Grinding Noise After 50mm Lift - Traction Control Activating

Hi all,

I have tried searching but haven't been able to find any answers, and I'm very new to the world of Jimnys so please excuse me if this is a dumb question.

I have a brand new JB74 (with only 50km on the clock).  The car has a 50mm Ironman lift which I installed myself.  When I go around left-hand corners with a bit of speed (50 - 60kph), I get a horrible grinding / rubbing noise and vibration from underneath the car.  It doesn't happen all the time but I seem to be able to induce it by braking lightly or decelerating while turning using engine braking.  This only happens through left-hand turns, not right.  It also does it with and without a passenger on board.

At first, I thought it may have been the ABS activating, but then realised I didn't need to brake to make it happen.  The ABS light also does not illuminate when this happens.  I also thought it could be the prop shaft rubbing against the cross member, however, I have fitted cross member drop brackets and I note that the sound mostly comes when the car is decelerating (ie. when the nose is pitched down and I assume the prop shaft moves away from the cross member).

The problem persists regardless of whether I have the stock wheels and tyres on the car, or my 235/70/R15s (on 15 x 7 rims).

Has anyone experienced anything like this or have any clue about how I could diagnose the issue?

Thanks so much for your help!

Kind regards,
HR

The obvious thing is to check all rotating assemblies and their immediate proximity for witness marks to confirm if anything is actually making contact with something it shouldn't. Next would be to spanner check all the bolt and nuts on the suspension for being tight. Are the road springs all correctly seated on their perches on the axles? Are all the upper nvh isolation pads in place on the road springs? When you tightened the radius arms was the car sat on the ground supporting it's own weight?

Oh and include the panhard rods in with the radius arms.

Have you fitted larger tyres?

As Lambert says link look for witness marks on the front propshaft hitting the cross member

Look for the tyres hitting the lip of the bottom of the front bumper

Sent from my moto g42 using Tapatalk

Thanks so much for your replies!  Appreciate you both taking the time to consider.

I've spent some more time with the car this evening, looking for witness marks and so on, and have now realised the noise is the traction control being activated.  Although I'm positive the traction control light wasn't illuminating before, it now seems to illuminate *most* of the time I experience the issue.  I activated the ESP Maintenance Mode and switched traction control off, and the problem appears to go away.

So after a lot of stuffing around, it appears it's not actually something rubbing.  My concern is that it doesn't take much for the traction control to cut in.  I've read that it can behave inconsistently between cars (ie. from one Jimny to the next), but could it be that the suspension lift has affected the way the traction control behaves?  I would expect that kind of thing could happen due to my bigger tyres, but reverting back to the stock tyres doesn't fix the issue.

The "traction control" works off the front ABS sensor for real traction control operation and off the LIDAR transmitter for collision avoidance. If it was the collision avoidance then you would get a dashboard warning so I guess we can exclude that. Therefore I would check that the ABS sensor is ok. Have they bent the mount so it is no longer spaced correctly from the sensor wheel and particularly look at the ABS sensor feed wire which can get badly stretched/damaged during the installation of the lift as you drop the axle to fit the spring in.. This is (on a RHD vehicle) above the axle on the drivers side.

Thanks so much Michael - that is likely what may have happened here.  I figure if the sensor or wiring itself has been damaged, I would probably get a warning or error code.  Because the symptom is more that the traction control cuts in early, I think your point about the mount being bent might be a good one!  I will have a look at the sensor area tonight.

I have just encountered the same problem JB74 LCV (abs braking nearside wheel when cornering at about 45Mph) after a 50mm lift and 225/70/16 Extreme XJ03 wheels. Potentially dangerous especially in the wet. It was explained to me that it is caused by the rotational relationship of the inside and outside wheels being increased due to a wider track and increased wheel size causing the vehicle to think it is in a skid? Suzuki dealership believed they could software out the problem but after two visits they have not cured the problem. Not sure where to go from here??

Surely though I would have thought that if all 4 wheels are the same size while the actual wheel speed for any given road speed is lower than standard the relative wheel speed difference between them cornering is as expected? It's not like having one wheel bigger than the other?

My immediate thought is the 235's are a possible problem. It does warn in the manual that increasing the tyre size can effect the ABS ect.
There's probably nothing that will change that other then slowing down around corners.
Cars are getting a lot smarter and the downside to that is the more you change them from factory spec the more confused they get as the data they receive to make decisions is very different from what is actually happening.
They might come up with an update to fix this but I doubt suzuki will, it allows them to remove the entire drive train from any warranty claims and that saves them money.

I would say the new Jimnys traction control/ crash alert is very sensitive. I can get mine to activate maybe once a week or so. Usually it kicks in when it thinks it’s going to crash into a pedestrian who’s actually walking along a path but the car doesn’t know the difference between the road and pavement. This I do find dangerous when you are not prepared for this to happen and the car is trying to brake when you’re happily driving along with other traffic around you. The traction control will also kick in going round corners and roundabouts if you push them probably above 30mph or so depending on road conditions. Now all my 3 JB74s have BFG 215/75/R15 Mud terrains and I accept that mud terrains on the road actually aren’t that grippy compared to a standard or all terrain tire so I think that’s something to bear in mind. Usually when I’ve had the traction control kick in I will agree with it that I was probably going too fast for the Jimny to handle even though the car feels ok whereas my old Gen 3s rear end on similar mud tires used to love sliding around and spinning away pulling away at traffic lights. So I think tires and a heavy right foot is the problem along with a sensitive car. 

HachiRocker wrote:

Hi all,

I have tried searching but haven't been able to find any answers, and I'm very new to the world of Jimnys so please excuse me if this is a dumb question.

I have a brand new JB74 (with only 50km on the clock).  The car has a 50mm Ironman lift which I installed myself.  When I go around left-hand corners with a bit of speed (50 - 60kph), I get a horrible grinding / rubbing noise and vibration from underneath the car.  It doesn't happen all the time but I seem to be able to induce it by braking lightly or decelerating while turning using engine braking.  This only happens through left-hand turns, not right.  It also does it with and without a passenger on board.

At first, I thought it may have been the ABS activating, but then realised I didn't need to brake to make it happen.  The ABS light also does not illuminate when this happens.  I also thought it could be the prop shaft rubbing against the cross member, however, I have fitted cross member drop brackets and I note that the sound mostly comes when the car is decelerating (ie. when the nose is pitched down and I assume the prop shaft moves away from the cross member).

The problem persists regardless of whether I have the stock wheels and tyres on the car, or my 235/70/R15s (on 15 x 7 rims).

Has anyone experienced anything like this or have any clue about how I could diagnose the issue?

Thanks so much for your help!

Kind regards,
HR

What are you running your tyre pressures at? 
With the size tyres you are using your pressures should be around 22psi.