[fordem]

I'm looking for towing & roof load limits on a 98 SQ420 five door Grand Vitara - preferably from an Australian or UK vehicle owner's manual - I already have the US figures.

A bit of history ...

My car is a 98 E06 (African market) SQ420, and when I acquired it, the owner's manual was long gone, and although I never really needed it (I have access to the FSM that matches the particular vehicle), I like to have the owner's manual, so I bought a used manual on ebay, US version because that was easiest to get hold of.

US limits are frequently lower because of the American propensity to litigation, and I just pulled my roof rails off to deal with a rattle and discovered that US vehicles use a different rail, one with plastic feet rather than the cast alloy ones that the Australian & African market vehicles get - now it's fairly obvious that the cast alloy feet are stronger than the plastic ones, but I'm curious as to whether this translates into higher roof load numbers.

[watermouse]

I think this spec would be the same as the Australian SQ625.

For some reason I believed the roof load was 30kg, not that I ever observed it. My 420 was also missing the owners manual.

[watermouse]

towing braked 1850kg, unbraked 450kg

[Built4thrashing]

watermouse wrote:

towing braked 1850kg, unbraked 450kg

towing is a questionable thing. Some say its 1850kg others say 1350kg.

Having used mine for towing i'd be nervous towing 1850kgs....

[henno]

klutched has towed a few GVs with his GV. I tow a boat that weighs in over a tonne, and that's with my shorty J20 GV and that is absolutely fine with everything except for power. Once at speed it cruises excellently; getting there is a mission sometimes.

[watermouse]

Built4thrashing wrote:

watermouse wrote:

towing braked 1850kg, unbraked 450kg

towing is a questionable thing. Some say its 1850kg others say 1350kg.

Having used mine for towing i'd be nervous towing 1850kgs....

I tend to agree. I towed 1400kg braked a few times and it was barely capable stopping let alone accelerating.
1350kg would be the more sensible limit.

I am going off the carsales.com.au specs which seem to have good correlation of tare weights for the various SQ models, 4cyl, 6 cyl, 2door and 4door. GVM is consistent to Tare Mass and max payload and GCM is consistent to the GVM and towing masses listed. Not a Suzuki source though...so a grain of salt...

[henno]

Carsales can be (or, is) unreliable. It still lists my model as an 1850kg braked rated towing capacity. I'd not want to play with much more than 1100kg.

[watermouse]

Do you still have your owners manual Henno?

[Chop]

Ah towing hey. Well I've gone from an 03 2.5 v6 to a 2010 ddis ngv and what an underbreaked heap of shit the 03 gv is. The Ngv shits all over it, I think the towing specs are all wrong on the older gv's. I tow around 550 -600kg everday.

[henno]

watermouse wrote:

Do you still have your owners manual Henno?

I sure do. I can't remember the exact figures, but I am sure it is a lot less than 1850.

[watermouse]

Not disputing that at all. Would be good to get some real figures in this thread.

It doesn't seem so hard to get copies of the FSM for any Suzuki 4wd but there is a real lack of online sources for glovebox manuals.

[ZUZUKI]

Suzuki Australia sales literature has always stated 1850kg for the 5 door.
The earliest I have is part no. 99999-GRAND-002, which was current in late 1999 when we bought ours new (still have it & the owners manual, which I will look at later for roof load info). This brochure make a real feature of the towing capacity, under a heading of "Real Towing Force" - continues "This Suzuki V6 Grand Vitara is a 4 x 4 that does far more than just pull its weight." "In, fact, the Grand Vitara's towing capacity is rated at a massive 1850kgs* (braked)
* Subject to State Government regulation
The Specification table at the back, under TOWING, states "Manufacturer recommendation 1850kg (Braked) - this is shown as being applicable to all the 5-door variants - 2.0litre J20 4cyl manual (1,355kg curb weight) 2.0litre auto (1,375kg curb) 2.5V6 manual & auto (1,405kg curb) - all with a GVM (Gross vehicle weight, on the brochure) of 1,950kg.
No GCM is listed.
Brochure Part no. 99999-GRAND-004 is a single double sided page, showing the up-dated grill, still showing 1850kg (braked) towing.
I have 2 different brochures, part no. 9999-Grand-005. The more comprehensive of the 2 was current in March 2005 - this shows the 3 door J20 as having 1,600kg (braked) towing, with 1,280kg curb (man) & 1,300kg curb (auto) & 1,750kg GVW. V6 is as before, but with 116kW/213Nm H25A instead of the earlier 106kW/208Nm version.

Like others though, I think 1850kg is on the high side. We towed 1100kg of camping trailer around Aust. & there were definitely times when that was as much as I thought the car could handle.

Rgs, Michael

[fordem]

henno wrote:

watermouse wrote:

Do you still have your owners manual Henno?

I sure do.

Can we also get the roof load limits please?

[watermouse]

Looks like we lost Zuzuki's last post in the changeover (and a few others).

The number I read was 45kg

[ZUZUKI]

Correct watermouse - my owners manual, dated March 1999 & as supplied with my car new in Dec. 1999 has lots of blah, blah bits surrounding the figures of 45kg (100lb) max. roof load.

Considering there are only 2 x M6 studs sticking out of the roof in each corner (total & if you use the factory rails, there is a fair horizontal distance from where the studs are & where the alloy rail feet start, 45kg is not too bad.

I have 'overloaded' my roof, no doubt about it - by how much I don't know, but did the development road up to Cape York, until the tele track, then back down the dev. rd back to Cooktown (where we had left the camping trailer & then transfered most of the load back onto the trailer) - nasty, nasty corrugations & survived in one piece.

Rgs, Michael

[weelz]

According to my May 2000 edition of the owners manual, the roof rail rating is 45kg or 100lbs, and towing recommendation is 680kg braked??? and 450 unbraked. Having said that, my SQ627 pulls my son's Skyline on my car trailer with no dramas.