[shep]

jimny_timmy wrote:

Chop wrote:

This was from a few months back. Can't see this being a favourable offroad vehicle.

http://www.caradvice.com.au/251027/suzu ... ion-jimny/

Any money says they ditch the live axle

My money is on it being ifs and IRS

[jimny_timmy]

shep wrote:

jimny_timmy wrote:

Chop wrote:

This was from a few months back. Can't see this being a favourable offroad vehicle.

http://www.caradvice.com.au/251027/suzu ... ion-jimny/

Any money says they ditch the live axle

My money is on it being ifs and IRS

Another hairdressers car

[Rhinoman]

The Euro diesel model used the Renault engine and an ECU designed in the UK

[Gwagensteve]

onetoomany wrote:

Steve, all due respect, but if you felt that this conversion was pointless/unfeasible would it really hurt to jot down another couple of sentences explaining why you feel that way? After all, this is the n00b thread, correct? Just some food for thought.

onetoomany wrote:

I've researched the sh*t out of this topic enough to know that it can be done

That's why I didn't list the problems I have with diesel converting a Jimny. If you've researched as hard as you claim to, I was sure the disadvantages of a diesel conversion would be clear, and you'd come to the conclusion that it's still desirable. Me chiming in with my 2c worth isn't going to change your mind.

However, as you've asked:

I think that diesel converting a suzuki is based on a few false premises

Diesels are reliable, mechanical, and economical…

Many small diesels aren't designed for longer service life than the equivalent petrol. All VW engines are designed for the same major overhaul life - 300,000km.
Few small diesels made since the Jimny was produced are mechanical. Many are electronically complex - Much more complex and sophisticated than a Jimny EFI petrol, especially a G series motor. They are also very dependent on clean fuel with absolutely no water in it.

Modern common rail diesels, when properly geared, can be very economical. That's not always the case for older mechanical motors though, especially if they are turbocharged. However, that's assuming that fuel economy is the only form of economy that's important. Diesels are VERY expensive to buy, more expensive to service, and replacing turbochargers and fuel pumps, as an example, can be very prohibitive, even more so if the engine is tuned or requires parts that aren't available in Australia. Damaged vitara and Baleno G16B donor cars are regularly being sold for $600-800. That makes it pretty hard to justify the cost and complexity of a Diesel swap IMHO.

I don't like modern EFI and diesels aren't afraid of water…

See above for the complexity of modern diesel EFI, and there's far more electronic connections and sensors in a modern diesel than a petrol motor. And whilst an old mechanical diesel won't care too much about being in water, they are far more sensitive to water in the intake. A teaspoon of water will destroy a diesel- not generally a problem with a petrol.

Some specifics:

There is no feasible, australian delivered, small, modern diesel that can be made to fit. The VW diesel was never sold in Australia with a mechanical pump, they are all TDi, which are very complex electronically. Converting one of these to a mechanical pump requires a bunch of parts that, again, aren't readily available in Australia. I think it was FZ that was chasing a TDi caddy from a damaged auction and it went for $6.5K. Add the conversion parts and driveline upgrade parts and that's one really expensive conversion.

You could import a Jimny with a Renault Diesel for sure, but these motors look to be nothing special in my opinion power and torque is very low. They are also electronically complicated, you'll have the only one in the country, and it will get annihilated for performance by an M18 engined car. I also suspect there are some tricky transfer gears or such to get the revs down to suit the diesel and that means there more awesome unique/impossible to get parts. Remember too, these cars weren't built because they are awesome, they were built because in some European countries, fuel prices mean there is almost no market for petrol vehicles.

Diesel torque is going to be very hard on the glass jimmy driveline, as is the weight of the diesel block. Front end life will be a problem. As you are talking about 31" tyres, you're really going to be pushing the front end way, way beyond its safe limits. The front housings bend stock.

Let's throw around some rough numbers. To achieve reasonable road performance, I guess you'd want a diesel that puts out 60-70Kw. At that power figure, a decent diesel is going to putting out around 200Nm, maybe more. It's also going to be doing it a very low revs. (My new DD has peak torque in at 1200rpm)

Putting 200+Nm into a gearbox designed for 100Nm, while it's only turning at 1200rpm is going to be murder on it, especially 5th gear. Blowing jimny gearboxes is going to get annoying too.

