Everyday Extreme

Originally Published: March 2013 Words: Robbie Ronson Pictures: Vic Peel

The Grand Vitara’s front diff case is an infamous weak point, as it was made from alloy. Having broken two, Terry has changed it for a steel unit, and the home-made guard he fashioned from heavy-duty chequer plate means it’s now highly unlikely to cause any further trouble. Protecting it from impacts was important, though, because it’s mounted 1.5” lower on Calmini brackets to compensate for the effect of the suspension lift on the driveshaft angles

You might think you’re looking at the outside of an LPG tank here, but actually you’re looking at the outside of a diff. The inside features a Lock-Right, with which Terry reckons the Grand ‘goes everywhere’ Note also the home-made pivoting bottom shock mounts, which prevent binding throughout the axle’s full cycle of travel

Rear shocks are Pro-Comp ES3000s, adding 3” to the length of the standard units. These replaced an old set whose pins bent and are located on heavy-duty bottom mounts, welded into place after the originals snapped off. Both these issues, Terry reckons, are likely down to the mounts’ position coming under stress when the more flexible suspension goes towards full articulation; the new ones counter this by pivoting as the axle moves, and the problem hasn’t come back

Calmini rear springs lift the vehicle by 3”, and are augmented by 1.5” poly spacers as seen at the top mount on this one. The total lift is 5.5”, which you’ll have worked out means there’s still 1” missing: this comes from a set of extended body mounts, with Terry limiting the amount of extra space he scored this way so he didn’t have to extend the gearbox and transfer case levers

A common problem on vehicles with a lot of suspension lift is that their diff noses end up pointing in horrible directions, but Calmini’s adjustable lower links see to that. Also pictured here is one of the lifted body mounts mentioned above; it’s the orange spacer that at first looks like it’s part of the link’s chassis mount

Terry says the system would dislocate if the rear shocks were longer, and you can see here that there’s a cone in place should this ever happen. As it is, though, there’s no need for the springs to unseat themselves

The independent front suspension doesn’t lend itself to lifting nearly as well as the rear. The +2.5” Calmini kit takes care of this nicely, however, and is seen here in pretty much standard form. The same can’t be said of the anti-roll bar, which is neither standard nor seen here at all for the very good reason that it’s been removed

Terry says he wasn’t wild about the spacers Calmini supplied for the front shock towers. So he modified the shocks themselves, using 2.5” extensions attached to the standard Delphi units

With the Lock-Right and so much more travel, the back is where most of the traction comes from. So Terry uses Kingpin Trekkers there, and less aggressive Insa Turbo Dakars at the front

Following the tried and trusted principle of not trying to fix what ain’t broke, Terry has left the Vitara’s 2.0 petrol engine well alone. There’s a K&N in the air box, and he’s fitted an electric fan (originally a 14” unit, but now replaced by a 16” since he burned the first one out on the day these photos were taken), but aside from these the nearest thing to a mod you’ll find under here is a Femco remote oil drain, allowing him to change the filter without having to unbolt the sump guard

One thing that is different about the engine is that it’s been converted to run on LPG. A multi-point system from Prinz was fitted in August 2007 and, Terry reports, has now done 36,500 miles without a hiccup. It runs a 60-litre gas tank where the original petrol tank was fitted, and there’s a specially made seven-gallon petrol reserve

The Grand Vitara’s transfer case doesn’t hang down nearly as badly as some trucks’ do, but it’s still a vulnerable spot if you’re going in hard. Terry’s solution was to make a guard from the same heavy-duty chequer plate that protects the front diff, which also helps protect the catalytic converter

We mentioned the seven-gallon petrol tank above, and here it is. Running on LPG is all very well, but you still need a drop of the hard stuff to get your engine started (and to keep you moving when you get caught short between stations that actually sell gas, obviously). The solution here was to have a tank tailor-made; it sits between the chassis rails, just ahead of the rear axle, and is well enough armoured to stand comparison with everything else beneath the car

Tail lights and reflectors from a trailer finish off a back end that you’re not going to miss

The tubular bumper on the front of the Suzuki was built to go on a Land Rover Defender and has been adapted to fit a Grand Vitara; taking the place of a giant swathe of plastic, it looks a lot more radical than it ever would on any 90. The winch in its tray is a Champion 9500HS, with synthetic rope running through a hawse fairlead which was rather optimistically painted to match

If you’ve ever crashed into the back of a Grand Vitara, you’ll know that beneath the plastic bumper it’s a lot more robust than it looks. The metalwork exposed here is the reason for that – thought obviously it’s been beefed up still further with the addition of a tubular steel unit and box-section recovery bar

It’s not pretty, but it works: six words which sum up many off-roaders’ approach to their mods. A raised air intake is more or less essential if you really want to push it off-road, and you can spend a lot of money on one. Or you can do what Terry did and come home from B&Q bearing twenty quid’s worth of plastic drainpipe, which you proceed to fashion into a snorkel of your own. Note the tube clips keeping it airtight, and the cunning use of gaffer tape where rubber grommets would just look tarty

No need for a beast of a roof rack when you can knock something up using your vehicle’s factory-fit cargo rails. It makes a good way of keeping the Vitara’s high-lift and waffles out of trouble, and it’s home to a set of spotlights too. The simple pleasures of a CB aerial mount you can just throw into place, meanwhile, are compounded by how much they wind up Land Rover drivers

