BillArnett
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Bill
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2019
- Threads
- 6
- Messages
- 170
- Reaction score
- 324
- Location
- Emerald Hills CA
- Vehicles
- Rivian R1T; Tesla Model 3 (Cybertruck on order)
- Occupation
- Retired
- Thread starter
- #1
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was a time of joy, it was a time of frustration, it was a time of confidence, it was a time of bitter experience, in short a fortnight both rewarding and expensive.
It started out well enough. We cruised from home (in Redwood City CA) to Silverton Colorado mostly without incident on freeways with no charging problems (and it was even free). Our worries about charger availability proved to be unfounded: though we did see that quite a few of the units were not functioning properly we never had to wait. The last leg was over Ophir Pass. This is a pretty easy trail (TrailsOffRoad rates it “moderate”, 3 out of 10) that I’ve done many times before in a variety of vehicles. The R1T performed flawlessly and effortlessly.
My goal for this trip was the learn more about the Rivian’s capability and this was a good start. Charging at our hotel’s Tesla destination charger with our TeslaTap converter worked fine.
The next day we planned to step up the difficultly a bit. We had planned to do the “Alpine Loop” to Lake City and back over Engineer and Cinnamon Passes. The R1T cruised up to the top Engineer Pass (TrailsOffRoad 4, but we didn’t have to do the harder part) without a hiccup. But there was a lot of snow on the other (east) side and we decided not to push our luck and turned back down and went up the easy side of Cinnamon Pass (3) to see what it was like over there. There was a lot less snow so we started down the east side. Easy stuff.
Then there was a big CLUNK from what felt like the left rear part of the truck. There are some bumpy rocks on that side of the pass but nothing exciting. I was driving pretty conservatively, maybe 10 mph, but in retrospect, it’s clear that we must have bottomed the suspension on that corner. Not something that would have been a concern with our old Jeep. But the R1T didn’t like it at all. The clunks continued and the R1T’s computer gave us some dire sounding warnings and limited our speed to 32mph. We turned back over the pass and down to Silverton without further incident and called Rivian service.
They insisted (correctly as it turns out) that we not drive it any further and arranged for a tow to the service center in Denver, 350 miles away. That left us stranded in Silverton and our plans in shambles. Fortunately, we were able to rent a Jeep for a few days while Rivian fixed our R1T. The whole point of this trip was to evaluate the Rivian and now we were stuck with a crappy rental Jeep and an uncertain future. It took two days before Rivian was able to diagnose the problem and a further four days to get the needed parts and do the repair. We made the best of it sightseeing (beautiful fall colors) with the rental Jeep then got a limo ride to Durango where we rented a Hertz car to drive one way to Denver to be reunited with our repaired R1T.
The diagnosis was clear: we had completely sheered the left rear damper’s rod at the top where it attaches to the frame:
There was also some other damage to the damper probably caused by flopping around after it came loose. They didn’t have the part in Denver, it had to be shipped from San Francisco. But as that part contains compressed air the shipping companies won’t allow it on an airplane so it had to come by ground. Three days :-( As it was being finished up we had a chance to talk to the Denver service manager, Damir, a very nice and knowledgeable guy. He did his best to get us back on the road as soon as possible, the shipping company’s rules are not his fault. He let us look at the truck while it was up on the lift (he can bend his own rules so we could understand the situation in detail. There are no bump stops. So the damper itself must take the full force of a bottoming situation. It’s clearly not designed to handle that. (Looking at the rear suspension I can see why they omitted the stops: there’s a lot of stuff in a small space in there, adding a bump stop might be difficult packaging-wise.) My previous experience with a Jeep Wrangler is that bottoming is rough and uncomfortable but ultimately harmless. Not so the R1T, it’s a much more delicate beast. I’ve learned a very expensive lesson..
The trip home from Denver was uneventful, aside from a couple of spurious warning messages. Not wanting the disaster to be our last taste of Rivian off-roading, we took a couple of easy dirt roads on the way. Again the R1T did brilliantly. I couldn’t be happier. When it works the R1T is the best off-roader available for my kind of trails. But it has its limits.
I traded a Tesla Model S and a Jeep Wrangler for my R1T. As a daily driver and as a road-tripper to get to the trails the R1T is almost as good as the Model S (main drawback: the charging network). As an off-roader it’s better than the Jeep on the easy stuff but it can’t handle the more difficult trails. That’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.
