gravel road vehicle?

In reply to twowheeled :

The IS doesn't have suspension travel. Travel and softly spring is the answer, it's why an Integra, in spite of a great double wishbone and exceptional handling for fwd, isn't the answer. 

In reply to BlueInGreen - Jon :

Seconded.

Commercial chassis hearse gets you 3/4 ton suspension and a stretched fleetwood wheel base, which was already 6 inches longer than a caprice.  

All Fleetwoods ride super soft so they're used to soaking up bumps, and they have airbags on the rear for when you pack the giant trunk full of your stuff.

Nothing with a straight axle.  Definitely nothing with a straight axle and a short wheelbase.

I do a significant amount of dirt road driving for work here in Northern AZ, and have had a number of vehicles for the task over the years.  As far as comfortable speed on dirt, the worst was an S10 Blazer.  The best was a Ford Expedition (in my particular case a 2006).  The combination of the suspension on the Expo, and gearing/torque from the 5.4 just worked really well.  The Expedition also had tons of room inside.  Crown Vics are OK, but the problem with sedans is clearance, and approach/departure angle.  The Expo didn't have a lot of clearance, but the overhang was much less than a sedan.

Corolla...the answer is always corolla i can bomb fire roads and most desert roads fast and comfortably. Had a YJ but never really did the jeep things realized my corolla could get us to most the off the beaten path places we go..a little lift bigger tires and some what of a skid plate and we are bombing roads at 50+mph that your fillings would have been shaken out of in the YJ

Suspension is not what absorbs washboards. Tires are. The answer is lots of sidewall and low air pressures. An AT tire on a 15" wheel at 20 psi works perfectly. 

My xj will run a washboard gravel road at 40 mph without feeling them. No rattles, no skittering across the tops of the bumps. The Fox shocks absorb all the potholes and whoops. 

If you want faster and better handling, I'd go with a P71 on AT tires. 

What about a first or second gen CRV? They seem to be popular for softroading and there is aftermarket support.

link for the fun,enjoy

Dead_Sled said:

In reply to BlueInGreen - Jon :

Seconded.

Commercial chassis hearse gets you 3/4 ton suspension and a stretched fleetwood wheel base, which was already 6 inches longer than a caprice.  

All Fleetwoods ride super soft so they're used to soaking up bumps, and they have airbags on the rear for when you pack the giant trunk full of your stuff.

honey you know those weirdos that drive old hearses? well guess what....

eastpark said:

A Chrysler mini van would probably be the right choice. There are so many around you'd get to pick one with exactly what you want, and you cannot beat it for carrying your dog and gear. It might not push your buttons style-wise, but it's practical and cheap. 

we have a sedona that has 16's and meaty tires on it as well. It also has an IRS of which I'm not convinced of the durability. I did put in stiffer springs and new KYB's in the back, but the front struts would be an issue. I think the only options are OEM or that cheap sensen garbage.  

I'm with toyman, but I think shocks are more important than tires for washboard. An XJ with Fox feels like a little trophy truck. UTVs are roadblocks for it.
 

Whatever you use, make sure you can get good shocks for it. And Bilsteins are not the ones you want. 

Big soft sedans will have trouble keeping their tires on the ground so they'll just surf on top. It can be comfy if you get the speed right but grip will be a problem and they won't like whoops. 

I'm not a subie fan and normally recommend anything else but....

a friend of mine does rural land auctions and often runs setup and support for our long gravel road bike races around here. He sold a late model Chevy 4x4 a few years back and bought a used outback. He bombs around the gravel Wildlife Management Area roads like he's a pro rally driver. Most of the guys won't ride with him anymore. If you want to carry speed on gravel, it's hard to argue with a Subie, I think

I live on a gravel road and have for years. Pretty much anything will work really, I drive zx2 on ours a lot.

But I own 3 2nd gen explorers for a reason and they click a lot of boxes

Cheap( 1k is kinda expensive for them)

Holds camping gear and dogs comfortably and will do scarier trails pretty easy like.

Get a 5.0 AWD for about $800 and enjoy, most the parts are long wearing, cheap as hell ( I paid $17 for brake pads and $2.54 for outer control arms and ball joints) and have pretty time tested parts all around. There's a billion of them too.

Just whatever you do , do not get the 4.0 SOHC engine. The 5.0 v8 and 4.0 OHV are great long last engines, the SOHC sucks a lot.

Peugeot 505

Anything with a low hanging plastic rear bumper cover will wear holes through it from thrown gravel.  See: Dodge Caravan.  Caravan rear shocks are not well enough mounted for washboard.  I see both those things pretty regularly.

