I’m Halfway Through My Cheap Range Rover Road Trip, Here’s What’s Broken So Far

I absolutely love a good road trip. So when an opportunity arose to drive my cheap beater 2008 Range Rover 850 miles from New York to Chicago and back for Thanksgiving, I eagerly threw my keys into the ring.

Driving a beat-up British SUV with over 200,000 miles on the clock over that many miles sounds like a recipe for suffering and hardship, but I managed to arrive in the Chicago area without having to use my Premier AAA membership. The trip wasn’t totally stress-free, however. There were some (extremely minor) trouble points that arose throughout the journey—one of which I fixed, and another that fixed itself (hopefully).Spacer

The Drive Itself Was (Mostly) Free Of Panic

After a brief oil level check, my girlfriend and I set out from New York City at 5 a.m. and pointed ourselves west, running the route I explained in my last post on this huge hunk of a vehicle. I was most nervous during the first leg of this trip through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, having never really driven this car for more than two hours at a time.

My worries were mostly unfounded. The drivetrain proved healthy enough to traverse the long, shallow inclines that define eastern I-80, shifting between fifth and sixth gear to keep up with my cruise control setting based on whether I was going uphill or downhill. Once things flattened out in Ohio, it was easy, stress-free cruising.

There was a bit more wind noise coming into the cabin than I expected—I’m not sure why I was surprised, considering this Rover’s front end is one of the most flat-faced, brick-shaped noses ever put into production. Also, the car pulls noticeably to the left under braking, but it’s not bad enough that I need to drop everything to address it.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the Range Rover’s fuel economy. While driving around in New York City, I was getting around 11 mpg, which was pretty terrible. I knew it’d get better on the open highway, but not this much better. The car averaged 17 mpg for the duration of the trip, according to its onboard computer, meaning it was getting well over 300 miles to a tank. That meant we only had to stop for gas twice on the journey (versus three times, which is what I was expecting).

The Car Is Slightly More Broken Than Before

One issue that occurred about three hours into the trip was a notification from the onboard computer about a low-beam headlight malfunction. Turns out the right-side Bi-Xenon light had simply … stopped working. It was nearly daylight by this time, but I didn’t want to risk going back out onto the road just to have a cop pull me over for a broken lamp.

Before I started slapping on the housing or digging deeper into the connections under the hood, I tested the classic WiFi router-style fix of turning off the headlights, then turning them on again. By some miracle, this worked. The headlight came right back on, and it hasn’t given me any trouble since. The Range Rover gods are on my side (for now, anyway).

The only other thing that went wrong was a piece of plastic clipped to the bumper that had broken into two pieces and started flapping in the wind about halfway through the drive. I previously ziptied this piece to the bumper, but I guess that wasn’t enough to keep it secure. Instead of trying to reassemble the plastic back into its place, I simply removed the push-in-style plastic fasteners that were holding them to the car and chucked them in the trash.

I’m sure these plastic chunks were once important for something, whether that was aero or holding other parts of the bumper together. But they’re gone now, and I don’t think it’s worth tracking down a replacement piece. Life goes on.

Wish Me Luck On Saturday

Since my arrival on Sunday, I’ve made another drive down and back to Chicago proper from the suburbs up north, where I’m staying, which took about two hours in total. The Range Rover performed well there, too. I plan to do at least two more of those drives while I’m here before heading back to New York on Saturday. These shorter trips will be a good gauge to monitor whether I need to fix anything more.

As for right now, there isn’t much else to address on the truck. It’ll be going back to New York fully loaded up with furniture and moving boxes, so I’m expecting slightly worse fuel economy (or maybe the same, since those hanging pieces of plastic likely created some problematic drag, and now they’re gone).

Having completed the drive here with relative ease, I’m pretty confident the Range Rover will make it back. But I don’t want to get too cocky, because that’s precisely where things go wrong. So, wish me luck.

Top graphic image: Brian Silvestro