Wednesday, Mar 02, 2005 at 09:52
Hi Graeme,
When my wife packs the van it weighs in at about 1900 kg with a ball weight of about 220 kg. We also carry a a 40 L Engel fridge and all our camping gear in the car for when we leave the van and go into those more inaccessible
places. I have HD springs in the back and Bilstein Shocks all round. I use a Hayman Reese Weight Distribution Hitch with a trg coupling on the van.
I also remove both rear seats and the third row
seat, as it is only the two of us that travel.
I normally travel at a maximum speed of about 90 kph by choice, but the car will go up to 110 kph on the freeways with the van on and steady as
rock. Fuel consumption is all over the place with the van on. Worst was about 19 L/100 Km best about 15 L/100 km. Depends on roads, ambient temperature and type of terrain. I've been over some pretty roug and hot tracks.
I had a major overheating problem the SECOND time I towed the van. With about 17,000 kms on the clock, I went out through Penrith and up over the Blue Mountains without a problem. Climbing out of
Lithgow on the road to
Bathurst the car overheated. To cut a long story short the problem was traced to the coolant (factory installed) "gelling" and blocking half the radiatorcores. Mitsubishi Motors have not acknowledge this as a known falt but anecdotally a number of NMs and NPs have had the same problem.
I've had the problem fixed and can generally say that I'm very, very happy with the NP 3.2 L Di-D as a tow vehichle, off-road 4WD and a town and highway car.
Check out the
forum on www.pajeroclub.com.au for lots of good informative discussion.
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