What is the mid sized Korean wagon GM sold 15 years ago?  Looked like a Malibu, but a bit smaller.  Anyway, a gravel road customer brought one in, complaining that the rear suspension was feeling loose.  It had sandblasted the bottom half of the lower trailing arm bushing right off, and the bushing separated from the arm.

Don't buy one of them.

I'm having a laugh at all the pictures posted of lifted cars with huge tires.  Lifting the suspension takes away most/all of the droop travel and the big tires mean you can't get much compression travel either.

Gravel roads are just "roads" in a lot of places, and they don't need trucks or crazy lifted anything to bomb around on them.  I think the official car of Finland is the Volvo 240

I can't say that this is based on personal experience (my favorite car for blasting around on logging roads and fire roads was a Corolla,) but somehow I feel like the answer to your question might be a Scandinavian sedan/hatch/wagon. The type of use you are describing is pretty much exactly what SAABs and Volvos were designed for...

My Ridgeline has very nice offroad manners. 

/thread

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

I'm having a laugh at all the pictures posted of lifted cars with huge tires.  Lifting the suspension takes away most/all of the droop travel and the big tires mean you can't get much compression travel either.

 

Gravel roads are just "roads" in a lot of places, and they don't need trucks or crazy lifted anything to bomb around on them.  I think the official car of Finland is the Volvo 240

It's the washboard mentioned that makes things difficult. Not that you need giant tires, but you do need a suspension that is at least partly on the job. I don't know what Finnish roads are like when they're not racing WRC cars on them :)

Nissan Versa Sedan. They use them as taxis in many parts of South America where the roads are let's say not the smoothest. 

For four years I lived three or four miles deep into the Appalachicola Natl Forest.   No gravel, but loose sand over red clay and washboard as berk

I know you said you had bad results with late model F150s, but I'm kind of confused how.  My '93 F150 ate it up like a tiny Asian man at the Nathan's 4th of July Hot Dog eating contest.  Not a clue how you got any of them to crab walk into the ditch, but throttle steering helped me stay out of it a fair amount of the time.  I never got stuck.

Maybe mine is old enough that it isn't really late model anymore?

A 1993 F150 is nearly 30 years old :)

My Suzuki SX4 Sportback does great on the gravel roads I grew up on.  Throw on a set of snows and it handles snow, ice, mud etc just fine.  My Mazda 626 Turbo was great on the same roads.  Olds Intrigue was pretty good.  A decent tire and good shocks on a car with some suspension travel and you're set.

Not that anyone in this thread really cares but I found my 6th gen VFR was okay on them and was more comfortable than my Z900rs.  The Z feels like a pogo stick with too much spring rate for some reason.  

Toyman01 + Sized and said:

Suspension is not what absorbs washboards. Tires are. The answer is lots of sidewall and low air pressures. An AT tire on a 15" wheel at 20 psi works perfectly. 

My xj will run a washboard gravel road at 40 mph without feeling them. No rattles, no skittering across the tops of the bumps. The Fox shocks absorb all the potholes and whoops.

If you have lots of unsprung weight, then yes, the tires will have to soak up the washboards because the suspension can't react fast / well enough no matter how good the spring / shock package is.  This is where my ZJ suffers.  It needs to be aired down to be anything less than miserable on washboard roads, but you can go through some pretty good dips, etc. at 50 and you just feel a slight "thump thump" because the suspension soaks that right up. 

But with a good independent suspension and low unsprung weight, the suspension can do more of the work and the tires won't have to absorb as much.  In the E38, even with fairly short sidewalls on 18s and pressures in the high 30s up front, low 40s in the rear, it's far better feeling than the ZJ on washboards unless you've aired the ZJ down quite a bit, in which case you're speed limited to avoid cooking the tires. 

You'll feel the washboard in the E38 (partly because the suspension isn't all that soft), but the suspension can move and absorb enough that the car doesn't get skittish like the ZJ does.  So it's more of a gentle vibration rather than the harsh vibration and lack of grip that you get with lots of unsprung weight on a rough surface unless you can soak it up in the tires. 

In this case, I actually have to agree with FrenchyD.  The 88+ XJ40 / X300 / X308 Jags have very good suspension that will soak up just about anything, especially if you've also got tall sidewalls on the tires.  And part of that is from Jaguar's obsessive tricks to lower unsprung weight, like using the axle shaft as a suspension locating link in the rear. 

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

My Ridgeline has very nice offroad manners. 

Mine does well until things get too bumpy. A pothole will drive the suspension into the bump stops a little too hard for me. Unfortunately, Fox doesn't make a set of shocks for it.