A Tale of Two Trucks: Off-Road Trip to Test R1T Capabilities [Suspension / Damper Damage]

[BillArnett]

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.

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[gramurai]

Great attitude Bill

Seems more likely a defective part than a design fail maybe?? I hope there is at least an internal bump stop in the shock...never seen a stock vehicle without them.

My wife and I are also selling our daily driver, long trip, and off-road vehicles and replacing with the Rivian. We will keep something as spare car but will likely seldom use it. Thanks to just retiring!

Hope you have many trouble free miles ahead

 

[ScottnAZ]

Great picture of the leaves changing! Share more from your adventure.

sorry to hear about the problems, but as said above….. great attitude about the adventure. Enjoy the truck!

 

[R1Sky Business]

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.

A truck doing truck things.....so edgy

 

[SoCal Rob]

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.

Sorry to hear about your trouble and thank you for sharing your experience.

If you don‘t mind a question, do you recall what height your suspension was set to at the time? I wonder if a higher setting would have helped prevent this… assuming you weren’t already at the highest. Maybe this will help others avoid a similar fate.

 

[zipzag]

So what's the feeling here ? A defective part? The vehicle should be able to hit a curb at 10mph without suspension damage

 

[BillArnett]

...do you recall what height your suspension was set to at the time? I wonder if a higher setting would have helped prevent this… assuming you weren’t already at the highest. Maybe this will help others avoid a similar fate.

I was in "High", not "Highest". It's hard to say if it would have made any difference, though.

I don't think the part was defective. I think it is a design flaw: there should be bump stops to prevent this kind of damage. But that most likely isn't going to change. To avoid this kind of damage the only solution is to drive much more conservatively on the bumps.

 

[SoCal Rob]

I was in "High", not "Highest". It's hard to say if it would have made any difference, though.

I don't think the part was defective. I think it is a design flaw: there should be bump stops to prevent this kind of damage. But that most likely isn't going to change. To avoid this kind of damage the only solution is to drive much more conservatively on the bumps.

Thank you for the useful information even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I would probably only use high unless I got caught on something. I was hoping that the black rubber part in your picture was intended to act as a bump stop but I also don’t know how it relates to the other components so probably a bit of wishful thinking.

The only thing that gives me hope that maybe it is a defective part rather than a defective design was the video Sandy Munroe did in his silver R1T pre-tear down.

and watch from 1:30 to 2:10

It sure looked like he was merciless on the suspension while driving over the logs on a 21” standard setup. While watching that video I thought to myself that I would NEVER go that fast over a surface that rough and I wouldn’t be surprised if he damaged something. As far as I know the suspension made it through unscathed and I’m having difficulty reconciling his experience with yours unless there was an issue with the specific part and not the entire design. Was what you drove over worse than that?

Thanks!

 

[iansriv]

Love your attitude mate! I can't say I would have been as gracious and understanding. I'm a bit confused why Rivian would have such a design flaw. According to all the Rivian trans-America Mountain fording, it should do fine. Enjoy the car in good health.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

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.

Do you have a photo of where that part is located?

Also, i know what you mean about most factory bump stops being quite harsh when you hit them. I swapped my OEM ones out for Timbren (I think) Sumo springs. instead of extremely dense rubber, they are hollow and look like a small stack of tires, they achieve the same purpose, but without the harsh hits of old.

I guess on the T and S, I assumed there would be bump stops further inboard on the lower control arms away from the suspension components. Guess not unfortunately.

Thanks for sharing too.

 

[zipzag]

Rivian doing the repair under warranty indicates that the damage was due to a part or design defect. Jeep is not routinely doing warranty repairs on parts damaged running on trails.

I would probably be more comforted if Rivian had fought the owner due to the terrible way he must have mistreated the vehicle and its robust suspension.

 

[fhteagle]

@BillArnett -

Great write-up and photos. There are certainly worse places in the world to be stuck than Silverton! If anyone else is headed this way and needs recommendations about who what where when why how out here, please feel free to PM me.

I think there might be some confusion as to whether this was a warranty repair, it if you paid out of pocket for any of the repair, travel, etc?

 

[zefram47]

Disappointing that you were able to shear the shock damper rod so easily. While leading trails one year I had an FJ in the group on Bilstein 5100s do similar, but I'd have expected more from Rivian's system. In the FJ's case it was a rear where the spring was divorced from the damper rather than a strut assembly, so we were able to rig up a limit strap and limp the truck back to town. One of the vehicles I'm replacing is a 4Runner that I've built out for off-road fun, so I've been watching the off-roading threads to see how well the Rivian has been coping with trails. Seems like quite a few suspension related issues, though many seem to be around the air suspension leaking, blowing a hose, etc making it difficult to get back to pavement without more damage.

 

[zipzag]

Disappointing that you were able to shear the shock damper rod so easily. While leading trails one year I had an FJ in the group on Bilstein 5100s do similar, but I'd have expected more from Rivian's system. In the FJ's case it was a rear where the spring was divorced from the damper rather than a strut assembly, so we were able to rig up a limit strap and limp the truck back to town. One of the vehicles I'm replacing is a 4Runner that I've built out for off-road fun, so I've been watching the off-roading threads to see how well the Rivian has been coping with trails. Seems like quite a few suspension related issues, though many seem to be around the air suspension leaking, blowing a hose, etc making it difficult to get back to pavement without more damage.

It also happened on stock wheels/tires. Hopefully a defective part. Reporting of suspension air leaks seem to have decreased.

 

[jclicky]

I was in "High", not "Highest". It's hard to say if it would have made any difference, though.

I don't think the part was defective. I think it is a design flaw: there should be bump stops to prevent this kind of damage. But that most likely isn't going to change. To avoid this kind of damage the only solution is to drive much more conservatively on the bumps.

This is such a huge disappointment. How could they build it w/out a bump stop?

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