Driven: New Defender - On & Off Road. Is it a Pretender?

[deep]

12 hours ago, Snagger said:

Absolutely.  The tuning of how progressive air springs are with ride height is done by shaping the trumpet form of the piston.  Make a classic trumpet shape and you’ll have a relatively consistent spring rate.  Make a pronounced trumpet and it’ll be firmer when sitting low, make an inverted trumpet (like an hour glass shape) trumpet and the spring will be firmer at greater extension.

Are you saying that air springs do not work by compressing the air inside them?  I am curious because every air sprung vehicle I have seen working hard, in person or on video, effectively ends up with an air bump stop at extreme compression.  In fact, I have even witnessed one explode under heavy pressure.

[Snagger]

9 hours ago, deep said:

Are you saying that air springs do not work by compressing the air inside them?  I am curious because every air sprung vehicle I have seen working hard, in person or on video, effectively ends up with an air bump stop at extreme compression.  In fact, I have even witnessed one explode under heavy pressure.

No, that’s not what I’m saying.  But their spring rate (stiffness versus extension) is tuneable by having different shapes of piston that moves up inside them, so the comment earlier that a more extended spring will be stiffer because it’s at higher pressure than when it is set for medium height isn’t always true.

[Ed Poore]

On 8/16/2020 at 7:44 PM, Chicken Drumstick said:

the Mud & Ruts setting seemed to kill the throttle with too much wheelspin

Did you try turning off the stability control? Button with the wiggly tyre tracks.

If it's like the TDV8 L322 I owned then it'll do this unless you turn off the traction control. I couldn't spin the tyres in the mud on my parents farm once to clear the treads I got frustrated and turned it off, improved things massively! Further investigation of the stuff that I didn't read showed that when you engage the terrain response (i.e. take it off road mode / "Special Programs Off") then you're meant to turn off the DSC / stability / traction control.

Basically the stability control is viewed as a safety feature and kills engine power the moment it detects wheel spin. As a safety feature therefore it takes precedence over the Terrain Response and will limit engine power even when the Terrain Response is saying give me more!!!

Interesting review though, I think if I was looking for something like this then I'd be sorely tempted to breeze on past the new Defender and pick up a good used L322 with a TDV8 or 4.2 supercharged . Better on the road, better engine, sod the economy and being a fraction of the price don't care so much when off-road and probably marginal difference between the two.

[Happyoldgit]

Excellent review of an ostensibly bland looking product.

[missingsid]

So jealous of your test area.

One thing I did not like is the rear view mirror/screen, I need reading glasses and it is far too close for me to focus on without glasses, if I sit in the back seat it is perfect! It captures traffic behind that is miles away and my 7 year old in the back would tell me if a new car was following us.

This is quite odd as the windscreen is a good distance away but the rearview screen is a foot back from it?

[Snagger]

14 hours ago, Ed Poore said:

Did you try turning off the stability control? Button with the wiggly tyre tracks.

If it's like the TDV8 L322 I owned then it'll do this unless you turn off the traction control. I couldn't spin the tyres in the mud on my parents farm once to clear the treads I got frustrated and turned it off, improved things massively! Further investigation of the stuff that I didn't read showed that when you engage the terrain response (i.e. take it off road mode / "Special Programs Off") then you're meant to turn off the DSC / stability / traction control.

Basically the stability control is viewed as a safety feature and kills engine power the moment it detects wheel spin. As a safety feature therefore it takes precedence over the Terrain Response and will limit engine power even when the Terrain Response is saying give me more!!!

Interesting review though, I think if I was looking for something like this then I'd be sorely tempted to breeze on past the new Defender and pick up a good used L322 with a TDV8 or 4.2 supercharged . Better on the road, better engine, sod the economy and being a fraction of the price don't care so much when off-road and probably marginal difference between the two.

Why on Earth isn’t the DSC automatically disabled when off road modes are selected?  There may be a good reason for it, but I can’t think of one.

[elbekko]

Lawyers.

[Chicken Drumstick]

14 hours ago, Ed Poore said:

Did you try turning off the stability control? Button with the wiggly tyre tracks.

If it's like the TDV8 L322 I owned then it'll do this unless you turn off the traction control. I couldn't spin the tyres in the mud on my parents farm once to clear the treads I got frustrated and turned it off, improved things massively! Further investigation of the stuff that I didn't read showed that when you engage the terrain response (i.e. take it off road mode / "Special Programs Off") then you're meant to turn off the DSC / stability / traction control.

Basically the stability control is viewed as a safety feature and kills engine power the moment it detects wheel spin. As a safety feature therefore it takes precedence over the Terrain Response and will limit engine power even when the Terrain Response is saying give me more!!!

