1991 Mitsubishi Pajero review from Australia and New Zealand

Front idler arm on the steering. The bearing decided to clap out. May well have been a fault of the vehicle as I remember seeing a recall for this after I had fixed it.

The 'mitsubishi' has been a good source of transport for me and I have yet to fault its off road capability. I do as a hobby gold mining here in New Zealand and some of the places that I have taken it - or - it has taken me have been impressive. When mining I tow my suction dredge behind and this has not impeded the vehicle at all. The 2.5 motor coupled to the manual box in the early (1991) models seem pretty low geared with 5th gear in the Pajero not even equal to the 4th gear in my previous Isuzu Big Horn (Trooper). 100K's an hour sees 3100 revs up in 5th gear in the Pajero. Still for the rather large 7 seater body that the 2.5 motor has to pull around it does very well.

The driving position is good and the seating in general is excellent. Internal finish and thought has gone in to these vehicles with quite a few 'creature comforts' added. The two front seats sit on hydraulic dampers and this is good when bouncing over river beds and such like. The interior of the vehicle is a light grey and is nice and bright.

Someone before I got this vehicle has changed the factory electric adjustable shocks for a set of manually adjustable gas Munroe's. This has really stiffened the vehicle up and made it a really good open road tourer.

The 4WD capability is great - not only have you the ability to be able to centre lock the front and rear diffs - this one has been factory fitted with an electric rear diff lock as well. This is handy when in mud, or if one or two wheels are not making good contact with Mother Earth.

I was initially a bit worried about buying this truck, mainly because of the fairly high K's and of their earlier 2.3 motor history, of sometimes falling apart. But after doing a quick couple of oil changes right at the start to give it an 'internal clean out', I find I do not have to yet add oil between changes.

One of the first things that I did do was to drop the exhaust system and put a 2" pipe connected to good full flow mufflers. Doing this has given me about an extra 10% of power and has allowed the motor to run cooler when under pressure from hill work.

I do all of my own maintenance - oil changes at 5000K's filter at 10000K's - but if the oil is looking dirtier than normal I will do the filter at 5000.

All in all I am more than happy with this vehicle and can see me probably getting to the 300000 without anything too major happening.