18th February 2010

Overview of Vitara work

Back in January 2009, I bought a 1994 Vitara for less than a grand. The car's condition was reasonable - no rust and a great runner. There was a slight leak from the rocker cocver, but this was just due to inproperly tightened bolts. A little TLC and a full service (including all the oils of the transfer cases) and it was running like dream. Some potos of when it was bought:



However, a few weeks later, mucking about in some ice, I had a bit of a spill and essentially ploughed the front nearside into a wall. Pretty frustrating, but thankfully there are a lot of spare parts out there for the Vitara. Damage was limited to the front bumper, the bumper reinforcement, grille and headlight. One of the fog lamps was ripped off too, but they weren't really working anyway!
Highly frustrated, I set about repairing the damage. First up, I bought a new headlamp from ebay (only about 15 pounds) as the local 'police' had spotted the broken light and wanted it fixed ASAP. I then bought a new bumper cover, and Joe along with Ivan tried to straighten up the original bumper reinforcement sections:



The repaired bumper reinforcement was great to keep the new bumper cover in place, but unfortunately, the metal had stretched, so once I had found a replacement grille, I simply couldn't get it to fit as the bumper was always fouling on it. It gave me time to find a replacement bumper reinforcement, however, which was handy as they are hard to come by in a reasonable condition. For several months, the car ran with no grille as you can see from the below.
Next up, whilst having a little fun off road, I managed to find a chunk of metal sticking out of the ground which destroyed one of my tyres. Though annoying, the tyres were appalling and would lose grip going around a corner even at a reasonable speed on a dry road, so it gave me an opportunity to splash out on some new boots for the beast:




The tyres I bought were the largest that would fit on the car in its current setup (no lift kit, spacers, etc.). They've provided a hell of a lot more road grip at a cost of lower fuel economy (I've calucluated maybe 10% less!). This thing never was going to be a green machine, though...

Once I'd returned the car to a reasonable condition, it was on with a few bits and pieces to add to the car. I fitted some 32mm spacers to the weels to give it a wide look, and better stability (see before and after shots below). They work a treat, but at a cost of the wheels poking out a bit from the arches now, which as you'll see from the below pics, means you get pretty muddy if you spin the wheels in mud a lot! A point to note - there are two types of spaceer available, one is a cheaper, cast (hollow) spacer, the other costs more but is made from solid billet aluminium. Researchign online, it is apparently wise to avoide the cast steel type completely. I've done about 3000 miles with the spaces now and not had a single issue.
I've also fitted parking sensors (christmas present from Joe!) and am going to fit a 2-inch lift kit in the near future. Hopefully the car will still be reasonable to drive after this... more updates when I get them!



Before, above. After, below.


Well, we fitted the lift kit. It's not an easy job: on the front end, we needed to drop out the wishbones. On the exhaust side, the wishbone bolt fouled on the exhaust. The exhaust bolts were rusted in place, so we had to order a replacement bolt, then cut out the original and fit the new bolt from the other direction. A real pain in the butt as we'd already fited the kit to the offside corner of the car!

It's also tricky to get the springs back on once the lift spacers had been fitted. It was a case of using a few axle stands, a trolley jack and brute force. Also, I had to trim a little away from the chassis where the rearmost pivot point of the wishbone mounted - this allowed us to lift the wishbone into the position, without hooking it over a lip.