Soek Raad - Pajero 3.5 LWB

[SimonB]

Well thank you very much...now poor old me has to go put back on my list a bunch of cars that I previously discarded....Oh well now i have to go and test drive some more cars...

You mention these gearboxes are robust...are the Auto's as robust? I am not looking for an auto or a manual per say. I just will take the best I can find for the money. I just want to make the most informed choice posible.

Carel

If I did my same exercise all over again I would buy the auto....

[Carel116]

Well now you see, this is why it is so great to have a forum like this. It is so difficult to make an informed decision if you havent had the expierience....I had some experience with a colt, and I loved it, even though it was old, 96 in this case, it was strong, and it had alot of manners when it got tuff. It never got left behind even when the company included Toys and Landies half it's age. This is why i am so hell bent on another Mitsu. I was looking at the Colt, but after driving the Paj there is no contest.

Carel

[SimonB]

This is why i am so hell bent on another Mitsu. I was looking at the Colt, but after driving the Paj there is no contest.

Like me - had a '04 2.8 Colt, now a '96 3.5 Paj. I am now a born again SUV petrolhead Not that the Colt was bad, far from it... but as you said, no contest.

[Carel116]

Good morning all

And the search goes on, I have not yet gotten the right Gen 2 but I have narrowed it down to three.

96 3.5 250k very little ofroad in impecable condition
95 3.0 160k very little everything...rearly used, no leather.
96 2.8 220k little offroad and diesel pump reconed with new injectors

They are all man. and in good condition. I am partial to the Petrols...but which one...

your oppinions are greatly appreciated.

[slojo]

Looking at those options, I guess it all comes down to price and condition.

I only tested on 3.0 when shopping and I found it pretty underpowered. However, the mileage, if genuine, is VERY low given the vehicle's age and would make it worth consideration.

The 3.5, even with 250 000kms would probably be my choice out of that lot though. I mean petrol just dropped by R1.60 today - at this rate fuel will be free by june next year ;-)

[Carel116]

Thanx Slojo

The 3.5 is my pick of the litter as well at this point, but that damn 3.0 is scratching where it does not itch...the guy selling it has an impressive service record of the car, so the km's seem legit...bloody thing looks like it was bought yesterday

With less power on tap I guess you tend to drive it harder, thus using more fuel...this is an assumption...

I terms of reliability, fuel consumption and "fix on the side of the roadness", are the 3.0 or the 3.5 better over landers.

Carel

[Ratsalad]

One of the diffs between the 3L and 3.5 is the work involved to changes plugs. If you work on it yourself the 3L is easier and even if you don't it's cheaper to service.
As jy nie skrik vir 'n manifold nie, kry die 3.5!
3.5 can do everything the 3L can do and you get better performance with similar economy.

[brennain]

.the guy selling it has an impressive service record of the car, so the km's seem legit...bloody thing looks like it was bought yesterday


l

I think you answered you question right there........

it DOES all depend on the prices though. But for me, service record, appearance and LOW KMS are the bigger deciding factors here. And as mentioned the 3.0 is cheaper/easier to service. I dont know how economy figures would differ. And leather you can always add yourself, it's not as expensive as you amy think.

[Carel116]

Hello Ratsalad

Ek is nie bang om self an die dingetjie te werk nie. Solank ek nie te veel special tools moet maak of kry nie

Ek will net nie later "regrets" hê oor ek nie die 3.5 gevat het nie.

Ek is nie haastig nie, so ek will soveel info bymekaar maak as wat ek kan voor ek koop....die 3.5 is so R5k meer as die 3.0 so daar is niks in die prys nie. hulle is altwee baie goedkoop.

Brenian...I have learnt over the years to be weiry of something that is to good to be true. As one of my friends said, if it looks to good to be true, it probably is. But if it is that good and I pass it up because I am to weiry, I might be selling myself short.

I am getting engine and chasis number soon, as I want to prob a bit more.

What I do like about the 3.5 is, although it has 255k on the clock it has little signs of ware on the seats, steering and carpets. But in comparison to the 3.0 the outside gives away the age a bit, not much though.

it is still a tough call

Carel

[SimonB]

Carel... you haven't mentioned price of your 3 options

IMO:
3.0 LWB is gutless
2.8 is slightly risky

You can definitely get a 3.5 with less than 250k for less than 75k (mine has 180k )

[jbeez]

Jbeez is the only person I know of who blew a Pajero 2.8.

