[skelly]

Just wondering if anyone knows the max amount of weight
I can put my roof gutters for a Suzuki Sierra I was going to
Buy some roof racks for it that supports 100kg but could the
Zook handle anywhere near that on the roof gutter?
Cheers. Skelly

[stockman]

I read somewhere on here around 30kg.

[Gwagensteve]

Even moderate roof weight will cause the a pillars to crack if used on corrugated roads, unless you have a coiler where the pillars were redesigned.

Steve.

[johnmath]

I did a 3000 km trek in my SJ50 up Goog's Track and back along the Oodnadatta track, which had several severe washaways at the time and sometimes we crashed through them because we couldn't see them in time to brake from 60kph. I had 60 litres of fuel and 30 litres of water plus some firewood in a steel basket on two heavy duty Rhino bars (you can see in my avatar). So all up a bit over 100kgs up top. The basket was offset to the passenger side so the weight was on that side, and I cracked the gutter above the passenger door. I now have three bars (four would be silly on such a small vehicle) but I wouldn't put that much weight up there again for that kind of trip. It also makes the vehicle less stable by moving the centre of gravity up. On that trip I didn't want the smell of fuel inside, plus it was pretty full back there as we were camping for ten days.

[skelly]

johnmath wrote:

I did a 3000 km trek in my SJ50 up Goog's Track and back along the Oodnadatta track, which had several severe washaways at the time and sometimes we crashed through them because we couldn't see them in time to brake from 60kph. I had 60 litres of fuel and 30 litres of water plus some firewood in a steel basket on two heavy duty Rhino bars (you can see in my avatar). So all up a bit over 100kgs up top. The basket was offset to the passenger side so the weight was on that side, and I cracked the gutter above the passenger door. I now have three bars (four would be silly on such a small vehicle) but I wouldn't put that much weight up there again for that kind of trip. It also makes the vehicle less stable by moving the centre of gravity up. On that trip I didn't want the smell of fuel inside, plus it was pretty full back there as we were camping for ten days.

Ok thanks for the info. What kind of fuel economy were you getting
With all that gear on top of your car?

[johnmath]

From memory we got a bit over 9 kpl overall for the entire trip. I didn't try too work out the economy going over the 300 dunes in low range on Googs Track. We were pretty loaded up - would have had trouble getting a cigarette paper in the back. The eye bushes on the brand new HD front shocks shat themselves on this trip - now replaced with Nolathane. I have a Swift tbi injection kit to fit one day and hope that helps a bit and I have just put on a Vitara fan clutch also to help with noise during highway cruising. I am getting up to 9 around the city as long as there aren't too many short runs.

[skelly]

johnmath wrote:

From memory we got a bit over 9 kpl overall for the entire trip. I didn't try too work out the economy going over the 300 dunes in low range on Googs Track. We were pretty loaded up - would have had trouble getting a cigarette paper in the back. The eye bushes on the brand new HD front shocks shat themselves on this trip - now replaced with Nolathane. I have a Swift tbi injection kit to fit one day and hope that helps a bit and I have just put on a Vitara fan clutch also to help with noise during highway cruising. I am getting up to 9 around the city as long as there aren't too many short runs.

Where abouts did you get the injection kit from? I'm pretty keen to do it to mine.

[johnmath]

Veering off topic... Well, the easy way is probably to drop in a 1.6 litre injected G16B motor rather than doing an engine rebuild when/if you need to.

My car had just had the motor rebuilt when I bought it. Otherwise, basically you get what you need off a donor car. Most people get the kit off a wrecked Swift 1.6 with a throttle body injection system. I paid about $450. It's a basic fuel injection system, but better than a carburettor! It comes with the wiring loom, the ECU, the distributor (which drops in place of the Sierra one), any extra sensors that plug into the loom and the throttle body with injector. You need an adaptor plate to adapt the throttle body to the Sierra inlet manifold. I bought mine from Suzistore for around $240, but they don't seem to have it listed now. All the other parts you need you get from the donor car, with the exception of a high pressure fuel pump. Most injected vehicles have an in-tank pump, but for simplicity when doing a conversion you usually run an external pump. There are a few around that are suitable - I got a new Bosch for around $265.

Once fitted, you'll need to sort out the air cleaner - I plan to enlarge the opening in the carby cover with a nibbler to fit the new throttle body and use the same air cleaner setup. Then if you want to run in closed loop (which will improve economy by adjusting fuel according to the amount of oxygen left in the exhaust) you will need to have your exhaust pipe modified to fit the O2 sensor that comes off the donor, near to the exhaust manifold. Without an O2 input, the ECU runs in open loop mode and fuels for the safe side (i.e. rich) for a 1.6 litre engine. A 1.3 will need even less fuel! I gather people don’t always bother with the O2 sensor. In my case, the car had extractors and a hot dog muffler when I got it. I wanted to shut up the exhaust noise so I went to a performance exhaust centre where people upgrade brand new cars. They fitted a practically new big catalytic converter (with the O2 boss on it's inlet) straight after the extractors and a practically new big muffler off a Toyota in front of the rear axle, both for around $80 including the parts that would have otherwise going in the bin. So I’ve got a nice high flow 2 inch exhaust that’s quiet and cost next to nothing!

I just have to put aside the time to fit the kit now...

[johnmath]

I have now fitted the TBI injection kit. The engine runs really well - smoother and more torque. Only problem was that the dizzy that came off the donor Swift didn't fit my engine. The Swift (Mk II?) fuel injection has electronic advance so I had to modify the original distributor, take out the balance weights, clamp the vacuum advance turret and remove the igniter from inside and use the loom of the donor distributor and connect it to the pickup in the modified distributor.