Guilty As Charged

Originally Published: April 2010 Words: Olly Sack Pictures: Steve Taylor

We’ve seen roll cages which fit more snugly, but you’ll not find many that are more comprehensive than this. Designed in-house, it was bent up by one of Richard’s mates and supplied flat-packed for the team to weld and fit. The rock sliders and back bumper provide the mounting points, and the wing bars tie the structure to a very solid front bumper bar – which in turn was made from an offcut created when they mis-measured the rear hoop!

Jackable rock sliders were fabricated on a DIY basis, as was the front bumper. The net you can see on the bonnet is used for carrying recovery kit, keeping it safe and sound but also very easy to access when things go pear-shaped

Rear bumper is another DIY creation. The back end of the tailpipe is also visible here; this was made by Phoenix Performance Exhausts in Jason’s home town of Cullompton. ‘They usually supply systems for high-performance cars and bespoke stuff for classics,’ he says. ‘So when I went down there with my old off-roader I was a bit embarrassed. But they were really helpful and did a fantastic job on it. The exhaust was made so it didn’t hang lower than the chassis, and it exits very neatly out the back under the rear bumper’

Combined bash plate and diff guard is fashioned from 4mm plate. ‘Most of the steel work was purchased from a local company, Luffman Engineering,’ says Jason. ‘They were great! When it came to making the bash plate, I gave them a template I’d made and in a few days it was done. They even scoured the lines where it needed bending – they made it really easy for me to work with when I offered it up to the vehicle’

After a lot of research, Jason addressed the Vitara’s suspension using a 3” Calmini Super-Articulation Kit featuring a rose-jointed rear A-frame, augmenting it with the same company’s 3” body lift. He imported these direct from Calmini in the US, getting a free steering damper into the bargain, though he admits his inspiration was the original Superzuki built by Dave from Bits4Vits – a company he did end up going to for various other items. The whole kit was fitted during the course of one very full-on weekend (Jason managed to wangle a Sunday for that one…) The only fabrication required by the lift was an extended gearstick

‘I emailed a few people about my requirements,’ says Jason, ‘and Dave Bowyer from Goodwinch was more than helpful.’ Hence the arrival of one of the company’s bridge-format TDS9.5i models on the Vitara’s front bumper. The winch was selected for general get-me-out-of-here duties and with an eye to production-class challenge events; it’s operated by a home-brewed switch panel Jason made out of a car stereo tray and mounted on top of the dash, which also houses the switchgear for the lights and fan. Juice for this lot comes from a brace of batteries, with the standard unit backed up by a leisure battery for the auxiliaries; at the time of writing, Jason hadn’t got round to fitting the twin-alternator set-up he’s planning

Recognise that rim? Neither did we, until Jason mentioned that it’s a steel unit from a Daihatsu Fourtrak. Tyres are Kuhmo KL71s; these measure a mere 30” in diameter, though he reckons the vehicle’s arches and gearing would take 32” without any further mods being necessary. As for the rear lights, these are modified LED units from a trailer, employed as he found genuine items hard to track down

Jason describes the snorkel as ‘a work of art.’ He’s not being immodest here, because he didn’t make it himself – this too was fashioned by Phoenix Performance Exhausts. Starting by feeding a flexi hose from a Series III Land Rover out through the wing, they connected this to a stainless steel tube bent to follow the line of the nearside A-post and inswept at the top to avoid tree damage. Jason’s verdict? ‘You wouldn’t think this was the first time they’d made one!’ Breather hoses for the axles are plumbed in to the snorkel, too, via the air filter housing; the top of the stainless stack is finished off with a very funky honeycomb mesh, which contrasts nicely with the X-Eng X-Lites mounted on the cage

No point in fixing what’s not broken, so the Vitara’s bonnet continues to conceal its original and still standard 1.6-litre 8-valve engine. Cooling is aided by an electric fan from a Mondeo diesel, which can be knocked out when wading to spare the electrics

