Thread: Sand Driving and Terrain Response

Land Rover have designed normal height to get the magic carpet ride (air bags at lower pressure) and off road to be as high as possible. The suspension stiffens as you raise the height. Shortened rods will give you a firmer ride as well as extra clearance. The ride height of other standard 4x4s are about 40mm higher than the D3. This issue is really anoying does not exist according to LR.

Originally Posted by jtonline

I was driving on soft sand, heavily rutted just last weekend, first time in the D3 and forgot to turn the DSC off and had no problems, but glad I read this to remember for next time. Can anyone also lead me to more info on the shortened sensor arms, as it was a pain in the but doing 50kms along the beach to have others come up behind and go past me with "stop hogging the good ruts" look on their face! Cause I could only do just below 50km before I would lower and scrape the guts out of the car!

Ignore those people. Continue to drive in the manor that suits both you and your vehicle.

Just a simple override button (another one) that means you can over ride the lowering from 50 to about 70km/hr, would be great. I agree the ride in the D3 is much better than 'other'4WD's I was almost going to buy a prado grande (whih does have air bags in the rear, but it still feels much more truck like than the D3.

And Gimmace I did and I didn't really care, as at those speeds the cars were jumping all over the beach.

What tire pressure do you guys use on the beach?

I've never had 18inch rims before so I'm not sure what they should be driven at.

I generally use about 20 lbs but have dropped to 14 to get out of trouble, this was on Fraser Is last Christmas. I've found that 20 PSI gives good sidewall flex over rocks etc but isnt low enough to damage the rims.
Regards,
Tote

I've just come back from a long weekend at Robe with LROCV. What a great trip!!!

I was the only D3 on the trip out of 12 cars and got bogged in the sand the most. I put this down to lack of experience in sand (ie none!).

DSC off makes a huge difference especially on climbs where you need to get a bit of speed up.

1st situation. Came to a quickish stop near a beach entry in the softer sand. Upon moving off again..bogged. Tyre pressures were 25 and probably stopped with sand in front of the wheel in the wrong spot. Not sure it was the cars fault!

2nd situation. Did a tight turn in some soft sand after we decided to turn around after a couple of cars LC and Patrol were bogged in front of us. DSC wasn't on, and probably sinking a good 8-12 inches in the sand. Maybe another mistake by me but not sure. Others seems to get round but I was in my own tracks.

3rd situation. Car decided to go left out of the wheel tracks already laid down in a soft section and bogged in pretty quick.

Is the D3 more prone to bogging in the beach than other LR's?

Another question..on a sandy climb are you better of being in high drive or manually selecting a low range gear? The D3 in most cases was able to get up hills with getting more power down earlier but I suspect gear selection is more vital than just pure speed.

the sand at robe is quite nasty stuff, but as a comparison i didn't get bogged but did get stopped in a couple of places that i needed to back out and try again. that was on 245 AT still at 30Ppsi

1 thing i have noticed is a lot of driver use to much power, on some of the sand dunes it don't matter how much air you have or power or gearing you will not make it unless you have momentum.

Originally Posted by Tote

I generally use about 20 lbs but have dropped to 14 to get out of trouble, this was on Fraser Is last Christmas. I've found that 20 PSI gives good sidewall flex over rocks etc but isnt low enough to damage the rims.
Regards,
Tote

Is that with 18inch rims?