The shop had no issues aligning the car within factory tolerances, but they could do nothing about the constant left pull. Off for a wheel alignment and I learned something interesting. The thump in the steering was still there, but no worse. It was quite a shock picking the car up, it looked like it had gone up a fair bit, and it had – around 1” in the front and 2” in the rear as the back had sagged in its previous ownership towing. I ordered a lift kit and specified extra load to suit future bullbar and accessory installation and possible towing. Dobinsons seemed to get favourable user reviews, however the local support close to home swayed me over to Ironman. I weighed up my options Old Man Emu offered a very conservative lift, probably not enough, leaving Dobinsons and Ironman. Crossing the cheap fleabay-specials off my list and reading through user experiences in the Grand Vitara Owners Club on Facebook led me to conclude that people had failures with most of the major brands. Not to the level of say, a Prado, but there were an acceptable number of well-priced options. The Grand Vitara is serviced okay by the aftermarket industry for suspension. Once I had resolved the internal conflict it was time to look into brands. I had to ignore the ‘want’ fairy on my shoulder and be realistic, this car can only handle a moderately small lift. Talking to a Suzuki specialist and reading around Suzuki groups convinced me that anything above a 2” lift on this generation Grand Vitara was out of the question, and even at 2” it was pushing the friendship a bit. The Grand Vitara is no useless softroader, no matter how much a shop will try to convince you otherwise when you go in to discuss modifications. Rather than messing around with replacing the shocks with secondhand OEM items from a wrecker only to change them down the track for a lift kit, it made sense to pay extra to do the lift kit now. Nothing excessive, but ~136,000kms in 7 years had led to creaky bushes, and as it turned out, four leaking shocks which needed to be replaced for roadworthy. And we have lift-off! My Grand Vitara had a reasonable number of kilometres on the odometer when I bought it.
0 kommentar(er)
