4x4

The story of my Suzuki Grand Vitara

12 Aug 2017

Juliette Remfrey 6

The tyres and bullbar are here!

It’s been a little while between updates because the Grand Vitara has been away getting mods, and he’s now back, more offroad-capable and raring to get out onto some tracks!

The tyres arrived; 225/75/16 Cooper STT PRO Mud Terrains and were promptly fitted to the car. Everything cleared and fitted perfectly as expected from the pre-purchase measurements and I’m glad I didn’t decide to go any wider. Happily, the spare still fits in the cut-out on the rear door, but may not have with a bigger tyre. The spare wheel cover won’t go back on, it doesn’t fit by a matter of millimetres, so I’ll be on the lookout for a soft cover to limit exposure to the sun and prolong the spare’s life.

This is my first time driving a car on muddies, and there’s no doubt they’re noisy. 60km/h seems to be the sweet spot for resonance through the cabin. My solution – turn the stereo up louder. I’ve adjusted my driving to account for any differences in cornering speed and braking distance compared to highway tyres (more on that in a separate post later) but the tyres are causing me no issues on road. I can’t wait to try them out in the rough stuff.

Once the tyres were fitted, it was straight off to Ironman to sort out a few of the car’s shortcomings. As you will have read in an earlier update, approach angle wasn’t amazing thanks to a low-hanging skirt under the front bumper, and there was also nothing to recover the car off nor much protection pushing through scrub and in the event of an encounter with wildlife, so a bullbar was needed. I had already fitted an Ironman lift kit (springs and shocks) which accounted for extra weight in the front from a bullbar and accessories, and extra load in the rear as a precaution. Immediately post-lift the car felt a bit oversprung and bounced around following a depression in the road, presumably because the front end was lighter than the springs were designed to carry.

Now the bullbar turned out to be a bit of work. Ironman advertise a bullbar for the 1.9L diesel only, and there’s some differences with the shape of Vincent’s front end. If you’re a 3.2L V6 owner, Ironman don’t have plans to release a bar for this model and what you see is a one-off, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like on the diesel as most of the difference is in the way it mounts and goes around the grille. The bar looks great, there’s protection for the headlights, integrated foglights and indicators and improved angles and protection on the sides and underneath. There’s provision for a winch and an antenna, but I don’t have any plans to install a winch at this point. The CB would be handy, so that’s on the to-do list.

While Ironman had the car they looked into the noises from the suspension. After some head scratching they worked out where the metal binding noise was coming from. As with most issues on this car, it was simple. There’s a step in the bottom spring seat of the shock, and the way the spring had been installed (particularly on the left) meant that it was rubbing the step. A quick rotation, and voila, noise gone! They also put shocks in the rear with revised valving to stop the clicking valve closing noise that monocoque cars (Grand Vitaras, Pajeros, etc.) can transmit through the car. Though with the muddies on now I don’t think I would have heard it anyway…

With the bullbar on the car is driving much better. It doesn’t continue to bounce after a bump and when coming to a stop the car doesn’t rock back and forth. It’s amazing how much difference the extra weight in the front end has made to handling and ride with the weight-friendly lift kit. I expect the extra weight of the bullbar, and the weight and resistance of the wheel and tyre combo will have increased fuel consumption a bit, but I haven’t noticed it yet. I’ll keep an eye on it and report back at a later date as to how much fuel consumption has increased.

Tint and a better stereo are still on the list of near-future ‘to do’s’, as a fixing the auto-up switch for the driver’s window and the clip that holds the passenger side sun visor to the roof. Little things, but I’m slowly making the car more liveable as money and time permit. But first I need to make myself a kit of recovery gear, it would be inconsiderate of me to hit the tracks, get stuck and expect to use other people’s recovery gear.