Soundly mounted next to the now-obligatory sat-nav is a video camera Terry uses for recording his best bits. Or rather, if he wants to try something he’ll really want to tell his friends about afterwards, he can guarantee it’ll be a raging success simply by forgetting to switch the camera on

It’s not pretty, but it works (where have we heard that before?) Here, the age-old words of wisdom refer to set of wheelarch extensions cut out from rubber sheet and screwed to the bodywork using angle brackets. Exposed fixings in this area are normally described as ‘boy racer style’… we’re not sure whose style these are, but they sure can take it

With almost half a foot of lift, a locking rear diff and some seriously gnarly metalwork at both ends, Terry Garner’s Grand Vitara is very obviously an extreme off-roader. But he’s taken time to get it there without messing up its reliability – for the very good reason that it’s also his everyday car.

There was a time, back in the early days of this here magazine, when barely a month went by that we weren’t featuring some sort of Suzuki Vitara riding on Calmini suspension. The two went together like Stan and Ollie, and a generation of off-roaders had great fun getting into another fine mess every weekend as a result.

Terry Garner’s Suzuki is different for a couple of reasons. One is that he built it after the original Vitara-modding rush had died down. The other is that it’s actually a Grand Vitara, dating from 2002 – a couple of years after the last original Vitara left the factory.

People looking for a Vitara to use off-road normally only want short-wheelbase models, but Terry’s is also unusual in that it’s a five-door. Not a 4x4 that’s famed for its ground clearance, but he’s sorted that with a combination of +3” springs, +1.5” spacers and a 1” body lift. The gear he used started life as a +2.5” Calmini kit, but he’s retained the best bits of it while modding or replacing the rest.

This is indeed a vehicle that you could look at as a perfect example of changing it up to suit yourself. When the rear shocks got bent by the axle reaching full travel, for example, Terry replaced them with longer-travel units from Pro-Comp, but while he was about it he made his own pivoting bottom mounts to prevent the same thing from happening again.

He also made his own front recovery bar, having seen something similar for the older Vitara being offered by Bits4Vits. It sits below a tubular bumper for a Land Rover Defender, which he’s modified to fit.

The engine behind it is pretty much factory-standard, with the exception of what you could actually call the biggest mod to the whole vehicle. This is a Prinz multi-point LPG system, which largely takes the pain out of running a petrol-engined vehicle. Terry reckons he gets significantly worse fuel consumption on gas, but that its far lower pump price means it still makes complete sense, not least because the system has run flawlessly throughout the half-decade since it went on.

Beyond here, the gearbox and transfer case are totally standard. There’s a one-inch spacer on the back prop to compensate for the extra height of the suspension, but it’s what’s on the other side of this that’s interesting. Being independent up front, the Grand Vitara will always rely heavily on its back axle to do most of the work off-road, so Terry fitted a Powertrax Lock-Right diff.

This is like an auto locker in reverse, in that it rests in the engaged position and de-clutches itself when necessary to let you go round corners. You don’t press any buttons, so there’s less control available than with a manually operated locker, but anyone who’s used one will tell you how good it is. Like Terry, for example. ‘It only cost £200,’ he says. ‘Much cheaper than an ARB. No maintenance, it’s just fit and forget. And the truck goes anywhere now, more or less.’

The diff gears have been changed, too, to 5.12:1 items, allowing Terry to go up from the standard 27” diameter tyres to his current 30” jobs – with more in reserve should he decide to go bigger still. It’s the same up front, naturally, where the alloy case has made way for a steel unit after he got fed up of replacing broken ones. The diff’s location has been lowered by 1.5”, too, using Calmini brackets to prevent the suspension lift from pulling the driveshafts to too extreme an angle.

Still on the subject of diffs, this time back at the blunt end of the vehicle, another Calmini mod is a pair of adjustable lower suspension arms. These allow the axle to be ‘rotated’ to agree with the new suspension height, lifting up the nose of the diff so that the angle between it and the rear prop comes back towards what it was in standard trim.

Like the shock mounts, this is a good example of the sort of little things that make a big difference. The Grand Vitara is Terry’s daily driver, and keeping it reliable is important – and over time, he’s engineered out the areas where lifting the suspension has ramped up the pressure on other parts of the vehicle.

And that’s been the story throughout, on a vehicle that’s a perfect example of how you can develop your truck’s hardcore off-road skills without stopping it from being usable every day. The plastic sills have gone, and the original exhaust has been replaced with a home-brewed system blending a smaller silencer with a side-exit route to keep it clear of the ground, but Terry has stopped short of doing anything that would prevent him from being able to drive it to the shops.

Not that the Vitara was ever just a high street cruiser, really, despite what people like to say about it being a hairdresser’s car. Fact is, with that live rear axle and dual-range transfer case in its arsenal, Suzuki’s original lifestyle 4x4 has always had a high level of off-road skill hidden away. It just takes someone like Terry Garner to uncover it.

PRO-COMP ES3000 SHOCKS, K&N AIR FILTER, LOCK-RIGHT DIFF, CALMINI FRONT DIFF BRACKET, CALMINI SUSPENSION LIFT, KINGPIN TREKKER TYRES, INSA TURBO DAKAR TYRES, PRINZ LPG, CHAMPION 9500 WINCH, GRAND VITARA