Uh Oh! Help with diagnosing sudden offroad LR4 Trauma?

[vivaldi1]

Hey Folks,

So, took the LR4 on the beach today. We are on vacation in the Outer Banks away from home and any dealerships. I let my other half drive because she has a blast. And I'm not just saying that. We did some dunes and then we went on a bunch of soft sand that might have had ruts that were 15-20 inches deep with a center filled with sand. Probably going 25-30 most of that stretch, in sand mode, vehicle elevated.

All of a sudden the car started shaking a little, so we slowed down, then we started hearing a bunch of weird clanking noises coming from the front of the car. Then from the driver side a bunch of clear liquid was shooting out of the front wheel well. At this point error messages came up declaring 'Emergency assistance breaking not available' (can't remember the exact messaging). I looked down to the part of the console where the hi/lo gear, hi/lo suspension and terrain mode settings were and everything was unlit. Needless to say this all happened in about a minute or two until we pulled over.

The only thing prior to that we remember is that when we were in the deep ruts, my better half was mentioning to me that the steering wheel was like at 90 degrees when she was going straight. I even looked out the windows and the tires were straight but she said it felt 'tight'. Also, occasionally to avoid oncoming beach traffic, we had to get out of the ruts into another set of ruts and that was challenging and sometimes met with a firm 'NO from the Land Rover'.

Anyways, I was able to drive it back to the rental house (we are on vacation).

There are no error messages, but when I get to 30MPH, the car shakes a little and the steering wheel visibly is oscillating left/right, the higher I go the more pronounced the shaking. So, I kept it close to 30 MPH.

Anyways, I'll be calling my home dealer tomorrow and suspect I'll have to have the car towed a few hundred miles.

Any thoughts on what this might be? It might also be multiple things. I'll post the final diagnosis once I have it.

I have no regrets. We had a blast on the 4x4 beach today. Though my position on this might change when I get the towing, rental car, and repair bills


Cheers,
-Willie

 

[garg]

That sucks! Hopefully you have a good rest of the vacation and this doesn't put a damper on it. Remember, it is just car.
I would be very interested in finding out what happened...

 

[crewcabrob]

Clear liquid? It would be my guess that it is some brake fluid. That would also explain why there would have been odd feelings in the steering wheel. If one brake was working and the other one wasn't, it would feel like the steering wheel was getting pulled in one direction.

I would say it is part of the ABS system that has failed. Theat would let you drive the vehicle at low speeds and then want to reset for faster travel.

This is just my guess based on what you typed.

Rob

 

[bgsntth]

I would suspect that your traction control was working hard for extended period of time, and you boiled your brake fluid. This has happened to me on long ascents up sketchy climbs. It also sounds like your power steering fluid overheated? This happened to me with my Cayman after a vigorous track day.

 

[vivaldi1]

So,

It turns out there wasn't any issue the dealer could find. Which perplexes us. We clearly saw the clear liquid, the car definitely almost shut down, error messages popped up, the suspension automatically lowered, terrain mode reset and the car drove funny for the remainder of the trip. So, the theory is we ran over a giant bottle of water in a perfect way that caused the fluid to spurt like an artery out of the wheel well and that we were just running the car too hard and it might have overheated some of the systems and that there was also lots of sand and debris causing some temporary problems that were remedied once the undercarriage was cleaned out. Oh well. It was a blast and glad there was no lasting damage. We'll be a little more careful next time. No we wont

-W