Landcruiser Handling

I have a troopy....would be the same underneath and no....she travels very well and if anything she loves the bush, gravel, beach and sand etc more than the highway.

On good roads like the hotmix freeways she's fine....but on the narrow rutted bitumen she can be unruly at times....I put that down to her rigid suspension and the way she tracks.....but put her onto gravel or sandy tracks and she is in her element and a pleasure to drive.

I never run the tyres too hard and in some cases I even lower them a bit more if necessary....some say this is no good for the tyres...but I paid for the tyres, not them and I run the tyres to suit me and the conditions I find at the time.

My wife gets motion sickness in soft sprung disco's and pajero's but never in the troopy.

Luv her...or and the wife as well.... : )

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We have towed a small (1.3 ton) off road van over thousands of kilometres of sand, rough dirt and corrugations with our 76 series wagon without any handling problems.
Could it be the way your boat is loaded?

The wagon has a 50mm lift and fitted with Mickey MTZ tyres that were inflated to 30 Psi . It was loaded with supplys for a week so had some weight in it plus the tank was full (160 litres), on corners it was skipping around quite a bit (enough for the passenger to mention it ) slowing right down solved some of the problem . My old 75 ute used to corner like on rails, so some fault may lay with me being used to a different ride. Will the different wheel tracks cause it to handle strange ?

Oh ! it was it's first outing on the dirt.

VDJ76,

what sort of handling problems are you experiencing?

I have the TDV8 trayback and it too, has a narrower rear track by some 4 inches.

I'll tell you what I experienced. On its first run we went over to Victoria to pick up our Trakmaster caravan. We brought it home via all sorts of places. we were up near Eulo in QLD on a gravel track, not going fast at all, when the whole thing got out of whack and it felt like the van (2500kg) was trying to push the vehicle into the bush. It was close to jack-knifing. Gave us quite a bit of a scare.

Later that same day we were having lunch off the road and another trayback pulled in but it was the previous model. He came over and during the conversation asked if we had experienced any severe fishtailing becasue a friend of his with the new V8 definitely had, and he put it down to the narrower rear track.

This was too much of a coincidence and if you think about it, and take to to the extreme, if the vehicle was a 3 wheeler with a single rear wheel (the narrowest rear track available) then you can really see how a heavy tow, like a van or boat, could push the vehicle out of plumb.

Anyway, I ended up speaking to Snake Racing about spacers. Can't say if I did or did not go ahead with them because there is a cloud over the legalities.

cheers

Our standard Troopy 2000 78 series 1Hz non-turbo pop-top camper with 750-16 tyres and all original suspension is great on gravel roads - over the weekend, we were up to 100kph with no handling problems at all. It handles better than our Rangie on dirt roads and over bumps.

Too much right foot will get you into trouble and a lifted vehicle will also not handle as well due to a higher centre of gravity.

Stevesub

VDJ76,,,,I have the same vehicle 76 Series wagon and have also noticed the back end can fishtail at times, particularly on sand or gravel. I put it down to the narrow track on the rear, don`t think there would be anything you could do about it. Now I am aware of it I will just drive accordingly but in all other respects I love the vehicle.

No Problem with ours. We towed our old van over to the Kimberley and back with no dramas. We did the GRR with a rooftop camper and it was great handled all the rough stuff with ease. The rear didn't seam to give us any problems maybe because we have an aftermarket Suspension.

Makes me wonder why Toyota would do some thing like this with narrower rear end. I went to put new tyres on wifes car the other day and I wanted to go a bit wider instead of the narrow cheese cutters on it now. I only needed two new front ones as the back still ok, He told me your not allowed to put wider tyres on the front they would need to be put on he rear and the rears bought to the front otherwise major handling porblems would be an issue. Wonder by the narrower track on the rear of the new cruisers would this cause the same problem ??? WHG