If you are able to get cruise revs down, lets say to 2000rpm, (and I have no idea how that is possible) you're going to want to do that in a way that doesn't equally reduce off road gearing., because diesel or not, Jimny's are already too tall geared off road. This has nothing to so with the torque band of the motor, it has everything to do with how fast you want to drive an obstacle, and what speed you want to go to maintain control. So id you lower gearing to allow off road control, but also have twice the torque, what is that going to do to the axles? We have a Jimny engined car in the club that broke a full float EN-26 axle with 100Nm and 63:1 gearing. 63:1 gearing isn't even all that low, and the auto softens out the hits to the driveline. How do you reckon a Jimny is going to go with 63:1 and 200+Nm?

If you want a diesel for long distance touring ponder this - I'd guess a converted diesel is going to weigh about 100kg more than a stock jimny. That drops you to 250KG of payload, and if you add a bar and/or winch, you're likely to already have the front end way over maximum axle load. In short, Jimny's already end up miles over GVM when packed for a long trip. The added weight and stress a diesel is going to place on the car will make it a less reliable car, not a more reliable one. Heavy jimny's already suffer from a number of borderline components and failures, and that's with 100Nm. A diesel isn't going to make any of those better, only worse.

All up, I think they are a terrible idea. It might be a fun project to build one, but by the time you've burnt all that money and time, it's quite possible the end result won't be any better than a Jimny with a M15 or G16, all things considered.

If you really want a long distance touring, diesel car that's reliable and runs 31's, you need a hilux, not a $10K+ engine and mechanical conversion.

Steve.

[droverdave]

seems UK got a few diesel Suzukis

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Suzuki-Jimny- ... 19e5b35a7c

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Suzuki-Grand- ... 3386bda7aa

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SUZUKI-GRAND- ... 19e584efe8

Perhaps have a chat to an import company

[Chop]

Problem with those diesels is they don't do any real touring! For most of the european's touring across the country takes half a day at most and thats only because of traffic not distance

[sideways]

I bet no one would have an issue with how many revs a Jimny does on the highway if they didn't have a tacho.

[Rhinoman]

That Jimny is a conversion, there were no Jimny diesels sold in the UK.

[sideways]

It's a Peugeot XUD9.

That's probably the easiest engine to do the conversion with here in aus. That with a TATA Telcoline gearbox (which would probably need tunnel mods to fit) and a 1:1 transfer with 3.9 diff gears would be geared about right. It's an old school injector pump engine so wiring is a doddle. IIRC an XUD9 with all the ancillaries weighs 140kg. If you looked hard enough you'd find one the right age, most are older.

It's still a completely pointless conversion though.

[Gwagensteve]

So my research shows all the Renault motors Suzuki uses are common rail- so complex and expensive to convert. The k9k used in the jimny seems to make 60+kW and 145Nm, way less the an m18 which would cost about 20% as much to convert to.

The XUD9 is mech pump but in later forms makes near 200Nm, which would wreak havoc with the driveline methinks. They also seem to be a low rev motor- governed at 3k from what I can see. That only adds to the gearing hassles if I'm right.

Steve.

[sideways]

Gwagensteve wrote:

They also seem to be a low rev motor- governed at 3k from what I can see. That only adds to the gearing hassles if I'm right.

Steve.

More than that, 3600-4500 depending on the model according to this. http://www.engine-cemberci.com/engine/PEUGEOT/4.pdf

Assuming the tata box has a 0.8:1 5th, with the 1:1 transfer (VVT manual), 3.9s and 215/75r15s it'd be doing about 2600rpm at 110, which is about right.

Also, check the lean! Not only do they lean 30* to the drivers side, they've got both manifolds and the turbo stuffed down there. That'd be fun to fit in a Jimny. I'm pretty sure they've got less lean in the TATA, they look more like 20* or so.

But yeah, the jimny driveline is cheezy enough with an M13a.

