Off-road ride quality: Vehicle vibrates on gravel

[slader]

Hi there. I hope this is the right channel for this question...

I live in KZN and I've owned my 2014 Renault Duster for a year now, and have done many long distance trips with it on dirt (Kruger twice, Drakensberg, Sani etc).

I, however, find that the car/cabin is incredibly bumpy/vibrates a lot when driving around 40km/h on hard gravel farm roads. When driving on hard dirt or gravel roads the cabin noise/vibration through the cabin is so alarming that I get scared to drive it faster on the dirt and tend to go as slow as possible to lessen the pain it feels like I'm putting my car through.

I have Goodyear AT's (biggest I can fit on the Duster) and as far as I know the suspension and shocks are fine (sometimes when the back wheel drop into a pothole or dump in the road you hear like a click sound but no idea what that is.)

The car is due for a service within the month and I wanna see if I can make the ride quality better for off-road.

Thanks in advance for all and any comments.

Slade

[Dungbeetle]

The only advice I have is to drop the tyre pressure to below 2Bar on gravel. Those tyres and the low weight of your vehicle will be happy as low as 1.6Bar. Have a pump in the kit.

[jelo]

Drop pressure, drive faster.......

[4ePajero]

The only advice I have is to drop the tyre pressure to below 2Bar on gravel. Those tyres and the low weight of your vehicle will be happy as low as 1.6Bar. Have a pump in the kit.

This ^^^

[Orxy]

^

+1

There's another rule of thumb that you can use for tyre pressures: measure the pressures when you get to gravel, then drop to half of that.

Then re-inflate to the measured values when you get back on tar.

[HugoNotte]

Drop pressure, drive faster.......

What Jelo says might sound counter intuitive, but is exactly right.
Dropping the tyre pressure, I would start off with about 1.5 bar, provided you got a /65 or /70 profile tyre, makes the tyres absorb a lot of bumps.
Driving faster, you will see that the wheels don't have time to go all the way to the "valley" of the corrugations, but ideally just ride on top of them.
Experiment a bit, both with tyre pressure and speed.

Drop the tyre pressure, drive for 15 or 20 minutes and feel the tyre's temperature. If it's warm to the touch, that's good. The tyre mustn't become hot, then your tyre pressure is too low for the speed you are driving.

[grips]

Problem when the inexperienced drive faster on gravel they roll their cars

[ChasingSunsets]

Hi,

While doing homework for a recent duster purchase by a family member I found multiple reports of shock failures within low mileage on the dusters. It's seems the factory shock absorbers are not great and don't last much beyond 50k km. So while the advice above is spot on (lower your tyre pressures) your issue is likely being exacerbated by bad shocks.

Hope this helps
Cheers

[Petri Oosthuizen]

Got my wife's X1 karretjie back from service last week.

"Bokkie die kar stamp nou baie op die slaggate".

The Einsteins there thought it good to have the tyre pressures (ordinary tyres, not fancy stuff) pumped to 3,3 bar

Daai ding het my steriel gestamp tot by die Engen dink ek

[jelo]

Problem when the inexperienced drive faster on gravel they roll their cars

Only in Fortuners......

[grips]

Only in Fortuners......

UnFortunately not

[grips]

There are two speeds for bad corrugated roads. 20 or 120

[HugoNotte]

There are two speeds for bad corrugated roads. 20 or 120

So what, difference is only "1"?

[slader]

The only advice I have is to drop the tyre pressure to below 2Bar on gravel. Those tyres and the low weight of your vehicle will be happy as low as 1.6Bar. Have a pump in the kit.

Okay, yeah that's what my brain was telling me has to be the reason. I had no idea we were going to do such a distance on corrugated roads, but I definitely know for the future! Thanks for the reply.

[slader]

Drop pressure, drive faster.......

Gotcha.

[slader]

^

+1

There's another rule of thumb that you can use for tyre pressures: measure the pressures when you get to gravel, then drop to half of that.

Then re-inflate to the measured values when you get back on tar.

Great, noted. Thank you!

[slader]

What Jelo says might sound counter intuitive, but is exactly right.
Dropping the tyre pressure, I would start off with about 1.5 bar, provided you got a /65 or /70 profile tyre, makes the tyres absorb a lot of bumps.
Driving faster, you will see that the wheels don't have time to go all the way to the "valley" of the corrugations, but ideally just ride on top of them.
Experiment a bit, both with tyre pressure and speed.

Drop the tyre pressure, drive for 15 or 20 minutes and feel the tyre's temperature. If it's warm to the touch, that's good. The tyre mustn't become hot, then your tyre pressure is too low for the speed you are driving.

These are the tyres I have: 215/70R16 GOODYEAR WRANGLER ALL TERRAIN ADVENTURE (104T)

Thank you for the information about tyre pressure and temperature. I had never really driven long distances on corrugated roads but going faster so that you stay "above" the valley. Will keep in mind for next time!

[slader]

Problem when the inexperienced drive faster on gravel they roll their cars

Good thing I'm experience after all these comments!

[slader]

There are two speeds for bad corrugated roads. 20 or 120

This is pure wisdom right here!