MITSUBISHI TRITON
http://www.weg.co.zawww.weg.co.za go! Drive & Camp^ September 2019 |^79
added rubber between you and solid ground.
Mitsubishi keeps mum about the Triton’s wading depth,
but with a little sleuthing, we were able to determine that
it’s a relatively poor 500 mm (less than wheel height).
This doesn’t compare well to, for example, a Ford Ranger,
which can drive through water that’s 800 mm deep, but it’s
nothing that a snorkel and a diff breather kit can’t fix. To
test if this is an issue, we drove our Triton through a dam
which is a little deeper than wheel hight – and survived to
write about it.
Mitsubishi is eager to provide the Triton’s approach,
departure and break-over angles though. The former two
measurements compare well to those of its competitors,
and thanks to a shorter wheelbase, its break-over angle
of 25° is markedly better (18,5° for a Ranger and 22,4° for
a Hilux). We crawled over moderate rocks and tree trunks
to see what this meant, and the side steps only scraped
against the largest of objects. The Triton’s small turning
circle made it easier to simply bypass obstacles, though.
Four what?
Mitsubishi’s Super Select II four-wheel drive system (or
SS4-II for short) works as follows: in two-wheel drive and
high-range gears (2H), the front axle is disconnected, and
the vehicle is rear-wheel driven only. Use this mode on
a highway to save fuel.