Gerrit Loubser wrote:Thanks for sharing the report, Gerhard. Those are beautiful pictures.
4ePajero wrote:...
[*]Traction is required where there are serious axle-twisters, especially at the short uphill hairbends. The Toureg's TC made it feel easy, but I know it would have been difficult with the Pajero's open diffs.
I drove up Sani a year or two ago in August and I can't remember any real axle twisters on the way up at the time. Our Gen 3 Paj ran up in high range without using the rear diff lock at all. Of course the road surface would change over time and might well be much worse now than it was then.
These were at the hairpin bends, where water coming from the top eroded a donga across the road, just before you have to make the sharp turn. On these bends, the road was so washed out that there was usually only one line to take, and axle twisting was inevitable.
I did not take to many photos (they don't really show the road the way it is), but look at this one. There is a small ditch forming right in the corner. When that erodes to say 400mm deep, combined with the sharp corner, things get exciting.
Notice the black tyre marks on the rock on left, evidence of tyre spinning, because of loss of traction.
On this one, you could drive 'around' it on the left, but on some that option was less viable than the one closer to the corner.
- Start of a donga.
Look at the image (which I got off the web). Very few corners had the nice 'flat' surface you see on the right here. It was more like the left of the photo
- Typical corner of hairpin.
At one of them, I had the Touareg's front left ±400mm in the air. When inching forward, that wheel started dropping and the rear right was in the air as well. I could feel the vehicle rocking on front right and left rear.
The V10 had enough power not to need low range, but the speed at which the road had to be negotiated made low range the better choice.
The section, the first river crossing after the RSA border post, shown on this Google Earth image, consisted of rock (up to 300-400mm dia)
only. There was
NO gravel on the road surface, and negotiating that in High Range would have been tricky. Without diff-lock? Then you are either a much better driver than I am or the road is now in worse condition. (.... or the Pajero is indeed so much better than the Touareg!
)
- River Crossing
I've driven the Baviaanskloof a few times, once in 2WD (high), and the Sani Pass made the Baviaans look like a urban highway
