Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

Two reasons for harsh ride on gravel:

• 1. To hard tyre pressures
• 2. if not convinced, refer to 1. above.

When determining tyre pressures for gravel, one starts at a pressure that is possibly to LOW, and then work your way up until the ride becomes uncomfortable.

The Gen2 has basically the same (a bit better) suspension as the Gen1, and the Gen1 with correct tyre pressures is a dream on gravel.

The Gen3 & 4 has even better suspension, and should be better than the Gen 1/2 on gravel.

Members post a problem, we point to the probable cause, but no-one comes back to confirm the actual tyre pressures used!

I have owned both a gen2 and gen3 and have driven dad's gen1 on many occasions.

I have driven both on the same gravel road with similar tyres and pressures.

IMHO the gen2 is a softer ride at lower speeds on gravel but the gen3 has a better ride at higher speeds on gravel. The gen1 was IMHO by far the better gravel road car - possibly because of the huge soft tyres.

The gen3 also does not have a huge difference in ride comfort between soft and hard pumped tyres, whereas the gen2 had a big notable difference between hard and soft tyres.

In the end I miss my gen2 but the gen3 is superior as it gives much better ride on the road and off road is similar to the gen2. It also has better sound insulation.

This is just my experience and may not be correct.

My Gen 3 also rattles badly in the Kgalagadi. I had standard suspension with Coopers Discoverer ATR, but found it very hard even on tar. I now have OME with Pirelli Scorpion ATR and find the on road much smoother. The dasboard still shakes to pieces and my wrists hurt after 2000kms in the park.

I started off at 1.6 bar as suggested at Twee Rivieren and then dropped to 1.5 as suggested at Mata Mata. Still way too uncomfortable. Ended up at 1.2 bar where it was sort of OK. Worried about the sidewalls though.

My brother's Prado was fine at 1.5 bar though.

I have a 2007 GLS LWB which I assume is a Gen 4? I travelled through Lesotho last month and thought I would have to see my dentist afterwards - even my teeth were rattling. The roads are not that corrugated but are fairly rocky so I was nervous about deflating the tyres too much (side walls being pierced) A Land Cruiser and a Patrol passed me - there is no way I could have kept up with them, I believe, without doing serious damage to my teeth or vehicle. I found the suspension to be uncomfortably rigid and don't know what to do about it.
Lilylou
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

what pressure was your tyres?

how loaded?

I was also in Lesotho a few weeks ago. Road from Tsaba Tseka to sani was rof, but when I deflated tyres from 2.5 to 1.8 it made a heeeuuuge difference.

There was a 4x4 tour guide at Katse who told me about the road (they were all driving Toyotas). He said they sometimes go down to 1.6.

Tyre pressure was 2.
I went from Sani to Molumong to Thaba Tseka to Katse to Hlotse around to Oxbow and then down Sani again. As you say the road was rof - but what a trip!

As I said previously:

When determining tyre pressures for gravel, one starts at a pressure that is possibly to LOW, and then work your way up until the ride becomes uncomfortable.

It could be worth your while to find a bad piece of gravel road to experiment.
Load the vehicle the same as you would on a typical holiday trip.

Go up/down (depending on whether you start high or low) in increments of 0.2 bar until you find the correct pressure for your vehicle with load.

I would start at 1.5bar and work my way up in increments of 0.1bar.


The whole family of Pajeros are renowned for their gravel road driving, so your experience is not the norm.

PS On a recent trip, 4ePikanini (in his Gen3) and I in my Touareg did quite a bit of gravel road (good and bad) and he had no problems. I had the Touareg up to 120km/h on some stretches, and Marius followed without complaint.

I'm pretty happy with my Gen3 on gravel / rocky roads... We have traveled a fair amount of bad roads - including the "terrible" D3707 from Orupembe to Puros.

I deflate quite a lot - if we travel quite slowly (average of less than 60km/h) on rocky roads and bad corrugated gravel, I go down to around 1.5bar. Good gravel roads at speeds of around 100km/h - around 1.7 to 1.8bar.

My friend with a Land Cruiser was also deflated to similar pressures.

4ePajero wrote:As I said previously:

When determining tyre pressures for gravel, one starts at a pressure that is possibly to LOW, and then work your way up until the ride becomes uncomfortable.

It could be worth your while to find a bad piece of gravel road to experiment.
Load the vehicle the same as you would on a typical holiday trip.

Go up/down (depending on whether you start high or low) in increments of 0.2 bar until you find the correct pressure for your vehicle with load.

I would start at 1.5bar and work my way up in increments of 0.1bar.


The whole family of Pajeros are renowned for their gravel road driving, so your experience is not the norm.

PS On a recent trip, 4ePikanini (in his Gen3) and I in my Touareg did quite a bit of gravel road (good and bad) and he had no problems. I had the Touareg up to 120km/h on some stretches, and Marius followed without complaint.

More than comfortable. The only thing keeping me back was a limited fuel budget and its difficult keeping up with that V10 engine.

I have found that the gen3 with BFG needs more deflatingon dirt than normal as the triple ply tyre is pretty stiff/strong