Suzuki Problems

There are a lot of things that can cause a rattle in the front end of a car on a rough road. Fundamentally, there’s something that’s loose and that’s causing the rattle as the suspension moves up and down on the uneven road. When you touch the brakes, everything compresses and tenses up either under the strain of slowing the car or because more weight has been thrown on to the front suspension. At that point, whatever is loose tightens up and the rattle goes away.

Start with the basics. That means bushes, ball-joints, springs, dampers, wheel bearings and the brakes. A mechanic will be able to do a quick inspection and locate what’s loose and what needs replacing. But don’t ignore it, as anything loose in the front end of a car is a serious safety issue. It could be something as simple as a loose brake backing plate, but even a worn bush or ball-joint is not difficult or expensive to replace.

You can google this request and come up with a few websites that say they offer a free workshop manual, as well as a few less sites that actually do offer a downloadable (usually as a PDF) workshop and service manual. The content may or may not be factory content, however, so keep that in mind.

Many of these websites are sneakily constructed to make you click on a link that is nothing to do with the manual allegedly being offered, and you can wind up going down some long advertising rabbit-holes that will ultimately take you nowhere.

Possibly a better bet is to find a reputable online book retailer which offers the workshop manual you're looking for. In many cases, this will still be a PDF meaning you need a computer to access it. Experience suggests that a hard-copy workshop manual is a much better idea as it can be taken with you to the driveway or workshop and referred to quickly and easily part-way through a particular job. And given the modest price of such books, it's a small percentage of the cost of a repair you can now do yourself instead of paying somebody else to tackle.

Being a Japanese car (Japan drives on the left as we do) the indicator stalk is on the right of the steering column. Most drivers find this is a more natural place to have them, and this is probably down to muscle memory as generations of Australian cars had the indicators to the right of the column as well.

That said, many European cars place the indicators to the left of the column, but it's surprising how quickly you'll adapt to that. Many Australians had their first taste of indicators-on-the-left in early air-cooled Volkswagens. This was more of an issue when cars had manual transmissions and you needed your left hand to change gears while hitting the indicators with your right hand.

The first thing to know is that if the car is not presented for delivery in the condition in which bit was described in the contract of sale, you don’t have to accept it. Without knowing the exact circumstances, it sounds as though the car may have ben used as the dealership’s demonstrator model. If that’s the case, it should be sold as such and at a discount to your fiancée.

Check the date of first registration. That might give you a clue as to how long it’s actually been driven on the road. You would expect a handful of kilometres to be added as the car is sent for pre-delivery and detailing, but 800km seems a bit sharp. If you go ahead, make sure you ask whether the warranty will start from the day you take delivery or will be back-dated to the date of first registration.

You have at least two separate problems here. The first is the error code suggesting the camshafts are out of phase (retarded). This is often the result of the cam-chain having stretched and requiring replacement. Fundamentally, once the chain stretches, the on-board computer detects this and illuminates the check-engine light as well as logging the fault code. If this is the case, the repairs could easily run into the thousands. However, it could also be a fault with the sensor that reads the camshaft position or something else altogether, but the timing chain would be the prime suspect. It could also cause a slow idle such as you've noted.

The second problem is that the check-engine light was either broken or deliberately disabled to disguise the fault with the cam-chain. I'm certainly not accusing the seller of doing this, but it can't be ruled out. And yes, an illuminated check-engine light is a roadworthy item, so the car would (or should) not have passed a roadworthy inspection with the lamp illuminated.

Whether the roadworthy tester is at fault will come down to whether they knew the check-engine light was faulty or not. Of course, if the light was already broken when the car was presented for inspection, that would muddy the waters further.

I sincerely hope you bought the car from a licensed car dealer and not a private seller. If it was the latter, you'll have little to no chance of gaining compensation for what could be a very expensive problem. But if you bought the car from a dealer, then you should have some come-back, especially once you prove that the check-engine light was either broken or disabled at the time you inspected the car prior to purchase. That's partly because of Australian consumer laws as well as the fact that the dealer needs to provide the roadworthy certificate and is responsible for its accuracy.

