Suzuki Club UK

Hi Folks,

I've been messing with a short wheel base grand vitara and thought i'd share what i've been up to.

Bit of background... so previously owned a vitara with an sj front axle and fox air shocks. Bought with the intent of taking to trials with my dad. It was built by someone a couple of owners earlier so idea was get something which works and get stuck in... but that never really happened... Got to a couple of pay n plays and some intro days but never really got along to a trials event. The thing had absolutely great flex but for several reasons did not always want to go where you pointed it (not so good for trials!). Also needed some bigger tyres (was on 29s) which wasn't going to be straight forward due to where its cage and sills had ended up. Was pretty much a case of change alot about the thing or start something "fresh" - so i sold it and decided to put the money towards something else... wasn't really sure what to use as the source vehicle until my other halves mum offered to sell us her GV1600 for a good deal as she needed to change to an auto. It ran and had MOT - nothing really wrong with it. This pretty much dictated the plan!

So objectives were vaguely something like: (initially anyway)
- try not to throw too much money at the thing
- try and keep the drivechain/suspension standard
- try and fit a set of 35" tyres that arn't really fit for road use anymore (should probably mention current plan is this will be trailered)

So cheap is great - the 35's weren't doing anything so that helps with the cheap thing. They came on a patrol i bought which since has had more road friendly tyres put on. Idea is with the sort of clearance they'll give even when airing down it should go places - hopefully without too much right foot. I'm not sure how long a GV drivechain will last with that size tyre... but part of the idea is to start with standard bits and improve reliability or ability and prove it out as we go. Other insentive to keeping it standard is anyone whos ever googled modifying vitaras for offroad is probably aware of what the front end tends to do...

Anyways - i'll stop woffling and start posting some pics ... they should be mostly in order. This is retrospective to start - i'll try to update it with anything else i do as i go...

So in the beginning...



They'll definitely fit.... and its definitely a good idea.

You might of realised i had to cut some bits off so started stripping out the rear end.



Taking out rear windows... It turns out my dad is far better at this than me (my side to the right). He managed to get a reciprocating saw through the gap between window and the body to cut through the adhesive. I thought i'd see how easily it would let go of the adhesive and well see mess...



First load of things to bin loaded into the patrol.



Then it got tarped until i could finish another project in the garage.

Might have noticed the GV2000 next to it. That's my other halfs. There was some debate about whether she have this one as its got more seats (this was before i started dismantling it) and then I could modify the blue one (more its already got a few tweaks - that'll teach her to go on holiday without me!)... unfortunately i said "yeah that'd be better because then i'd have the 2.0 so more power". So yeah that didn't work out for me. Also i now have to be stealthy when poking around it looking at parts. Some folks on the facebook page pointed out having less power might be a good idea with these tyres so maybe thats okay.

Then it went in the garage and the back fell off...





Disappointingly light to be honest. Might have been a bit heavier with the rear seats, windows, rear door and spare.

I didn't try to cut all the way to start as i was going to try and use the upright bit of the rear footwell to rebuild the rear (didn't really work - see later). Due to the slant on the seats i wanted to leave enough to get them most of the way back so at least the top end of the cut is roughly in the final place there. I'm not that tall but seems good to get the space if i can keep it. Also had a bit of a dilemma around if i could keep the internal stucture within the walls... if i went too far forwards i'd eventually run out of pillar too.



Reckon you could do this without cutting the rear end off. Major surgery to the rear arches but its doable. If you were to do it that way i'd probably combine arch enlargement with moving the rear axle back as it would still have overhang (so extend arch more back than forwards) - swings and roundabouts as i wanted to keep short wheelbase for maneuverabiltity. I'll possibly move the rear axle a bit but want to try it standard wheelbase first. I think you'd want to lift the fuel tank though as it hangs down alot on these and if the axle when back you'd have issues with the panhard pretty soon.

Flat packed the bit that fell off into the patrol...



Somewhere around here i "borrowed" the steel rims off my vitara and the 32mm spacers. The rims themselves have little offset. The tyres are 35x11.5x15 and if i remember right the rims are something like 15x8 maybe 15x7. I think maybe the latter. Being a narrower 35 i figured this works out pretty well. Did spot some rims with more offset that i think would fit over a vitara front caliper but they were going to be out of stock for some time. Also the donating vitara is at some point not meant to require suzuki rims anyway (see patrol rims that came off these tyres earlier in thread - thats another story). The rims i put on would clear the rear fine - but would not clear the front calipers (gvit standard is 16" - played this game on the blue gv2000 before). Having the tyres already meant spacers made sense to make it all work - without spending any money on things i didn't already have. Down the line i discovered spacers would buy me more steering lock against chassis.



You can see below i haven't really cut enough away yet at the back. When that axle goes up its going to get fairly tight. There's also a fair bit of overhang.