So in the end I’m still convinced that it is a far, far better truck than I have ever owned; a far, far better road tripper than I have ever known.
It started out well enough. We cruised from home (in Redwood City CA) to Silverton Colorado mostly without incident on freeways with no charging problems (and it was even free). Our worries about charger availability proved to be unfounded: though we did see that quite a few of the units were not functioning properly we never had to wait. The last leg was over Ophir Pass. This is a pretty easy trail (TrailsOffRoad rates it “moderate”, 3 out of 10) that I’ve done many times before in a variety of vehicles. The R1T performed flawlessly and effortlessly.
My goal for this trip was the learn more about the Rivian’s capability and this was a good start. Charging at our hotel’s Tesla destination charger with our TeslaTap converter worked fine.
The next day we planned to step up the difficultly a bit. We had planned to do the “Alpine Loop” to Lake City and back over Engineer and Cinnamon Passes. The R1T cruised up to the top Engineer Pass (TrailsOffRoad 4, but we didn’t have to do the harder part) without a hiccup. But there was a lot of snow on the other (east) side and we decided not to push our luck and turned back down and went up the easy side of Cinnamon Pass (3) to see what it was like over there. There was a lot less snow so we started down the east side. Easy stuff.
Then there was a big CLUNK from what felt like the left rear part of the truck. There are some bumpy rocks on that side of the pass but nothing exciting. I was driving pretty conservatively, maybe 10 mph, but in retrospect, it’s clear that we must have bottomed the suspension on that corner. Not something that would have been a concern with our old Jeep. But the R1T didn’t like it at all. The clunks continued and the R1T’s computer gave us some dire sounding warnings and limited our speed to 32mph. We turned back over the pass and down to Silverton without further incident and called Rivian service.
They insisted (correctly as it turns out) that we not drive it any further and arranged for a tow to the service center in Denver, 350 miles away. That left us stranded in Silverton and our plans in shambles. Fortunately, we were able to rent a Jeep for a few days while Rivian fixed our R1T. The whole point of this trip was to evaluate the Rivian and now we were stuck with a crappy rental Jeep and an uncertain future. It took two days before Rivian was able to diagnose the problem and a further four days to get the needed parts and do the repair. We made the best of it sightseeing (beautiful fall colors) with the rental Jeep then got a limo ride to Durango where we rented a Hertz car to drive one way to Denver to be reunited with our repaired R1T.
The diagnosis was clear: we had completely sheered the left rear damper’s rod at the top where it attaches to the frame:
There was also some other damage to the damper probably caused by flopping around after it came loose. They didn’t have the part in Denver, it had to be shipped from San Francisco. But as that part contains compressed air the shipping companies won’t allow it on an airplane so it had to come by ground. Three days :-( As it was being finished up we had a chance to talk to the Denver service manager, Damir, a very nice and knowledgeable guy. He did his best to get us back on the road as soon as possible, the shipping company’s rules are not his fault. He let us look at the truck while it was up on the lift (he can bend his own rules so we could understand the situation in detail. There are no bump stops. So the damper itself must take the full force of a bottoming situation. It’s clearly not designed to handle that. (Looking at the rear suspension I can see why they omitted the stops: there’s a lot of stuff in a small space in there, adding a bump stop might be difficult packaging-wise.) My previous experience with a Jeep Wrangler is that bottoming is rough and uncomfortable but ultimately harmless. Not so the R1T, it’s a much more delicate beast. I’ve learned a very expensive lesson..
The trip home from Denver was uneventful, aside from a couple of spurious warning messages. Not wanting the disaster to be our last taste of Rivian off-roading, we took a couple of easy dirt roads on the way. Again the R1T did brilliantly. I couldn’t be happier. When it works the R1T is the best off-roader available for my kind of trails. But it has its limits.
I traded a Tesla Model S and a Jeep Wrangler for my R1T. As a daily driver and as a road-tripper to get to the trails the R1T is almost as good as the Model S (main drawback: the charging network). As an off-roader it’s better than the Jeep on the easy stuff but it can’t handle the more difficult trails. That’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.
So in the end I’m still convinced that it is a far, far better truck than I have ever owned; a far, far better road tripper than I have ever known.
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