Interesting review though, I think if I was looking for something like this then I'd be sorely tempted to breeze on past the new Defender and pick up a good used L322 with a TDV8 or 4.2 supercharged . Better on the road, better engine, sod the economy and being a fraction of the price don't care so much when off-road and probably marginal difference between the two.

TBH I could have done with spending a bit more time with the Terrain Response, but I only had the vehicle for a limited period.

And I honestly didn't know you had to manually turn the DSC off when in low range. My Jimny does this automatically for you when you select low. Sadly I think the complexity of the entire Terrain Response setup, including the traction and stability systems is very overwhelming. tI would be interesting to do a time & motion study on how long and more importantly how many button clicks are required to get the new Defender in it's 'off road' mode.

With the old model, it was simply done with a single movement of the transfer box lever. And you don't even need to stop.

 

Agree about the L322 TDV8.

[Ed Poore]

46 minutes ago, Snagger said:

Why on Earth isn’t the DSC automatically disabled when off road modes are selected?  There may be a good reason for it, but I can’t think of one.

Safety. The average person is a complete muppet so car manufacturers have to design for people who achieve and then surpass the Darwin Awards.

I've spent a fair bit of time working with automotive certification and its harder to build stuff than for space and military. Those are just expensive when things go wrong.

[Ed Poore]

@Snagger it seems everyone likes to make systems more complicated than necessary these days. I see the point on repurposing buttons but frankly they're bloody annoying when you're bouncing around off road, I have enough trouble adjusting the radio volume in my 110 let alone if I had to use a touch screen.

I liked the 3.6 era ones because everything was a big physical button. The only thing I used regularly that wasn't was on longer drives it was nice to turn off the screen at night, quite a few button presses on the touchscreen but I actually found pressing the voice recognition and stating "display off" worked well.

Same brand but I hired an XF when I had the TDV8 and on returning the vehicle I asked what did I think. Said quite plainly the only improvement over my daily (the TDV8) was fuel economy and do you think I gave a carp about economy if I was running a V8 Range Rover as a daily?!

Sound system was worse, satnav was retarded, visibility was horrendous, road noise was louder and so on.

[Snagger]

You’re right, Ed.  But I think that while designers like McGovern cause part of the problem with car controls, a lot of engineers are wrong in the head these days.  At work, my instrumentation screens are plain LCD colour displays.  They can be very hard to read when the sun shines on them, especially if some idiot colleague has been touching them with his fingers.  The new version being certified right now has touch screens, which is going to generate a lot more fingerprints that will render them unreadable, and worse, while the current cursor control for operating the datalink interface is a little clumsy in turbulence, trying to operate touchscreen controls at full arm stretch in the bouncy stuff is going to cause a lot of mis-selections, rendering the system unusable except in calm conditions.  What the hell are engineers thinking these days? 🤔

[reb78]

40 minutes ago, Snagger said:

You’re right, Ed.  But I think that while designers like McGovern cause part of the problem with car controls, a lot of engineers are wrong in the head these days.  At work, my instrumentation screens are plain LCD colour displays.  They can be very hard to read when the sun shines on them, especially if some idiot colleague has been touching them with his fingers.  The new version being certified right now has touch screens, which is going to generate a lot more fingerprints that will render them unreadable, and worse, while the current cursor control for operating the datalink interface is a little clumsy in turbulence, trying to operate touchscreen controls at full arm stretch in the bouncy stuff is going to cause a lot of mis-selections, rendering the system unusable except in calm conditions.  What the hell are engineers thinking these days? 🤔

Haha. I couldn't help but think of this (you only need the last 15 seconds really!):

 

 

[Snagger]

“As a change of pace...” 😂😂😂. Most of the captains I knew left everything they could to the poor bloody FOs!  They got that FO’s expression just right! 😂😂😂

Quagmire is another good one, but I model myself on Dick Darstardly!

[Ed Poore]

3 hours ago, Snagger said:

What the hell are engineers thinking these days? 🤔

I mean I can see the benefit in that you don't need to get it right first time because to fix it it's only a software update. Previously if manufacturers messed up a button it was a recall and strip down, reassemble etc.

I did have a great time designing a UI for a complex radio where I sat down with the equivalent of the technical director and spent our time deleting buttons from the interface.

Also trimming down a vastly (unnecessarily so) complicated radio protocol, he knew it well so sat down at my PC and deleted about 90% of the code. We went and grabbed a tea by which point he walked past the door to my office and said, give me a call when you've got it compiling again. 

[reb78]

That Space X capsule that went up recently was all touchscreen I think - they are all at it!