[Gwagensteve]

I reckon 2600rpm is way too high for a 200Nm motor pushing a light car. It's going to be buzzy and thirsty IMHO. Might be ok with 31's/32's though, except the driveline won't have a buckley's of taking the torque and load of the tyres, and it will be way too tall geared offroad.

Steve.

[Gwagensteve]

In case people don't realise the problem of putting high torque values into gearboxes at low revs, it's due to the length and strength of the torque peaks.

In a four cylinder diesel there are two power pulses per revolution. Lets use my Defender's 2.2 duratorq motor as an example.

It produces 360Nm peak at about 1750 rpm. The engine will happily pull overdrive 6th from about 1300rpm in a 1950Kg car.

360Nm isn't 360Nm total peak, it's 360Nm averaged over a constant. In fact, there's very, very high peaks momentarily. In an overdrive gear, you're actually slowing them down and prolonging those very high leaks, and doing it through the smallest gear in the gearbox.

The 4BD isuzu motor Land rover used in the 1980's in Australia will smash rover 5 speed gearboxes, even though they have far less torque than the V8 engine or 200Tdi used later, because of how low the torque comes in.

Taking a gearbox designed for a car with 100Nm and putting 200Nm into it at 1/2 the revs puts much higher loads though the gearbox than the bare KW numbers of a small diesel would portray.

As an example, this is also a huge problem for tuned Diesel pickups in the US - they can produce huge torque at very low cruise RPM (<1200rpm) and this is just hell on drivetrain.

Steve.

[sideways]

Going on with that, Peugeot traditionally used substantially bigger gearboxes on their diesels even though they were generally less powerful engines based on their petrol cousins. It's not like the petrol gearboxes are weak or anything either.

More deets on said landy and your plans for it please.

[Jezza86]

what are jimny gears made from? would it be possible to get replacement gears to handle the additional face pressure on the teeth? they are still teeth in helical cut gears arnt they?
would be good to know in case i dig up a m18. ive heard steel gears can be noisier too...

[jimny_timmy]

Gwagensteve wrote:

In case people don't realise the problem of putting high torque values into gearboxes at low revs, it's due to the length and strength of the torque peaks.

In a four cylinder diesel there are two power pulses per revolution. Lets use my Defender's 2.2 duratorq motor as an example.

It produces 360Nm peak at about 1750 rpm. The engine will happily pull overdrive 6th from about 1300rpm in a 1950Kg car.

360Nm isn't 360Nm total peak, it's 360Nm averaged over a constant. In fact, there's very, very high peaks momentarily. In an overdrive gear, you're actually slowing them down and prolonging those very high leaks, and doing it through the smallest gear in the gearbox.

The 4BD isuzu motor Land rover used in the 1980's in Australia will smash rover 5 speed gearboxes, even though they have far less torque than the V8 engine or 200Tdi used later, because of how low the torque comes in.

Taking a gearbox designed for a car with 100Nm and putting 200Nm into it at 1/2 the torque puts much higher loads though the gearbox than the bare KW numbers of a small diesel would portray.

As an example, this is also a huge problem for tuned Diesel pickups in the US - they can produce huge torque at very low cruise RPM (<1200rpm) and this is just hell on drivetrain.

Steve.

Do you think suzuki would have taken this into account with the k9 model. I get exactly what you're saying, and I've also seen a cv go pop on a standard jimny without much effort... Actually minimal effort. I'd imagine if it was all the same running gear that the k9's would be chewing cv's in 1st low on stock tyres.

[Gwagensteve]

Who says they aren't?

[jimny_timmy]

160nm at low rpm... Wouldn't surprise me

[Boova]

KAP Suzuki in the UK do Diesel conversion kits for Jimnys
Exciting new product - Jimny conversion kit with Vauxhall Turbo diesel engines

http://www.kapsuzuki4x4.co.uk/news/index.php

maybe contact them for a chat

[Rhinoman]

The Renault/Peugeot engines fitted in the Suzukis are detuned to get more low end power and to prevent the drivetrain exploding. The Vauxhall TDs that I've driven have had no bottom end torque at all, you have to rev it to keep the turbo spinning, I can't think of a worse engine for an off-roader.