More power on road with or without engine swap?

Hello,

I'm new here and relatively new to the Jimny life. I have a 2001 that's been pretty good to me last few months driving around town, will be using more off-road in future. I'm planning to drive to the Alps for the winter, However on motorway it's pretty uncomfortable over 65mph so the journey there won't be much fun... Does anyone know a way to get it to sit at 70/75mph more comfortably without an engine swap? Or if engine swap is best answer (only done a little research myself on this but seen good things from a 1.6) does anyone know of someone in the UK that does them as think it's probs a bit more than my mechanical skill currently.

Thanks for any advice 

Arch

Hi Arch,
What makes it uncomfortable for you?
High rpm at 70, bit gutless on the hills, road noise, seats or jiggly road manners, or all of the above? I find ours will sit at 70 on the motorway although hills will zap the speed, it feels  uncomfortable to me due to excessive engine rpm and noise.
Only asking as throwing a bigger engine in won't on its own address all the potential issues, so having an idea of your "uncomfortable list" in some form of order may help focus any suggestions.
 

As Scimike says, an engine swap won't change the engine revs. If that's your concern then your options are:
A. Get over it. The engine really doesn't mind what RPM it sits at, so neither should you! Shift down to maintain speed on hills.
B. fit a combination of bigger tyres to stretch out the gearing and a bigger engine to help turn them.
I have a 1.6 in mine and it happily cruises at 80-85mph. I did similar speeds with the 1.3, it just took slightly longer to get there.

Well mostly I'd say it the noise and high RPM, but after some more research id say I wasn't giving it enough RPM as was scared to not overwork engine so I've been sticking to 65mph at about 3000rpm. Maybe I should give it some more and just live with the noise if I wanna do 70+

Will still think about an engine swap if it drastically improves this.

I'll go with option A then I think, I'll get some headphones...

Mine is at 4000rpm at 65mph lots of modification but will happily sit at 70+
But fuel consumption is ridiculous 

It goes against my driving style, but the Jimny engine isn't bothered about high RPM, it will sit there all day. I've (with the caravan on the back) been forced to rev the nuts out of it for long periods, its no problem for that little Suzuki engine.
Sound proofing may help make the cabin a more enjoyable space, I've gone the other way and fitted a loud exhaust 

Or just cruise at 60-65mph. I seriously doubt you'd notice any real difference to journey times.

After years of fairly powerful engines that will just sit at 75 all day the Jimny did seem slow and when I first got it I cruised at 55-60 as I didn’t like the noise and relatively light steering.

Now that I have got used to the noise and fitted a steering damper I will happily sit at 65 with the odd departure to 70. 300BHP has it right though the difference in journey time between 65 and 70 is only about 4 minutes per hour, so even if you drive all day you might only be looking at 30 minutes longer.

Although in the UK with traffic and roadworks you will probably find it hard to sit at 70 or over for very long.

Robin

The faster you go, the less time it takes. And the longer the journey, the more difference that makes. I recently averaged 67mph on a 550 mile trip to Inverness (not in a Jimny, admittedly). It took 8.5hrs. A friend who believes the "you won't get there any quicker" mantra took almost 13hrs to do the same trip.
Driving to the alps on decent French roads there's no reason to sit at 65mph.

The other answer of course is not a bigger motor but a bigger stereo. On long trips it's useful to over power the road noise. Late at night it's good for keeping you awake and on a Friday evening it's good for getting attention off of the scantily clad crew in the town centre. Also nowadays the cost of a decent pounding system is peanuts compared to when I was a kid in a Polo.

wrote:

The faster you go, the less time it takes. And the longer the journey, the more difference that makes. I recently averaged 67mph on a 550 mile trip to Inverness (not in a Jimny, admittedly). It took 8.5hrs. A friend who believes the "you won't get there any quicker" mantra took almost 13hrs to do the same trip.
Driving to the alps on decent French roads there's no reason to sit at 65mph.

With a 4.5hr difference or 42% longer journey time, I'm guessing there is far more to this story than just motorway cruising speeds.....