Timing chains broke and that broke the rest Would go for a diesel again if I have to. Last weekend to Tietiesbaai. Seven of us in the car, roofrack loaded like a Transkei bus, wind blowing us to pieces and travelling at 100-115KM/h I still managed to get arounf 9 km/l

[hbannink]

You landed in the worst place to get an objective view about pajeros. Once you have owned one it is tickets the guys here will not change easily, the only other vehicle that drives like a pajero is another pajero.
The stock 3l pushes out about 110 kw with the 3.5 about 157kw but driving the two there is not that much difference in consumption and performance of the 3l is far from land rover frustration. The most noticeable difference is on high speed passing another vehicle the 3.5 will accelerate quicker, where the 3l has more grunt in the lower range. The 500cc difference is nor the main reason for the difference in output but rather the 12 vs. 24 valves. Generally speaking multi valves produce more power in the higher rev range and single valve motors lower down.
Mitsubishi motors have an almost bulletproof bottom end with a motor falling well within factory wear limits, Most problems are on the heads and valve gear.
Regardless of which one you go for you will soon learn the advantage of inserting the new plugs in to a piece of hose pipe to help installing in to the head. If it was my call I would do a cambelt service regardless of what the seller says. set aside a weekend and get to know your engine, Remember to take pics as you strip it will prove to be a great bonus when reassembling afterwards.
If you find the 3l not powerful enough you can always tweak it a bit

[Carel116]

Didn't they make a 3.5 with 12v...why do i remember thatdont know..

Now the thing with a turbo is, it is a very effiecent way of for you to turn a really fuel efficient city car, like the the Paj into a slightly thirsty little monster, and I am not so sure if that is right thing to do for reliability.

speaking about tweaking...I have heard of a couple of guys getting CRD to work on there cars with really great results...fuel economy and power

Carel

[hbannink]

Didn't they make a 3.5 with 12v...why do i remember thatdont know..

Now the thing with a turbo is, it is a very effiecent way of for you to turn a really fuel efficient city car, like the the Paj into a slightly thirsty little monster, and I am not so sure if that is right thing to do for reliability.

Carel

I have heard of a 3.5 12valve but never seen one, 4e will probably be the best to confirm this, but I have made a general comment. There are quite a few differences between the 6g72 and 6g74 motors that all contribute to the difference in power and torque curve.

One point that I am going to dispute is the idea that a turbo turns "a really fuel efficient city car into a slightly thirsty little monster". I have a turbo "devil" platkar with a 16v modified superboss motor boosting 1.2bar and it is all down to drive style. If you step on the loud pedal and the turbo is sounding like a 747 on take off the fuel gauge looks like a rev counter in reverse granted, but if you drive like normal person it gets better economy than my 1800 golf.

I have often toyed with the idea of forced induction on my pajero, nothing hectic just .2 or max .3 bar and the only thing stopping me is reliability off road. My concern is that something will break under all that power so the "tweaks" that I have posted was more tongue in cheek than being serious.

On the other hand If I drop that charger on and up the boost to .6 I will have the fastest pajero in town and still have a power boost at low rpm

Hek

[Carel116]

Hey Hek

I also have a turboed platkar but it started out as an already thirsty 3.0.
The problem with your theory about driving the car sedately is that, who wants to drive it like a tanie buying groceries...you spent the money to make the power, so now you have to use it

With the Paj I don’t want a rubber ripping platkar beater, but I don’t want to run out of steam in a ladden car up a long hill, or negotiating some arbitrary sand dune that somer popped up in the road.

Carel

[benhur]

M10CW

On My Pajero which I bought in late April 2007 and so far have done about 60 000kms I have done the following repair work so far (except for normal servicing):

Problem no 1 - Cracked Exhaust Manifold on left bank. This seems to be a general problem. R1600 for a new one at the agents (there are two). I Don't want branches, I don't like branches and I heard of a few Pajero's with heat problems under bonnet after fitting branches and they then have to reroute wiring to get it out of harms way. My friend who works at Afrox got a sample of some special arch welding rods they are manufacturing, the crack was welded up and the manifold skimmed afterwards and so far it holds.

The other issue was the rear brake disks warping - Again it seems to be a general thing with Gen 3 Pajero's doing this. The guy who did the on car disk skimming job for me told me it was the rear, I did not believe him had the front ones done, and at the end he turned out to be right so I paid for the front unnecessary. He says he gets called out to various Mitsubishi dealers to skim rear disks under warranty regularly.

