4x4

The story of my Suzuki Grand Vitara

12 Aug 2017

Juliette Remfrey 6

The lift!

And we have lift-off! My Grand Vitara had a reasonable number of kilometres on the odometer when I bought it. Nothing excessive, but ~136,000kms in 7 years had led to creaky bushes, and as it turned out, four leaking shocks which needed to be replaced for roadworthy. Rather than messing around with replacing the shocks with secondhand OEM items from a wrecker only to change them down the track for a lift kit, it made sense to pay extra to do the lift kit now. But which one?

The Grand Vitara is no useless softroader, no matter how much a shop will try to convince you otherwise when you go in to discuss modifications. But it has its shortcomings. Talking to a Suzuki specialist and reading around Suzuki groups convinced me that anything above a 2” lift on this generation Grand Vitara was out of the question, and even at 2” it was pushing the friendship a bit. I had to ignore the ‘want’ fairy on my shoulder and be realistic, this car can only handle a moderately small lift. Once I had resolved the internal conflict it was time to look into brands.

The Grand Vitara is serviced okay by the aftermarket industry for suspension. Not to the level of say, a Prado, but there were an acceptable number of well-priced options. Crossing the cheap fleabay-specials off my list and reading through user experiences in the Grand Vitara Owners Club on Facebook led me to conclude that people had failures with most of the major brands. I weighed up my options; Old Man Emu offered a very conservative lift, probably not enough, leaving Dobinsons and Ironman. Dobinsons seemed to get favourable user reviews, however the local support close to home swayed me over to Ironman. I ordered a lift kit and specified extra load to suit future bullbar and accessory installation and possible towing.

It was quite a shock picking the car up, it looked like it had gone up a fair bit, and it had – around 1” in the front and 2” in the rear as the back had sagged in its previous ownership towing. That should do pretty nicely. The thump in the steering was still there, but no worse. Off for a wheel alignment and I learned something interesting. The shop had no issues aligning the car within factory tolerances, but they could do nothing about the constant left pull. They explained that the difference in castor between both sides was the cause, and that all of these cars were set up for driving on the opposite side where the camber of the road is the other way around. Makes sense. The only option was to try to source some offset castor bushes, but I put that at the bottom of the priority pile and told myself I’d live with it as there was significant labour cost involved in changing bushes in the front lower control arms. The car rode well with the lift, not appreciably harsher, just taller.

Armed with extra clearance I was ready for my second offroad excursion – to Cobaw State Forest. This forest contains some pretty tricky tracks – none of which I had any intention of attempting, and others that should be driveable and would test the car’s capability nicely. Unfortunately I’m still running cheap highway tyres, but that’s on the list to change along with wheels. The car bumped its way through the corrugations of the access roads and drove through or over the ruts nicely; it fitted neatly due to its narrow track. Cross-axle situations didn’t phase it, the traction control stepped in and kept me moving.

As we came to a particular hill I let a convoy of very modified 4WDs past. They walked up a large concrete drain step like it wasn’t there. My turn. Up the front wheels go, then BANG, CRUNCH, not moving any further. Back up, try again. Up the front goes, over the drain, BANG, CRUNCH, stopped again. After several attempts it just wasn’t going to do it, which was a shame, it would have been nice to explore a little further but the low-hanging Suzuki factory towbar was having none of it (see title picture).

What the lift has not done is sort out the departure angle, just improve it a bit. Whether that’s achieved by way of replacing the factory Suzuki towbar with something that doesn’t hang low, or an entire replacement rear bar, it needs a better solution. The small stint in Cobaw gave me a couple of bushes to fix immediately. The thud through the steering became so loud I took my concerns to a local suspension expert who gave me a run-down on cracked, torn and worn bushes. I might have finally got to the bottom of the thud – cracked front swaybar ‘D’ bushes. It made sense, on a hoist I could clearly see the fresh rub marks and there was far too much movement. Luckily the part cost for those bushes is small.

The front lower control arm bushes were worn before the lift, and placed at a not so desirable working angle post-lift, so it wasn’t surprising they went shortly after the lift with a bit of flexing out in Cobaw. Having to replace these bushes so soon into ownership isn’t ideal, they’re a reasonably labour-intensive exercise, but the one positive I can take from it is that it gives me a chance to install polyurethane bushes (single offset on one side) to correct the castor issue and hopefully provide a longer working life. Time will be the judge of whether the wheel alignment improves and how long the bushes last with the lift.

The list of needs and wants is growing, but not all of them are 4X4-specific. Five new All Terrain or Mud Terrain tyres are priority number one; the lack of traction isn’t helping the car offroad, the tyres are pretty worn anyway and one has a screw in it. The spare also doesn’t match the tyres on the car. But there’s so many choices and I know very little about 4WD tyres, other than that I want something in Light Truck (LT) construction. The departure angle needs sorting out. While I could remove the towbar that would give me nothing to recover the car off, so until a solution is found it unfortunately needs to stay on and limit where I can take the car.

Then there’s some conveniences for the interior. Without tinting on the windows my pale skin cops a lot of UV and it’s currently a big glass bubble that everyone can peer into. I’m yearning for a little privacy. And Bluetooth, the car desperately needs Bluetooth. We’ve rigged up and excellent RAM Mount X-Grip phone holder to the right of the steering wheel, but I can’t legally use my phone as more than a navigation device while driving at the moment. The speakers are quite decent and the standard stereo plays MP3s, but the LCD screen is on the blink. It’d be an opportune time to replace it with a Bluetooth and Apple Carplay / Android Auto-compatible unit. The front seats aren’t particularly supportive either and I suffer from a bit of a numb arse after 30 minutes or more sitting in them. Maybe additional bolstering or an entirely different seat could be explored later down the track – money and legality permitting.

Stay tuned for my experience with buying a non-genuine replacement mirror, bushes and where I’m up to with choosing tyres.