Vehicle mileage

Hi Les
Thanks for your reply.......agree stringy question Lol.
A PJ ranger is one of the vehicles i am considering, is yours still going strong?

I purchased a vehicle with 316000 on the clock, thats where i was ignorant or naive i guess, didn't worry me. It was a V6 petrol Pajero, great truck and i added another 120000 to it then a couple bought and took it up the cape for work. It was all bog standard too.

Cheers
Ev

No worries Ev.
Yeah mine is still going great (auto trans), have a few engine mods though to keep it sweet, or at least prevent engine wear etc.
I have broken the output shaft from the transfer case to the front drive on a trip to the mid north, but that was a bit of user error, and an extreme hill !!
This looked defective in the casting, could see pits marks in the break.
Also have broken 2 torsion bar mounts (rear mounts each side) on 2 separate trips, but think both were fatigued on a north Simpson trip in May 2015.
One broke on a trip out of the Simpson out of the desert on that July, but made Mt Dare and repaired there (still going strong).
Another went June this year on Googs Tk while en route to Madigan, again north Simpson.
Before another north Simpson tip this coming June, I have new (2nd hand) rear mounts to reinforce with plates, so it will never happen again.
Other than that, I love the compact size for tracks, beaches, goes very well, econ excellent if careful, even loaded for a big desert trip, 220lt fuel, 80lt water, all the gear (couple of hundered kg under GVM still), it still gets well under 11lt/100km sitting on 95, or low 11s sitting on speed limits 100 / 110.
Tell you what Ev, I also bought a Pajero about 8 or 9 months ago, V6 3.0 petrol, NF wagon, manual, with 262k on it !!!
I've put 8k or so on it since purchase, great around town for small trips.
I love driving it, it's more fun to drive, so capable on tracks, best LSD I have ever seen.
Took it to Turon NSW and it excelled up gnarly little climbs where the Ranger would have needed a bit of left foot braking, and other dual cabs in the group were having 2, 3 goes, throwing it up out of creeks, the Pajero just walked them very much like locked Patrols / Cruisers.
Low end torque is nearly as good as the Ranger, which is saying something.
Sadly I can't keep 2 4WDs long term, will be selling it into the start of 2017.
A long story, it was a bit of an emotional purchase and so with my love of big drives, I have the Ranger set up well, so that is what I will stay with.
They are a great low cost 4WD though, managed 13lt/100 from it overall on the Turon trip, Adelaide - there, tracks, and back.
Anyway, hopefully you pick up a great vehicle whatever you choose, they all have their little quirks I guess, but I do find the Ranger brilliant for my needs.
The Mazdas in our group drives occasionally (be they PJ/K or PX equivalents), always seem to give better economy for some reason, maybe tune, I'm sure they run same engines.

Yeah the Paj was a great truck and comfortable with suspension seats.
Sounds like you make good use of the ranger.

Thanks Bantam

Hi Batt
My current vehicle is a 2010 Prado, great vehicle but for personal reasons i have to make some changes that mean i have to get a cheaper vehicle, most of which are a similar age or a bit older and most have high kms. It would be better if i could get something with 100000km on it rather than 170000km given i will put 30000km on it each year.

I am considering ford ranger and isuzu dmax at this stage 2007-12 variants.

Evan
I went the other way a few months ago. Traded a 2008 (early 2009 delivery) Ranger extra cab with 130,000km on a mid 2013 Prado with 83,000km.
It was easily the lowest mileage Prado I could find and as an ex-govt fleet car came with dual battery, on board compressor, drawers and a good service history.
the ute served me well, nothing broke or fell off (except the rubber pad on the sidestep on the Kalumburu Road) but I decided I needed some more comfort and dealing with the dust in the back just got a bit tiresome.
Good luck with the search
Rocco

I'm no mechanic but why are there so many high km carby fed vehicles still running around and some new vehicles and bikes, lawn mowers, chainsaws etc etc are still being made with a carby if they're that bad for an engine why are the still so popular.
A quality engine built and design from the factory is the most important thing to start with, keeping up maintenance schedules as well. Can't see why general towing would reduce engine life when they are apparently designed with that in mind from the factory hence towing capacity ratings unless you're constantly towing extremely heavy loads which may have some effect on engine life because it's always working a lot harder than usual.
Over the years I have worked at a couple of companies the high km carby fed utes both large falcons and 2wd hiluxes with 450,000 to well over 500,000km on them regularly serviced driven by different people all the time and loaded up with gear for working away on mine sites, quarries etc sometimes towing as well. I'm sure this is not a couple of isolated cases. I don't know if there is any truth in what you're saying about fuel injection but I know the simple less complex carby works fine in standard form it may be different when modified or it is changed out for a larger carby that pumps more fuel in.

You could maybe even say the reverse with fuel injection being so particular they have compromised reliability to a certain point in some circumstances. A bit of rubbish in the fuel would pass through the carby maybe cause a bit of a sputter or miss but the same rubbish may shut you down and possibly ruin fuel injectors if not filtered out and that's especially important on modern day diesels as people are finding out by quite regularly.

There are many reasons why engines should be lasting longer and it is nothing to do with carbies.

The oils we use have improved considerably decade after decade ..... a lot of the bonafide oil additives of the past are now in the oils we use ...... even some of the older branded known oils have had formular upgrades.... that is before we start talking about synthetics and new oil blends.

The single biggest improvement has been the quality and accuracy of the machining in the engines.

Back in the 70's and 80's, one of the biggest performance / reliability improvements you could make was have your engine ballanced and blue printed, because the fit and finish of the engine parts was so poor.

Fuel injection has many advantages when properly implimented.
In addition to the performance improvements which are considerable, electronic fuel injection prevents many forms of engine abbuse.
It is simply impossible to over rev most modern engines, the engine control system simply wont allow it.
In petrol vehicles the Engine control system, controls timming and mixture, thus preventing overfueling, predetonation and to a certain extent overheating>

AND the biggest of all reasons engines should be lasting longer is ..... they are built by the Asians not the Americans( who intend them to wear out) or the British ( who simply have not improved their methods or equipment)

cheers

Best answer yet, engines have assembly tolerances to allow them to be at their optimum at normal operating temperature, the most wear time in an engine is while its warming up, which is why taxis get such amazing mileages, the worst car to buy would be the one owned by a little old lady that only drove 1km to the shop & back each day.

Next worse to buy would be the Ex taxi A friend used to run various model Falcons and at least two of them didnt last long after being sold to private owners.

Seems they got used to being run hot and long and the change to cold to hot to cold upset them and they blew engines within 6 months.

Another guy had a Toyota ST150 ( not imported here) and he sold it at 700,000 and the engine hadnt been touched apart from things like plugs,belts, water pump and other peripherals.
Was on the road about 14 hours a day every day.