Back in the suzi club

[wikusvandemerwe]

Hello All,

Thanks for providing a great resource such as this forum!

I've had many 4x4s over the years but the latest is an 07 grand vitara which I bought after having our family car written off a couple of weeks ago.

I realise that the GV is more on the soft road side of things but I'm no novice, someone on this forum probably owns the crazy Jimny I used to own... Other than that I've had air portable land rover, 3.0 duty trooper, pajero shortie etc etc etc.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with our new GV, it's black it's shiny and it has only two minor issues (one of which I hope I've sorted out today!) the other I've joined the forum in the hopes of finding some avenue to investigate and sort the issue out so if anyone can tell me where to start with a dash engine temperature gauge which works most of the time but sometimes seems to drop down to below 0oC and stay there... Not sure about this or why it does it, I'm sure the engine's not overheating so I'm not overly worried. I do have a warranty for the vehicle so if it comes to it I will have a garage look at this for me if my 4x4 handiness is no use.

Being as this is my first post I'm not sure if I will be able to post links to photos but I'll try...

The GV:


The only other Suzi I've owned:



Thanks for having me, take care all!

[dan_2k_uk]

Hi and welcome to SCUK.

Hopefully someone is familiar with the temp issue.

[twiss]

Sounds like a loose connection on the temp sensor.... not sure if a GV that new will but the older ones had 1 sensor for the ECU and 1 for the gauge... might be worth a poke around to see if theres a loose connector

[wikusvandemerwe]

Thanks Dan and Twiss (hello mate!) :-)

The other issue I mentionned earlier was the lack of MP3 player input and it's still ongoing... I got one of those FM transmitters from maplin to try out on the way back from the office but for a fiver it performed as well as something which retails for a fiver should be expected to. Which is to say, crap.

I see there is some kind of mod to enable aux input but I'm not going to pull apart the dash just yet as the wife will destroy me if I go down that road two days into ownership...

[ROBBIE]

Hi to the club. Shiney

[Jordi]

Hi, welcome to SCUK.

[Anton]

Regarding the FM transmitter thing, I've tried those in the past and yeah, they do suck. A lot. I think because UK airwaves are so crammed full of stations they're always going to struggle, and might work a bit better abroad, but still - when I found some empty airspace and tuned the radio and the FM transmitter in, the results were utterly dire.

Considering it's got to transmit a couple of feet, that's really not acceptable. Maybe there's a decent one out there somewhere that works a bit better?

Oh, and the temp issue - personally I'd have it looked at as you can't guarantee that the ECU won't try to compensate for low engine temps a little. Yes, it's got a lambda sensor in the exhaust that should reign it in, but it might decide to make the engine run a little richer because it thinks the temps are very very low. Won't really hurt much, but might use a little more fuel.

Maybe.

Anyhow, nice Zuk, welcome to the forums!

[twiss]

Oh, and the temp issue - personally I'd have it looked at as you can't guarantee that the ECU won't try to compensate for low engine temps a little. Yes, it's got a lambda sensor in the exhaust that should reign it in, but it might decide to make the engine run a little richer because it thinks the temps are very very low. Won't really hurt much, but might use a little more fuel.

The problem there is that unburnt fuel going into the cat will damage it

[wikusvandemerwe]

Well guys I will get this looked at sooner rather than later, today the gauge has been fine and the temp is showing as 'normal' but if the sensor is in doubt then the reading could be off...

I tried the FM transmitter again this morning, seems better for spoken word than music, all in all sounds pretty terrible :-)

Thanks for the greetings guys, I had forgotten about the shiny terminology lol the shame of a shiny I see you all seem to be running on SJ's and 410's - excellent work. :-)

[twiss]

Im pretty sure the FM transmitter quality is a problem related to the quality of the device...

My ex (many moons ago) used to have an iPod specific FM transmitter that clipped into the bottom, and it was crystal clear all the time. I was actually surprised at the amazing quality because I thought it was going to be crap!!!