Then I have an on going problem. I have some sort of vibration in the rear between 120 and 130 km/h. I have been driving it like that for a long while now and it does not seem to get any worse so I am not doing anything other then driving below 120 or cruising at 130 on the high way. There is also a bit of a backlash that I feel/hear sometimes when she gears down. My guess it is all related to the rear prop shaft or its rubber joints (it does not have universal joints)

At one stage a week after I did a water crossing at Moegatle that was a bit higher then I suspected (from driving it before) I washed my engine to get the mud out. In the week after that I picked up a serious oil leak which became progressively worse quickly. I had to change both the cam seals and the crank seal. Again I was told these seals do not like wading. The parts were R 350 IIRC at the stealers but it took a big part of a Saturday as you have to strip half the engine to get there. ( at the time I wanted to change the fan belt and cam belt but at R 1500+ for the two, I only bought a second hand (almost brand new) fan belt from PartHunt for R 50. I kept the cam belt as it was replaced at the last service it had before the warranty rand out at the stealers.

This is not the worst nor the best I had so far on a vehicle I drove as my daily runner. So far the best was my 2 BMWs and the worst the Isuzu.

Other issues I had so far is the wheel alignment that I struggled to sort out. This was more related to the recommended Service providers then to the car itself. Two weeks after buying the car I was involved in an accident. After Elden Auto Body (Mitshu aproved panel b(ch)eater) fixed the car she pulled left. I returned the car and after they fixed (or tried concealing all the other little bugs I returned the car for like gluing the wheel arch flares which they did not secure properly the 1st time round) I complained about the steering again (the original quote did include the replacement of both left control arms) Then they referred me to MotorVision, who is obviously in cahoots with them After doing an off-road trail I realised how they butchered my vehicle when the right top control arm came loose where they slotted it to get more adjustment out of it, to compensate for the accident damaged left control arm.

The long and the short of it was that after deciding I had enough of fighting with them, I bought a new-second hand lower control arm from PartHunt and after replacing it, Mallas was able to for the first time get the wheel alignment in spec with the caster on the left wheel fixed.

My other gripes so far is that on the Gen 3 there is little after market spares available and the Stealers charge between 3x to 5x for filters and service parts then what it would have cost if it was available aftermarket.



Also Mitsubishi SA does not have the ability to reprogram the ECU for basic functionality like electric Window operation etc. The way the car came out of the factory is the way you will keep it or you will have to find an ECU of another car that was programmed the way you want it.

If it was not for the agents I would have given this vehicle a 5star rating.

What I like about the car. It is a pleasant drive as a daily driver. it handles well at high speeds and can be driven hard without worrying that you will stuff up the engine. Off-road (even though it is a bit heavy and handles funny due to strange weight distribution, have a bad break over and departure angle (lwb only) it is fairly luxurious and comfortable even SWAMBO does not complain too much, after a full day out on a trail.

So if you can work on it yourself and don't have to rely on the agents then it is a good vehicle. Hopefully now with the Gen 4 out more of the Gen3's parts will become available after market as I have seen some filters and stuff was mentioned in the various catalogues as future parts (still in development)

Also on the upside I saw earlier mention of the difficulty to replace the spark plugs. I removed one of the accessible plugs the other day and after 50 000 kms the long life plugs I fitted is still looking good for many kms to come (BMW use them for about 100 000 kms on average I was lead to believe.)

So all and all I believe the Pajero is good value for money. If money was not an object I would have rather bought a similar model Prado but at the time I paid R 200K for mine (2003-model) a similar model Prado would have been R 360K+ At least my Pajero is now paid off and I can rather spend the money towards maintaining her then having to pay a monthly instalment on a more expensive SUV.

[hbannink]

If money was not an object I would have rather bought a similar model Prado

One thing that you did not mention is the fuel consumption, the prado does have a bigger thirst. I have compared the two on tar and the biggest difference was consumption as for off road I don't have a clue.

[benhur]

On road I get averaged between 6.1 en 6.9 km/l in the last couple of months. If I drive alone it tends more towards 6.1, if Mamma drives it a lot it tends more towards 6.9km/l. The Prado owners I spoke to get the same.

A weekend away off-roading can take the consumption down to as little as 4km/l I even managed worse if I fit the 33's.

But who cares about consumption? Get your boss to pay your fuel bill