[Vitarded]

Hi all,

I've owned a '09 Grand Vitara for the better part of a year now and in that time it's largely been used as my daily driver. It had it's first off road adventure last week and for the most part it did everything I wanted it to, save for one potentially fatal problem.

On two occasions the temperature gauge rose rapidly, within two minutes of pulling over the temperature returned to normal and I could continue driving. This occurred during sustained hill cimbs from Gloucester to the Barrington Tops National Park, and on the soft stuff at the south end of Stockton beach. The latter annoyed me most as I had intended to take this vehicle to Fraser Island next year but I'm just not confident in it now.

It's a 2.4l petrol auto with 80,000km on the clock, dealer serviced, oil looks like oil, coolant looks like coolant, fans are spinning and no obvious other reason to fail. It has never done this before. I had a mate with me on the trip in the previous model xtrail (also 4 cyl petrol auto) and he suffered very similar problems +/- 10% of what mine did. I'll be getting a complete radiator flush with the next service and ask them to pay attention to the cooling system.

Has this happened to anyone else? Is this par for the course for a 4 cyl auto 4wd? should I be worried? Can I do something to improve the cooling system?

I spent many years of brownie points with my wife buying this vehicle, and I won't get leave to buy something bigger and better for a while yet, any assistance appreciated.


TLDR Version; 2.4l Auto '09 Grand Vitara, overheating on hill climbs and soft sand, no obvious problems, similar problems experienced with mates auto xtrail, thoughts?


Cheers,

Grant.

[Chop]

Shep may be able to chime in here, the traction control would be braking whilst in some soft sand. Making the car work a bit harder.

[royce]

let your tyres down

take it easy

live with it, lot of load in sand and on hills, plus its not been the coolest recently

[alien]

^^ what he said.

sand is pretty much the worst thing to drive on as far as putting load on everything, as its constant and you're trying to go fast most of the time.

slightly taller (but not wider) tyres will help a little, and air them right down (of course you then need to take more care on cornering so you dont roll a bead).

other than that, choose the right gear for the job, you generally want to be revving the engine more on sand than you do sitting at say 2000rpm trying to force it to go faster.

[shep]

The only time mine has got a bit hot is thrashing it on a beach in high range. Only did it once. Stick it in low range so the yaw controle thingo is turned off and have no issues. Mine is a 2010 2.4 auto with 100000km. It is a bit hard on trans fluid but I just dump the pan every 2nd oil change. It is only 2.5 liters but ya have to use the right trans fluid. Not dx3.

Mine also has a bull bar and 2 driving lights in front of the radiator so has a bit less airflow then a stock one plus I also use it to tow my 5m boat.

Pics are good

[shep]

On tyre pressures. Recommended pressure is 36-38 psi. On dirt I go down to 22psi and when needed go down to 14psi. At14 psi the tyres bag Very well and the car can crawl over a fair bit of stuff.

[Vitarded]

I used to have a '91 vitara SWB with the carby 1.6l and did plenty of beach work in summer with nil issues, I guess I'm just dissapointed that my current Vitara 18 years younger is struggling in similar conditions.

14 psi seems to be the magic number for Stockton beach, I was knocking the auto back and trying to keep above 3000rpm. Low or high range made no difference to the overheating issue, but I did appreciate that the traction control stopped intefering in low range, wish it would let me turn it off in high.

More revs seemed to help on the hills though, also revving in neutral helped it cool down quicker when stopped.

Until now this car has been brilliant and fits our lifestyle well, sadly feels like a bit of a liability now. Given the responses above I suspect this is par for the course for a 4 cyl auto and perhaps I should've known better and coughed up for a diesel in the first place.

[Vitarded]

I agree Shep, pics are good.

Attachment:

IMAG0237 (640x383).jpg

Camping at Junction pools in Barrington Tops National Park

Attachment:

IMAG0243 (640x383).jpg

Waiting for the engine to cool on Stockton beach......

[shep]

I seriously have never had a issue with heat in low range and only ever put it in d if going forward. 3000 in low is 40 ish kph and I reckon that is plenty fast enough.

If you are worried stick a mechanical guage on it and see what it reads as a lot of modern cars don't have much of a temp difference to make the guage go from 1/2 to 5/6.

[christover1]

Could be that the auto is heating it up.
It runs through the radiator.
Extra trans cooler may help?

[McBane]

yeah Auto's generate huge amounts of heat in sand like shep said pressures low range and take it easy