[Naks]

 

Just came back from a trail drive, which has a training obstacle course - side slopes, cross-axles, hill climbs, etc., all on very loose sandy/clay soil.

We put my mate's Defender through it in various modes, and there was very little to no spin in the correct modes. This is because we figured out that when you switch off the car, it DOESN'T remain in the Terrain Mode, but defaults back to Comfort, which then results in loads of wheelspin.

Thanks to PowerfulUK for their detailed video on this: 

 

One more thing - this is software-version dependent, because unlike their video, our Defender defaulted back to Comfort mode regardless of which mode it was previously in when switched off!

[Snagger]

On 8/25/2020 at 8:50 PM, reb78 said:

That Space X capsule that went up recently was all touchscreen I think - they are all at it!

They are, but their pilots wear gloves, their screens are higher quality, and their windows are really tiny and in a place the sun can’t shine onto the displays...  They managed some manual manoeuvring on Demo 2, prior to docking, but a stick would be more intuitive for that.  I think the engineers really wanted to save the weight and have smaller folding seats to create more room.

[FridgeFreezer]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49319450

After an accident & investigation the US Navy are ditching touch-screens for controls on ships... who'd have thunk they're not as good as actual physical controls?

[elbekko]

3 hours ago, Snagger said:

They are, but their pilots wear gloves, their screens are higher quality, and their windows are really tiny and in a place the sun can’t shine onto the displays...  They managed some manual manoeuvring on Demo 2, prior to docking, but a stick would be more intuitive for that.  I think the engineers really wanted to save the weight and have smaller folding seats to create more room.

And the actually important controls are proper buttons underneath the screens.

[reb78]

4 hours ago, Snagger said:

They are, but their pilots wear gloves, their screens are higher quality, and their windows are really tiny and in a place the sun can’t shine onto the displays...  They managed some manual manoeuvring on Demo 2, prior to docking, but a stick would be more intuitive for that.  I think the engineers really wanted to save the weight and have smaller folding seats to create more room.

Its the old... ‘NASA developed a biro that would work in space, the Russians used a pencil’ thing to me. 

[FridgeFreezer]

1 hour ago, reb78 said:

Its the old... ‘NASA developed a biro that would work in space, the Russians used a pencil’ thing to me. 

Except that graphite dust from a pencil in a spacecraft can get into electrics and cause short circuits and fires, and the Russians ended up moving to pens too...

http://www.hoaxorfact.com/technology/nasa-spent-12-billion-for-space-pen-while-russians-used-pencil-facts.html

[reb78]

38 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Except that graphite dust from a pencil in a spacecraft can get into electrics and cause short circuits and fires, and the Russians ended up moving to pens too...

http://www.hoaxorfact.com/technology/nasa-spent-12-billion-for-space-pen-while-russians-used-pencil-facts.html

I prefer the hoax version.

[Naks]

with regards to the car always going back to Comfort Mode, one of the guys on the Defender2 forum managed to get an answer from JLR:

"Someone from the infotainment and UI development team at JLR replied to my query about the above issue (the TR always defaulting back to Comfort mode after an ignition cycle.) It's an emissions testing requirement (not sure in which country - probably more than one.) The rules mandate that a vehicle always has to start in the same conditions used for such tests. So, there. It's something we'll have to learn to live with."

what a major PITA!

One thing we did notice during Thursday's outing, was that unlike the RRS, when in Rock Crawl mode the ND locks the rear diff completely - we could see this when turning on a flat surface and the rear tyres were scrabbling, whereas on my RRS, it's pre-locked and turning on a flat surface is normal.
 

Edited September 26, 2020 by Naks

[Bowie69]

8 hours ago, reb78 said:

I prefer the hoax version.

I prefer truth 😛

[deep]

11 hours ago, Naks said:

with regards to the car always going back to Comfort Mode, one of the guys on the Defender2 forum managed to get an answer from JLR:

"Someone from the infotainment and UI development team at JLR replied to my query about the above issue (the TR always defaulting back to Comfort mode after an ignition cycle.) It's an emissions testing requirement (not sure in which country - probably more than one.) The rules mandate that a vehicle always has to start in the same conditions used for such tests. So, there. It's something we'll have to learn to live with."

what a major PITA!

One thing we did notice during Thursday's outing, was that unlike the RRS, when in Rock Crawl mode the ND locks the rear diff completely - we could see this when turning on a flat surface and the rear tyres were scrabbling, whereas on my RRS, it's pre-locked and turning on a flat surface is normal.
 

That doesn't make a bucket load of sense.  It's the engine doing the emitting, not the suspension, difflocks or traction control!

I don't think I could own a new vehicle these days.  All this big brother knows best complexity just ____es me off.  A lot!