4x4

The story of my Suzuki Grand Vitara

12 Aug 2017

Juliette Remfrey 6

Cheap parts…

We finished off the last update with the car having broken bushes out in Cobaw and we start off this update with the car still sitting on broken bushes, parked up and not being driven. There’s a reason though – in part due to my love of a “bargain”, and in part due to an incompetent seller.

You see, I ordered front lower control arm bushes close to a month ago as “new stock with damaged packaging” (who wouldn’t at half price) and received what was supposed to be a complete kit, but it was missing one bush and one was the wrong size. The seller apologised and said they’d order in the missing and incorrect bushes and send them to me. It’s fair to say after three weeks and numerous rude messages from the seller that it’s never coming. You win some, you lose some in the game of trying to be cheap.

I ordered cheap swaybar D-bushes (rubber not polyurethane) and they arrived without issue.

That brings me to talk about the mirror – another fleabay special. You’ll notice a theme here, I like to save money where I can, particularly because it’s a secondhand car. The internals of the driver’s side mirror and the mirror glass itself were fine, but the painted cover and casing were cracked from the previous owner. I enquired about a new, genuine replacement from Suzuki and it was only sold as a complete unit for $520 with a 4-week wait. No thank you!

As it turned out I was to have no luck scouring the wreckers – the mirror with indicator type appeared to be specific to my model, and as my model was uncommon (even more so in red) I had no luck finding one. I checked an online auction site and found what looked to be a bargain, a complete non-genuine mirror assembly – supposedly an exact factory replica, Australian stock for under $160 delivered. Too good to be true?

Well, sort of. A generous Grand Vitara Owners Club Aus Facebook group member offered to paint the cover for me which saved a lot of money on having something so small painted. But it turns out that the rubber seal to the body didn’t sit flush with the mirror base. It looked like it was mostly due an issue with excess plastic from the moulding process not allowing the seal to fit into place. A few modifications to the seal with a Stanley knife didn’t fix it either which was a pain. It left a huge gap between the body and the mounting base of the mirror which would let water in so that needed to be fixed. Other than that it looked pretty good, until I got into the car and started the engine. The mirror glass was a different colour, with a blueish sort of tint where the standard one has no tint. I could probably live with that if the mirror glass didn’t vibrate wildly at idle and while driving. It was enough to be seizure-inducing. I contacted the seller and they offered to send me a replacement while I sent the other one back at their expense. That’s customer service!

Thankfully the mirror is simple to swap on the Grand Vitara, and we became quite the experts after removing and refitting on several occasions. Pop off a trim piece, undo a few bolts, unplug the wiring and it simply pulls out. The replacement arrived a few days later. The seal was still a bit of an issue but better than the first unit. I was faced with a few options; send it back, leave my broken mirror on the car and keep hunting around the wreckers. I wasn’t prepared to do that. Or I could send it back and buy a genuine unit from Suzuki. I wasn’t going to part with an additional $360 for a mirror and wait 4 weeks for the privilege! So I decided to deal with what I bought – not a perfect replacement part, but I managed to glue the seal down enough, it didn’t vibrate as much as the first one and aside from the blue-ish mirror glass it looked close enough to the genuine item that no-one looking at the car would notice. For $160 I couldn’t expect it to be perfect.

The car is still parked up, but hopefully the bush issue will be fixed shortly because it’s tyre time!