Don't know if any mightcarmods fans will read this - but i had some stickers lying around and i thought they made the wrong kind of sense in a good way...

As things were looking quite tight at the back decided it was a good idea to see if things would work out in the rear arches. Mostly my plan here was cut things until the tyres cleared. Things were going to get pretty complicated in the drivers footwell if I had to remove so much that the pedals would need to be adjusted. Passenger side the only real issue was the blower. I wanted to at least keep the vents for the windows so I could demist it. I was considering the Hagen widening mod but not sure its so easy on a gvit due to the shape of the crossmember. I didn't have to go there in the end but if I had it would have improved clearance against the chassis on full lock and also against the footwells. I started on the passenger side

Anyway pictures...

I started on the passenger side as I figured i could get away with overcutting there and then use it to measure the minimum needed on the other side.

Stripped the dash out and binned it as was getting in the way of removing blower and very flammable insulation...



Hole cut in footwell.



Looks fairly tight but will clear even under flex. I putt jack under wheel to lift and check and allowed some more beyond what the bump stop would allow. Haven't got a picture but the top of the inner wing was going to be tight. Really I cut too much here. I don't have any good pics this side of what I took out of the pillar. Did have to chop further most part of the bottom door hinge. Also ended up removing part of the reinforcing channel that the body mount fits on.

Attacked the other side. This time it was less just cut a big section out and more a case of slitting in strategic places and beating with a hammer until the tyre would turn past it.





Here's a picture of the bit of reinforcing channel that had to be removed... which is the passenger side thinking about it. Thought id taken a picture



Can see from this picture accelerator pedal will go down if the stop plate is removed. Or pretty close (it did in the end).



So at this point I could turn the wheels without hitting the arches but the tyres hit the chassis at the rear edge. Was pretty close the front edge too due to the shape of the front crossmember end where it bolts under the chassis. It was pretty close tbh as with a bit of force on the steering wheel could feel the end of the travel on the rack.

Not sure what to do about limiting the wheel hitting the chassis on full lock I went back to the rear as I figured the plan was halfway a goer.

I decided I would to a 2" body lift (controversial box section of course) because:
- it would give me needed clearance above front tyres against wings (for now I wanted to keep them)
- it would give me clearance against part of the passenger arch which I couldn't move too much where the bottom end of the blower assembly mounts
- I have a big bag of longer bolts

The plan was to use just box with holes in the very front mounts and then weld the box section to the new rear section and the reinforce channel id previously cut at the front. So this would be the permanent kind of body lift. The other part of the plan was to run the box out the sides of the vehicle to form a rock slider for now - with the potential later to be used as roll cage mounts. I'm not sure this strictly allowed but I figured I could change it later.

Building the rear panel I wanted to add back in the strength that had been lost from cutting the body. Initial plan is to be able to do the gates that don't require a cage - but still I want to if something does happen the body won't just crumple. The other request from my dad was plenty of rear window - it was an issue with the previous trials vehicle that you really couldn't see much out the rear.

Here's the bottom section.



It is upside down. The inner pieces of box for the body mounts. I screwed up here as the outriggers should really have been extended all the way in to the body mount at least. It also would have saved me a lot of hassle later if I'd put more slant on the U for the transmission tunnel. The angle slots under the back of the floor and I cut box section flaps each side of the transmission tunnel to push it forwards. Oh... I'd removed the back of the rear footwells by this point as it sat too far back and was going to make getting to the body mounts a pig... don't have pics but its effectively been cut at the bottom in front of the rear mounts - which is why my new mounts stick out backwards...



The sides are 2x4 box converted into channel. Plan was to "man-ipulate" outer body panel to meet this channel.

Then I welded in some sheet...



Despite remembering to cut holes in the upper angle for seat belt mounts I forgot to put the holesaw through the lower panels for the electrics to the fuel tank. Also at this time discovered my latest electric drill isn't big enough for my holesaws so had to somehow get that whole piece onto the pillar drill. Its quite heavy although I'm okay with that - had recently discovered the rear shocks were pretty much at the end of their travel so I guess a decent amount of weight had left the rear.

I tacked on the bottom section and started building the upper parts...



I plated over the hole left by the rear windows and made the side panel meet my channel. Its not pretty and I'm pretty underwhelmed with my welding on channel.



From the inside...



That's pretty much the rear panel. I did bit more welding on it here and there as an when I wanted a distraction from other job. The top part by the way is 2" angle which the roof happily pulled down to. I slit the channels in the roof to thread it through so it could meet the outer bits of angle. I also gusseted the body mounts somewhere during this.

My Dad came down for a day and we put the exhaust on. I think I'd had it in the garage for a couple of weeks by this point and taken some time off the job to work on it. This was a nice task to finish my garage holiday on because it was quite easy and I think turned out okay.

