Well, the official results are now in. I can confirm that we have driven our vitara to 1st in Class A and 4th Overall in the Southern Counties Off Road Championship. This is a fantastic result for our first years racing. So, in a sport dominated by Land Rovers and Land Rover based specials, why a vitara? The honest answer is becuase I already owned it. That said, there are many good reasons to choose a vitara as the basis for a cross country racer. They are small, light, and parts are cheap and plentiful. The question was would it make a good racer?

At the time I started to build the car there was at least one vitara running in the AWDC safari championship and another in the BORC, I learned a lot from looking at these vehicles and talking to the people that prepared them. Looking at the vitara I found there were several areas that were immediately obvious as in need of improvement.

Suspension

Unlike the majority of the event field that are Land Rover based the Vitara has independent front suspension. On paper this should be an advantage giving a lower roll center and more responsive wheel movement but other factors with the suspension negate and advantage the setup should give.

Shocks : One of the biggest problems with the suspension is the lack of choice of replacement / uprated shock absorbers. After much searching around I found that the were only really a few options and none were really designed for cross-country racing, more for trialing. Eventually I sourced a set of Bilstien replacement dampers. Because of Bilstiens pedigree I'd originally hoped these would do the job, but after only a few laps on our first event at Sidbury it was obvious they wouldn't.

The shocks suffered from two problems. A lack of initial damping was apparent. The shock didn't have enough rebound damping to begin with and what they did have was soon lost due to fade. This was accentuated by the lack of airflow over the mud encrusted shocks hidden away under the vitara bodywork, so much so that at the second event of the year we ran with the front bumper and grill removed to try to improve shock cooling. There was only one solution - we needed better shocks.

As the choice was so limited we approched Ohlins and Leda to try to source some custom units, but all the options offered were too expensive for our budget. Eventually I decided the only way forward was the addition of a 'proper' off the shelf shock alongside the standard shocker. These ended up as fox 8.5" remote-reservior units from Milner Off Road, the same at each corner for interchangability in case we should have a failure at an event.

Springs : I had no idea what spring rate the standard springs were, just that they were too soft and too short. I considered having some custom springs wound but with no experience of racing the car - or even racing come to that - I had no idea what rating the replacement springs should be. After a bit of ringing around I decided I was out of my depth and started to look for some off-the-shelf options. Again, options were limited but I found that Old Man Emu make 'uprated' +1" ride height spings. These seemed like a good option to lift the low front end a little and stiffen things up.

Front suspension strengthening : At the front end the vitara does not have the strongest suspension mounts and as I had already managed to bend mine green-laning before the car had ever turned a wheel at a competitive event modifications would be needed. If you ever look under the front of a vitara you will see the chassis is more or less the same as a vehicle running rigid axles but with attachement points for the front suspsension arms hung off the chassis. These are vunerable and quite flexible.

To comply with rules set by as many clubs as possible I decided that any stengthening to the front end should be bolt-on and removable. This would mean the car would still qualify for the 'standard production' classes within the AWDC and BORC championships. To that end, a cradle was designed that would pick up on key points in the suspension and tie them together to prevent bending. A 6mm thick aluminium bash plate was also added to the underside of this guard to protect the sump and the fragile cast aluminium differential housing.

Body

As the car was designed to run in the 'standard production' classes very few modifications have been made to the exterior car body work. The main changes are the addition of mudflaps to comply with the rules and a few holes in the bonnet to aid the cooling of the radiator and front shock reserviors.

Tank guard : One area that concerened me was the fuel tank. The fuel tank on a vitara is in the usual place behind the rear axle. It struck me that although the tank is sturdy and made of reasonably thick steel I felt it would benefit from a guard to give it some protection from damage from stones, so Hendley Engineering made us one from steel sheet. This picks up on the front tank mounts and the box section of the tow-bar. This adds an extra skin, spaced away from the tank surface slightly to prevent any rocks or stones hitting the tank directly.

Roll Cage : As a standard vitara is quite a flexible car the design of the roll cage would be important to stiffen the vehicle. The cage in our Vitara was made by Dan Evans at Protection and Performance to our design. The cage is 8 point, picking up on the rear suspension mounts, and passing through the bulkhead to pickups on the front suspension mounts. The cage is fully welded in and pointed in to the roof of the vehicle, and has cross-bracing in the roof and rear hoop. At the front of the vehicle a framework is welded and bolted in around the engine to stiffen the upper suspension mounts.

Engine and Transmission

As the vitara is a 'standard production' class car, the engine and transmission are basically standard. The car runs a 1600cc 16v engine and 5-speed gearbox. The only mod is the removal of the catalytic converter and its replacement with a cherry bomb type silencer. All season the car has peformed well and although it has less than 90bhp has only felt under-powered at one point pushing through the sand and water at the Long Valley event. If we were building the car again I think I would opt for an 8v engine as it probably has more torque in the mid range and the 16v needs to be kept at high revs to maintain progress.

The only real problem area with the vitara are its engine mounts. The standard suzuki engine mounts are just a typical rubber block with a plate bonded each side. These often fail as the cars get older and break easily when trialing, let alone when safari racing. I sourced a set of replacement mounts from Dan Evans at Protection and Performance. These use a Land Rover radius arm bush in a custom fabrication to give a semi-rigid attachement that cannot separate like the standard item.

Racing the Vitara

So, after all the modifications, how did the car do? We entered all 7 rounds of the 2006 SCOR championship, and failed to finish 2 events (rounds 1 and 6).

The first DNF at Sidbury last March was due to overheating and eventually a burst radiator hose. This was as a result of a chalk clogged radiator from, shall we say, over-enhusuastic driving through the large chalk slurry hole in the center of the site. I learned my lesson and managed to finish there at our second attempt at the site in November.

The second DNF was at Long Valley in October. This was due to snapping 2 of 3 exhaust manifold studs and the third falling out resulting in the exhaust falling off and a very loud car. We couldn't find any suitable studs at the site to replace them with an so were retired by the scrutineer for being too noisy.

Although we finished all the other 5 events they were not without incident. I think the biggest surprise this year is that we have completed the season of events without breaking a diff, halfshaft or driveshaft. However, we suffered a broken front shock mount at Minhead but were still able to finish, and an engine mount pulled out of the chassis at Horam but again we were able to make it to the end. We also had problems with warn rear propshaft splines jumping at the final Sidbury event.

From a consummables point of view the car has been very economical to run. This season the main costs have been one set of brake pads, and one set of SuperPro front suspension bushes as the standard ones only lasted a couple of events. Apart from that the only other expense has been a new wheel and tyre after we damaged a wheel on a tree-stump at Minehead.

Our first season in the car has taught us a lot about racing strategy and racing the car. The car has been fun to drive, relatively cheap to run and reliable. and although we have ironed out many problems, we have found a few more. Over the winter break we aim to tackle some of these to hopefully make the car more reliable and successful for next years Championship.