Mitsubishi Pajero Sport Problems

The Mitsubishi 4N15 engine in your Pajero Sport has a timing chain rather than a toothed rubber belt. As such, the chain should be good for the life of the vehicle rather than requiring periodic replacement as a timing belt does. However, this does not make the valve-train maintenance-free, as this engine requires valve clearance adjustments every 60,000km.

Cracked cylinder heads and blown head gaskets are not completely unknown on this engine, but exactly how big a problem it is is the real question. There’s one theory that the cylinder heads crack when mechanics over-tighten the fuel-injector hardware or try to remove stuck injectors with too much force.

The good news is that replacement cylinder heads are readily available and can be had in bare form or in fully built-up form including all valves and springs.

The last decade of dual-cab four-wheel-drive utes have emerged as the tow-vehicles of choice, and you see them everywhere filling roles exactly like the one you have planned. Popular models include the Ford Ranger you’ve nominated, Toyota HiLux, Mazda BT-50, VW Amarok, Mitsubishi Triton, Nissan Navara and Isuzu D-Max. But there are also cheaper alternatives including makes like the South-Korean made Ssangyong and various Chinese brands like LDV and Great Wall.

Just make sure you know exactly how much you need to tow before making a decision as some of the cheaper models don’t have the same outright towing capacity and even if they do, some of them don’t have the engine performance to make towing as easy as it should be. For parts availability, the Toyota would be king in really remote areas, but any of the major brands are pretty well covered in Australia.

Meantime, don’t rule out ute-based wagons such as the Ford Everest, Isuzu MU-X, Mitsubishi Pajero Sport and Toyota Fortuna. These offer better ride comfort when unladen thanks to more sophisticated rear suspensions and most have as much or almost as much towing capacity as their ute brethren.

The fact that all these features have gone AWOL all at once suggests the display unit itself might be the problem. That, or perhaps a fuse that controls the circuit the display draws its power from. If it was one function on its own, then you’d suspect a sensor for that system might be the problem, but when they all disappear at once, the digital readout unit would be the place to start checking.

However, don’t forget that your car has a five-year factory warranty, and this is most definitely a problem that – on the surface – appears as though it would be covered by the Mitsubishi warranty. Even if you bought the vehicle second-hand, provided the car has been serviced correctly, the warranty should still apply regardless of how many times the car changes hands.

You could try for a computer reset by disconnecting the battery overnight, but make this Mitsubishi’s problem, not yours.

This is not necessarily a problem, but rather a characteristic of modern, multi-ratio transmissions. They can give the impression that they’re constantly searching for the right gear for the conditions, and it’s worse in hilly country or if you’re towing something. By constantly trying to be in as high a gear as possible, the engine will theoretically use less fuel.

Probably the real question is why a computer-controlled turbo-diesel engine needs an eight-speed transmission in the first place. The answer is that it’s all to do with recording a better fuel consumption number than your opposition on the official test. Sometimes, the vehicle has more gears than it can actually use in Australia. Our 110km/h freeway speed limit meant that early examples of the Toyota LandCruiser 200 Series (which had `just’ six gears) wouldn’t shift into top gear. That’s because the factory calibration told the transmission it could only use sixth gear at speeds of more than 115km/h. Which, just wasn’t happening for the vast majority of 200 Series owners in this country. A reflash for the computer fixed the problem, allowing the Cruiser to select top gear at closer to 90km/h, but it’s a great example of where transmission tech is heading.

This problem has occurred before and happens when the pulley rubs through the hose, which finds itself in the wrong position under full turbo-boost. From what I can gather, the problem is due to a running change in supplier of this hose. And even though the hose was a slightly different shape, the manufacturer used the original alignment marks from the previous hose. So, when the mechanic fits the new hose, it places it in the path of the fan pulley when the engine comes on boost.

Ideally, the hose needs to be fitted so that there's at least 25 or 30mm of clearance between itself and the pulley. Your twist-at-the-bottom method should work, because you're effectively altering the incorrect alignment marks to where they should be.

These two vehicles share a lot of traits both in terms of their engineering and their target market. Both are aimed at the high-end of the mid-sized off-road station-wagon market and both do a pretty good job of offering lots of off-road ability along with the sort of luxury and convenience that many families want. In the case of design and engineering they are both based on utilities (the Mitsubishi Triton and Toyota HiLux respectively) and share the drivelines and front structure with those utes. To make them work as passenger rather than load-carrying vehicles, both the Pajero Sport and Fortuner do away with the utilities’ leaf-sprung rear axle and replace it a coil-sprung unit for greatly enhanced comfort.

Both vehicles have had their niggling reliability problems, mainly to do with DPF and some EGR problems, but overall, they’re both now old enough for the majority of the bugs to have been ironed out. Perhaps the biggest packaging difference is that the Pajero Sport is a good deal narrower across the cabin than the Toyota, and that matters for families with bigger kids. Both vehicles were facelifted late last year with new tech and mechanical and performance improvements. Both also have seven seats as standard.

The Mitsubishi is about $4000 cheaper based on RRP than the Toyota, but the final price can vary from dealer to dealer and what state you live in. The best advice is to try each one on for size and maybe even throw in contenders like the Ford Everest as a direct comparison.

This type of problem can have any number of causes. The best option is to have the car scanned electronically to see what fault codes have been logged by the on-board computer.

You could be looking at a fuel issue, something purely mechanical (like the idle-speed set too low) a blocked air-filter, a computer issue or any number of sensors that are not playing ball. But until you interpret the fault codes, you’ll be flying blind and potentially replacing things that aren’t the cause of the stalling problem.

I’d certainly be taking the vehicle back to the workshop that serviced it and pointing out that the problem only occurred after they'd 'fixed' it.

By and large, a car should perform the same day in, day out without any huge (or even noticeable) changes in its performance. So I’d say, yes, something is wrong with your car. As for the cause, well, it could be anything from poor fuel to a faulty battery to a park-brake that is sticking on. It’s impossible to diagnose problems like this one remotely, so have it checked out at a workshop. Continuing to drive it with a fault is asking for more damage to be done.

This is a really common concern, Raj, especially among people like you who are considering their first diesel-powered vehicle. Modern diesels are very efficient and powerful (compared with old-school diesel engines) but those benefits come with some compromises including higher maintenance costs and potential glitches such as the DPF problems you’ve noted.

DPF problems are usually the result of the filter becoming clogged with the soot from the diesel’s exhaust. There’s not much you can do about a diesel engine producing soot (apart from making sure it’s tuned properly to minimise the soot) so the filter is designed to regenerate when it starts to get full. That process requires heat and that’s where the problems start. A vehicle that is only driven around the suburbs often won’t create enough heat in the exhaust system to allow this regeneration to take place. At that point, the filter becomes clogged and requires either manually cleaning or, in some cases, replacing. Neither is a cheap process.

So, what you need to do is to take the vehicle for a drive at highway speeds to allow things to get hot enough for DPF regeneration to take place. This drive needs to be at least about 20 minutes and it needs to happen at least once a month. So the answer to your question is not really how many kilometres you need to drive, but what sort of kilometres. Even if your four-times-a-week trip to work is, indeed, 50km, if it’s all done in stop-start, low-speed traffic, then it won’t be enough.

The bottom line is that a turbo-diesel isn’t really the right vehicle for a lot of urban-based people. The catch there, is that a lot of vehicles that were once available with a choice of petrol or diesel power are now diesel-only propositions. That includes the Pajero Sport, of course.