Advice re. engine failure on Defender 110 2.2

[Milesp99]

Hi,

I would be grateful for people's thoughts. My brother recently bought a '14 plate Defender double cab pick up from a garage (not a Land Rover dealer or an independent specialist).
He drove it to London and then on it's first longish trip to Devon where it is going to live it broke down having lost a load of oil. It was recovered by AA and has now been assessed by a Land Rover specialist with no compression on cylinder 3 injector stuck open so fairly catastrophic.

The car broke down less than 4 weeks from purchase date and had done about 300 miles from date it was purchased by my brother.

The garage it was purchased from were initially saying none of our business use the included "RAC" warranty which has a max claim of £1000 so not of massive use here.
The garage have declined to take car back but have accepted for it to be seen at a Land Rover specialist near them (carriage to this garage at our expense though).

Anyway, long story short - catastrophic engine failure less than 1 month and about 300miles from purchase anyone have any advice as to whether car can be rejected? They also dealt with some rust around windscreen and replaced windscreen and it now leaks into passenger footwell when it rains (hard to know if related but...)

Anyway grateful for people's thoughts.

Many thanks

[camel_landy]

Windscreen leak... "They all do that sir".

FWIW - There's a separate service manual for tracing & fixing leaks like this, which should give you an idea of how common it is.

However, as far as the engine goes, you may well be better off talking to someone like trading standards.

M

[hyphen]

Less than 4 weeks from purchase date indicated the dealer should be liable.

Ignore their RAC warranty rubbish, the car dealer is responsible for the car being of saleworthy condition. This dealer wants to avoid paying up so you will likely need to stand up to them.

Read up on the law/get legal advice or trading standards.

Citizen's advise have something on their site:
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/buying-...

Edited by hyphen on Thursday 24th October 09:19

[drmike37]

If he's upset about a leak he bought the wrong car.

The dealer is surely responsible for the engine? A 2014 Defender won't have been shed money and you're well within your rights to expect it to last longer than a month.

[blueST]

At the risk of being repetitious, they practically all leak into the footwells, and there are many places where the water can come in, not just the windscreen.

Defender water ingress manual is here: https://www.landroverweb.com/Pdf-files/Manuals/Lan...

As for the engine, the owner needs to firmly make this the dealers problem.