicle anyway, so I was not going to drop $8K into the vehicle, rather disclose the findings to the new potential owner...but that's when they said it was already done.
Thankfully, the service department took care of me, regardless of whether it being a bogus cost quote or not... either way, new differentials put in for free! Maybe it's all a ploy for the dealer to get paid some sort of labor rate from corporate while not taking the customer for a ride??? But that would seem counter-intuitive to every other dealer experience!