‘When I was out with Jordan and Kyle one weekend,’ says Jason, ‘I had trouble keeping the windscreen clear of mud. So I designed a way of getting more water to it. On the later Vitara Estate, they had a twin pump option fixed to the washed bottle for the rear window. As mine is a soft-top, it didn’t have one, so I got a twin one from the local scrapyard and bridged them together. I then used some small tubing to give me three washer jets for the driver’s side. It works very well’

Jason Dolbear only got into off-roading because his kids had got bored of radio-controlled cars. But he’s learned a lot about building 4x4s as a result – and he’s turned out a particularly nice grass-roots Vitara in the process. Just as well he picked up a copy of a certain off-road magazine, then…

We get the blame for quite a lot here at Total Off Road. Whether it’s encouraging people to wreck the countryside or denting our colleagues’ shiny motors in the office car park with our big, nasty 4x4s, there’s not a lot we haven’t heard. The editor was even accused of being responsible once when the Sainsbury’s across the road ran out of pies.

Actually, of course, that one might be true. Well, you can’t maintain your innocence all the time, can you? We’re also unlikely to evade being found guilty when it comes to Jason Dolbear, and the Suzuki Vitara he’s built.

‘It all started when I picked up a copy of TOR in my local newsagent,’ Jason recalls. ‘Yes, TOR, it’s all your fault.’ See what we mean?

‘My sons, Jordan and Kyle, and I had been racing radio-controlled cars as our family hobby,’ Jason continues. ‘But kids being kids, they lost interest after a couple of years, and so I was looking for something else to do with them. After reading my copy of TOR, I showed the boys what could be done with a cheap off-roader – and they were very happy to swap toy cars for a real one!’

Now, so far we’re getting the blame fair and square for setting the chain of events in motion that turned a humble Vitara into the big, butch and very flexible machine you’re looking at here. But we’d like to plead mitigation: in fact, what we did was help Jason rescue an innocent Suzuki from a fate no vehicle deserves.

‘I started the build a year or so ago,’ he explains, ‘when I bought the Vitara out of the free ads. It was Vitara Wide Boy, advertised as being for spares or repair, and I bought it for £250. When I got it home, I took off all the girlie bits like the wheels, front A-bar and chrome side runners.’

Already, he’d improved the vehicle, and the rewards were quick to follow when he managed to flog all the tacky crap for £350. So here he was a ton to the good and with a likely looking Vitara on his hands – a situation in which every man aspires to be.

The only slight hitch was that he didn’t really know anything about building a truck, and he didn’t have anywhere to build it. There was also the small matter of having a full-time job, as an area sales manager for tool importer Hamble Distribution, and being a full-time dad.

Thus weekdays and Sundays were out of bounds, which tidily narrowed down his choice of options for workshop time. Said workshop was his best mate Richard’s garage: ‘he was quite happy for me to use it,’ says Jason, ‘but I don’t think he realised it was going to take as long as it did!’

With Jason and the boys working Saturdays on the vehicle, helped by Richard when he was around, the build progressed slowly but surely. Parts were variously fabricated at home or bought in from outside, always with a judicious eye on cost: Jason reckons that not including the value of the labour that’s gone into it, the truck stands him around three and a half grand.

But it’s repaid him several times over, as well as giving him something else that money can’t buy. ‘I wanted to learn how to do something completely different to my working week,’ he explains. ‘An escape, if you like. By doing this build, I learned how to fabricate and weld, as well as how to do other vehicle modifications and repairs. I’ve really enjoyed it.’

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. A sorry tale of an off-road magazine exerting its evil influence on an unsuspecting reader. There’s not a lot of denying it, really – we’re guilty as charged. Though this is one of those occasions when we’re more than happy to cop the blame…

DIY ROLL CAGE, DIY ROCK SLIDERS, DIY BUMPER, PHOENIX PERFORMANCE SNORKEL, X-ENG X-LITES