The exhaust was donated by a friend and is from some Suzuki motorbike... which I like because it ticks the cheap list and is a Suzuki part! The original back box itself was in good condition but was massive and hanging down under the vehicle. The tail pipe was a gonner as I think you could see in an earlier picture - and I didn't really want the bendy section running over the rear axle. I spent some of the remaining funds from sale of the previous Suzuki on some 4 point harnesses, some Perspex for the rear windows, and some lengths of tube.



This'll do for now in terms of position. Thought about putting it horizontal higher up at the roof but due to the curve of the pipe this seemed good enough for now.

I thought I'd eliminated the cat during this process but as my Dad pointed out there's still something cat like on the downpipe. Seems different to the GV2000. Don't know if anyone can shed some light on this. The cat is definitely post down pipe on both the GV2000 and the 1.6 16v vitara on my drive. Does it have two?

Started patching up the holes in the front footwells.

Drivers side...



The outrigger/body lift block is 2x4. Went with this because of where I had to drill through to allow body mount bolt to go down through with a piece of 2x2 it wouldn't have sat far enough forwards to become bottom part of arch. Also as I always have a lot of 2x4. The body is still bushed. So the original bush sits under the outriggers/body lift blocks.

I welded to the reinforcing channel which I mentioned I had to cut earlier - I think you can see the section I had to replace. I welded on the back side of the outrigger to where I could reach. Was fairly tough going. I'm fairly happy it isn't going to let go anyway.

Passenger side...



This side was way more work but I think it ended up tidier. I test fitted the blower before hand. Also the ECU lived down there in a mount attached under the blower. I decided I'd move that higher up anyway which is no bad thing. Drivers side I mostly just had to unplug wires to get them out of the way and spend ages cutting away the insulation.

I thought the changes to the passenger footwell might be a bit uncomfortable but a test sit said its actually pretty good. Handy the seat can go back a decent distance still too.

Other thing you can see here is I had to butcher the floor to access the original captive body mount bolt. The bit of plate with a hole cut in on the floor is tidying up the cut I put in to get into the channel. I didn't want to fork out for the extensions that go on from below which meant getting the bolt out. They came out quite easily. I drilled the centre of the pin at the top progressively with bigger drill bits and then knocked the pin about a bit from below and it came out ' leaving a nice bit of steel for the new bolt head to sit on. Thought that was going to be a big faff but wasn't too bad.

Those door hinges by the way seem to be holding with one less bolt on the lower. At one point I thought the doors were sagging but I'm not pretty sure the body was flexing. Doors close nice again now the rear panel is in. If they do start moving i'll probably just tack the lower hinge in place.

I don't know if you can see the while cable tie in that pic. Its the type you can undo. Finding them really useful to attach to things that I need to remember to re-attach some time later as they are really obvious.

Okay so steering hitting the chassis situation. I decided against notching the chassis as I wasn't really happy with the amount of chassis rail that might be left. Didn't really know how much I'd have to take until I started cutting really. Still didn't think the Hagen mod was going to be easy and I was already pushing the limits of what would go on the trailer with these spacers on (spacers are helping in this situation - they are also max size I can run at the intended club - or that I would anyway). Pretty sure the Hagen mod would mean my calipers would hit the spring too - which might end me back up in the same situation of needing to limit the steering. Trying to avoid messing with the suspension at this point.

I decided to try and make some bits of tube for each side that would go on the end of the rack and stop it going to full travel. Idea was to stop the tube moving around on the rod by swapping out the lock nut for a washer welded to the end of the tube. The tie rod would then clamp it in place. Part of the idea here is its easily reversible if I decide it really does need that little bit more lock and I figure out how to make clearance another way I can just take them out. Its a shame to give up steering lock on a vehicle intended for maneuverability but I've managed to keep a short wheelbase so i'll let it go for now...

When I dismantled it I managed to re-use the locking washer(?is that what its called).

Pictures make it clearer... I've got plenty of this...



The little indents on internal part of lock tab are what stops it from spinning on the rack end. The tabs fold down over four flat sides on the tie rod joint. To remove I used a punch to start levering them then some pliers to get them far enough to get a spanner onto the tie rod. Reverse to put it back on really. More punch less pliers.

By the time I was done I think the tube measured roughly 16mm in length. It had to be big enough to clear the rod - but also small enough to go into the end of the cylinder. You could use a bigger bit of tube in terms of outer diameter but the recess into the end of the tube is greater than 16mm - cant remember how much - but enough you'd notice it. So you wouldn't want a tube at all in this case just a washer would do it. Problem you also might have with that is the gaitor interacting with the washer.

This has given me a enough space against the chassis that I'm pretty happy I won't loose and lugs off the tyre and some space for mud to build up too. I checked with tyres at full droop - so travelling furthest distance in - but also compressed to ensure the centre point of wheel was in line with the chassis.