Naks wrote:

One more thing that owners may want to experiment with and report back:
After experimenting more with the hill hold during the outing, we have found that in Comfort mode, the Hill Hold automatically brakes & holds the vehicle if we stop on a hill, *without having to touch the brakes*.
However, when in any of the TR modes, it does NOT automatically hold the vehicle on a slope - you have to press the brake pedal and then press it again and then only will it hold the vehicle.

Some more feedback on this: we went back to the same trail today, with another new 110.

We tried the Auto Hill Hold in both, and it works 100% in the new car, but not in my mate's.

We also discovered that when my mate's rolls back, the engine stalls, which is very dangerous on a trail.

So definitely an issue with his vehicle, which hopefully a software update will fix. --
2010 Defender Puma 90 + BAS remap + Alive IC + Slickshift + Ashcroft ATB rear
2015 Range Rover Sport V8 Supercharged



Defender Puma Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zZ1en9
Discovery 4 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zXrtKO
Range Rover/Sport L320/L322/L494 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zc58JQ

Chicken Drumstick wrote:

Sadly though, there is some bad news. Well not bad, more catastrophic. Under some conditions the gearbox is the most dreadful, awful gearbox I’ve ever driven. Once rolling it went well enough and complimented the engine. The gear shifts were also smooth. The problem is twofold. It seems to be completely dimwitted at times and leaves you quite literally sitting in the road not moving.

There are two flavours of this. The first is from standstill, if you pull away normally, sometimes it would do nothing, I’m not entirely sure if this was the gearbox or the throttle. But the engine doesn’t rev and you don’t really move. Then it will suddenly lurch forward with little to no warning. This makes some kinds of normal road use quite horrid. Also despite being an automatic, it seemed to have an unwillingness to want to crawl when you lift off the brake pedal. The same being true for reverse. I suspect you could get used to it with enough seat time. But it would always be horrid. I found the only way to pull out from a T-junction was to prod the throttle quite hard, then as soon as the vehicle started to move, lift right off, then reapply some throttle. I can only presume, gone are the days of smooth driving?

Despite this horrible oddity, it gets worse. At other times you also get what appears to be a completely dead throttle pedal or lack of response from the gearbox. Usually on 90 degree turns, such as turning into a side road, or pulling out from a Give Way where you could keep rolling at 10-20mph. You go to accelerate in a normal fashion and you get nothing in return. Should you have been foolish enough to pull out in front of something, it will give you quite the puckering I can tell you. This problem is compounded by not being consistent either, because at other times under very similar circumstances, there is no delay at all and it’ll shoot off like a scalded cat!

I decided to experiment a bit with the gearbox and found that normal D or Sport mode made no real difference to this behaviour. And yet there was still one more party trick in store. If you come to a complete standstill, such as being at a roundabout or a junction, don’t hold it on the brake and don’t build any revs. Just stamp on the throttle pedal. My normal expectation would be for the vehicle to move away briskly and swiftly. In the Defender it does not move at all, it waits, then waits a bit longer. Then it eventually decides that it will move. The delay is simply enormous! To the point that it is comically concerning. Never have I driven anything like this.

If you were to give yourself a one, two, three countdown. And went to wide open throttle on three. You’d get to the count of five before you had any form of meaningful forward progression.

I do not know if this problem extends to other vehicles with this powertrain or if the petrol Defender would exhibit the same. But this singular major issue would be enough to turn me away from wanting to buy and own one of these. Hopefully it is just something software related and can be reprogrammed, but it would appear to be a deliberate design choice in how the Defender is intended to drive on the road. Put frankly, I know the ‘Defender’ is being brought into the so-called “Digital age”. However, I still prefer certain controls to have a degree analog feel to them.

I wonder if this could have been the cause?


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