Petros wrote:do you have direct knowledge of Suzuki cars being any less reliable?
1. That has been my impression over the years, gleaned from assorted news sources.
2. A HS buddy of mine owned a Suzuki-Subaru franchise here in STL for some years (he's now retired and sold it). He said the smartest thing he ever did was to drop Suzuki and concentrate on the Subie; too many probs with the the Suzuki cars in general and probs with the administration. He dropped it before the company decided to pull out. When he was closing out the last of his inventory at handsome discounts, I asked him if he'd sell one to one of my daughters - he said "NO!"
I thought they were still sold in Canada?
It made some pretty interesting cars, however. I thought that Swift was a hot car, no?
On that X90 my former employee owned - he never had any probs with it that I recall - it was just implausibly impractical.
Tom
T4WD augury?
"Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' Let us go and make our visit." T.S. Eliot - "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"Now and then we had a hope that, if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates." Mark Twain
parts were always costly for the Goe metro and tracker, same for swift and vitara. I looked at rebuilding the engine on the esteem (it is the same engine in the tracker but 1.8 rather than 2.0 like in the SX4), just the head gasket for it was $150 from all aftermarket souses, more than a whole gasket kit for a Tercel (head gaskets are only about $16 for the Tercel). I ended up buying a whole engine from picknpull on a half off day for about $140. including all the external accessories. faster and cheaper than a rebuild. I notice now however that the aftermarket prices have come down to about the same as honda parts, now that there is no dealer parts available.
I think Suzuki North American salse were mismanaged. even minor problems become big headachs for the dealers if they can not get parts, nor support from the factory to fix it. Most dealer mechanics are newbies run through their training, if they do not get good training on the suzuki engine than the dealer pays big time for botched repairs. So I can understand the dealer problems. The few repair manuals I have seen for the Esteem are crap, almost useless. If I did not know so much about the engines in general it would be easy to do major damage to the all aluminum high precision engine. It would not take replacing too many engines, at the dealers expense, for him to sour on the whole car line. Again I think that could be from very poor North American dearly management and training. One reason they pulled out, a lot of angry dealers, sagging sales. Odd because their world wide sales of cars have been good everywhere but here. Perhaps headquarters should have got a clue and just fired their north american operations manager. OTOH, in large companies, this is the same as admitting HQ had screwed up, and did not want to admit it. Too bad, I think it is a great car, well designed, and unlike the newer hondas and even many of the toyotas and subaraus, they are much eaiser to work on, better access and clearance.
Dan, it was doing the 2/3 temp thing in town too. Come to find out though I think she was just burping air. The coolant overflow was full to the brim while this was happening, and bubbling, then after another 2 hours of driving was below "low". Filled it back to high and will see how it is.
In other news I found out the problem with my exhaust
you do not have much reserve capacity with the single row radiator. So if a bit low on coolant will show up as running hot on hills climbs. I always double check after filling a radiator from empty after it was run and cools down. I have also took off the upper hose at the rad and filled the block separately, and than connect it and complete by filling radiator. I still double check it after it gets good and warm, heater core on (to get the air out it), let it cool over night and check level again. only after a few days of checking cold am I satisfied I got all the air out of the system.
In other news, Party got a new muffler today at Midas for $160 (parts/labor/tax). Unfortunately the drop it in replacement by walker was discontinued last year (!!!!), and the only available option required cutting and welding or rednecking.
Since it is the wife's car I decided to just get it done professionally, and it looks nice and sounds even better!
Former Tercel Enthusiast (not a practical family car anymore but they still have a place in my heart)
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