Changing our tow vehicle.

WOW! Ron how quick are you? Thanks.

Roughly 1.6

127 kW and 410nm in the Prado is hardly going to be troubled by the 130 kW 301nm that the 1999 v6 Pajero managed. I'd guess the Prado would be quicker by some margin off the mark towing the Kimberley. He's upgrading because the Pajero is old, not to save money.

None of that gels with my experience of moving from 3.3 litre v6 petrol motor to a 2.2 4 cylinder crd motor. I'll take the diesel any day. Coming up to 300k on the 2.2 and haven't touched the motor in 8 years from new. Services every 12k @ around $300, pretty much what I was charged for the petrol car taking into account it was over 8 years ago. The little diesel has 400nm torque and tows better than the petrol did and uses just over half the fuel. Not towing, I used get around 550kms to a 65 litre tank on petrol, I get nearly 900kms to 65 litres on diesel. That's my summary over nearly 20 years in both types of cars. The diesel could crap itself tomorrow and I would buy another one. It's paid its dues.

Yeah, nothing to do with power - we have 2 turbo diesels and just love the grunt. Lots of torque low down. Pulls like a bull in springtime!
Landcruiser servicing is every 10,000k and VW is every 15000k so no different to a petrol, and both use cartridge oil and fuel filters so cheap on parts.

You fellas need to get ya figures right and comapre apples with apples.

the 3.5 litre v6 in the Pajero made 150 to 160KW depending on what model.

The earler Mitsubishi motors where known to be a bit thursty.

If you don't think it has anything to do with power you are kidding yourself ..... people often bang on about torque and towing ....... it always ... always comes down to power.

Of course a diesel has low down torque ...... because they simply don't rev and makes bugger all power after 3500 4000 RPM ..... ya petrol motor still have 1500 2000 rpm to go and still not peaked out.

ya gona pay more for oil and more for filters on diesels ...... they mostly hold a lot more oil and the filters are twice the price.

I've see people itemize the costs ....... swings and roundabouts ..... diesel in the same model does not work out significantly cheaper than petrol.

You also have to burn a lot of fuel to cover the cost of a new vehicle.

It depends on what your expectations are ...... no doubt a diesel will tow.

cheers

They don't seem to make petrol trucks and semi's anymore, they're all diesel because they have to pull stuff and use less fuel doing it. That means high torque at lower engine revs. They don't make many diesel race cars because they have to accelerate quickly and travel fast. That means more power at higher engine revs. The only Jap diesels I would buy are Isuzu or Mitsubishi. These pages seem to be loaded with problems concerning Nissan and Toyota crd's. I'd rather have a petrol than a non crd because the old diesels go too slow, need too much servicing and use too much fuel. The Pajero 3.2 crd seems fairly bullet proof with decent power, torque and fuel economy. I haven't noticed any horror stories and they've been around a while now.

Big difference between power and torque. Torque is what you require for towing as it isn't a drag race to the next set of lights. The little diesels will have around 120nm more torque than your petrol engine.

The newer pajeros have a pretty good record as Micheal H9 says.

Any comparisons to large diesel trucks are irrelivent ....... none of our cars have 10 and 12 litre motors, none of them have 15 and 20 speed gearboxes.

Diesel truck motors are large heavy and make small amounts of power for their engine capacity size and weight.

The big difference between diesel truck engines and all car engines is their ability to produce full power for extended periods, a large portion of that comes down to the engines ability to cool it's self

Diesels also do not vary greatly between being driven unladen and fully laden in both progress on the road and fuel consumption ...... Diesels are most economical fully laden and driven hard. ...... in fact diesels respond poorly to being babied and run lightly laden

Petrol engines on the other hand are smaller and lighter for a given power output, respond very well to being lightly loaded, or light throttle application.

There is no "difference" between torque and power .......... nothing moves without power ....... you can have all the torque in the world and nothing moves.

It always and every time, comes down to power ....... if you want progress along the road power is required.

put crudely but correctly power = torque X speed

With two engines of the same power, the slower reving machine will always have more torque ...... "Ya canna change the laws of physics, Jim"

The fact that one vehicle or engine has more or less torque does not make it better or worse.

There are a lot of people who are accustomed to towing with large slow rev'ing engines ..... a lot of those are also accustomed to towing with automatic gearboxes.

Those people will always favour a slow rev'ing high torque engine.
These same people will complain that small high rev'ing engines with plenty of power and capacity are gutless and unsuitable for towing.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I own two near identical vehicles .... one diesel and one petrol ........ both have their advantages ...... but they most certainly require a different driving style.

The petrol makes a lot more power than the diesel.
The diesel it could be argued has a more relaxed driving style ...... no point getting excited, nothing will make it faster than keeping it in its power band.

Let me tell you while the diesel is good at producing a consistent speed and it will chugg up any hill....... BUT driven correctly the petrol vehicle will get its self and whatever load up a hill faster than the diesel .......

I pretty much overtake very little on the highway in the diesel under any load, the petrol on the other hand has the power and the revs to make safe overtaking with a trailer a reasonable proposition.

Pretty much all the modern petrol motors ( particularly the variable valve timing motors) make a lot of low end torque and are very tractable at low RPM.

The practical driving differences between diesel and petrol get less and less.

The driving style IS different.

cheers

All I can say to that is you must be driving an old style diesel. Sure, I'd take a petrol over one of them, no contest. But I'd take my little crd over any v6 petrol any day. You need to take a decent deisel for a good drive, not some old banger that belongs in a tractor. :-)

We really only use the Pajero when we go away and it uses 14 ltrs
per 100km