In a very broad sense, these components should last the life of the vehicle. Certainly, by the time you need to replace any of these major components, the cost of doing so is likely to be more than the value of the whole vehicle. That's often when cars get scrapped.

I'll take a stab in the dark and suggest that the warranty you're being offered is from a car dealer attempting to sell you the vehicle and the warranty as an up-sell. So here's the bottom line: With very, very few exceptions, these aftermarket warranties are not worth the paper they're printed on. The fine-print will exclude just about any fault or problem that is likely to occur, meaning that real world problems won't be covered.

In any case, a 2021 Suzuki Swift will still be covered by Suzuki's factory warranty which will cover problems with these components. Why would you need two warranties to cover the same components? Or is the dealer suggesting that Suzuki's factory warranty is not sufficient? Suzuki might be interested to hear that.

Since the Bluetooth is refusing to respond to either the head unit or steering wheel controls, it’s likely to be a problem with the unit itself, rather than a simple switch failure.

In any case, your car is still under factory warranty, so take it back to the dealership and make it Suzuki’s problem. Sometimes these units can be reset by disconnecting the power to them for a period of time, but unless you know the factory procedure, you’re flying blind. Back to the dealer.

The backlog of orders for the retro little Suzuki Jimny means that buyers need to be patient. At the start of this year, Carsguide was told that the average waiting time between purchase and delivery in Australia was between six and eight months. While ever Suzuki is experiencing demand like that, you wouldn’t expect any rush to expand the range.

That said, reports have emerged that Suzuki has, indeed, green-lighted a five-door Jimny which would have those two extra doors as well as the possibility of a turbocharged engine and even a mild-hybrid driveline (mainly to suit European tastes). The five-door concept is said to be 300mm longer and will probably weigh a little more as well.

At this stage, rumours suggest the five-door wouldn’t be in production until 2023 at the very earliest, but given Australia’s demand for the two-door version, you’d expect Suzuki to give serious consideration to sending the five-door Down Under.

The Suzuki Grand Vitara is kind of considered the last of the four-wheel-drives that can be successfully flat-towed. That’s because it has a driveline that has a neutral position where the wheels are entirely disconnected from the driveline. In cars without this facility, flat-towing is a no-go as damage will be done to the transmission if they are flat-towed (flat-towing, of course, referring to the practice of towing a vehicle without a trailer and, therefore, with all four of its wheels on the ground).

Even in a vehicle with a conventional automatic transmission which does, indeed, have a neutral position, the gearbox would be destroyed by flat towing as the driveshaft will still be turning the inside of the transmission. A car with a manual transmission should be able to be flat-towed, but finding a new car with a clutch pedal these days will be the big challenge. Certainly that’s the case in the type of multi-seater vehicle you’ve nominated. And many modern four-wheel-drives and SUVs have permanent all-wheel-drive which is also mechanically unsuitable for flat-towing.

The other catch is that a lot of car-makers say that flat-towing their product will void any driveline warranty. You need to check with each manufacturer before taking the plunge. And don’t forget that different states and territories have different rules about flat-towing (it is legal across Australia, but the details vary). You also need to keep in mind towing limits which vary across different makes and models. Flat-towing is big in North America, but it has never really caught on here.

This model Swift was recalled to check and tighten, if necessary, the bolts that connect the torque converter to the car’s engine. However, if these were to fail or fall out (as happened in some cases) it would be a one-off event and the car then wouldn’t work at all.

Your problem sounds more like a worn transmission which is not accepting the load you put on it when you try to accelerate. This could be worn bands or some other component inside the transmission. CVTs are pretty complex things and rely on physical parts like bands and pulleys as well as hydraulic bits and pieces to take drive to the wheels. It would also be worth checking the torque converter, as a damaged or worn unit can also produce the symptoms you’re seeing. I’d start with checking that the recall was carried out and work backwards from there.