Install manual hubs on 4WD, impact on value and handling?

But if you are out in the snow or mud in 2 wheel drive having to get out of the car is the universes way of reminding you to plan ahead next time. You are going to know that your route will take you on roads likely to not be gritted or cleared, in just the same way that you are aware you are planning going to drive off a sealed surface. After all its why you have bought a jimny in the first place is the certainty that you need to be prepared in some fashion. Otherwise you would have bought a swift.

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But if you are out in the snow or mud in 2 wheel drive having to get out of the car is the universes way of reminding you to plan ahead next time. You are going to know that your route will take you on roads likely to not be gritted or cleared, in just the same way that you are aware you are planning going to drive off a sealed surface. After all its why you have bought a jimny in the first place is the certainty that you need to be prepared in some fashion. Otherwise you would have bought a swift.
 

Agreed!
I forgot in the Series III once, luckily I was younger and more nimble.
I had to climb over the door to get on the wing and then dangle down to reach the hubs hanging onto the spare wheel. Looking back I can't imagine how I could ever have done it, but it was that or paddle in what was probably raw sewage.......

(You don't buy a 4x4 to walk in the mud....)

You are reading my mind. Is there any drawback on locking in the hubs in 2WD except for fuel consumtion?

Increased wear and tear, fuel consumption and slightly worse performance but it's all negligible. If you want to go down the locked hub route you can permanently lock the vacuum hubs using a 20mm self tapping screw. It's quicker and cheaper than installing manual hubs.

I never wanted manual hubs, I wanted the convenience of the three push buttons on the dash, that was until I spent two mornings last winter under the car trying to unblock the the vac lines all to no avail. Buying manual hubs was the quickest way to get my Jimny back to working correctly, essential as I had a 200 mile round trip over the moors in snow last Xmas.

Now when I think back there has been a few instances over the years when I have put my car in 4wd and got a steady green light only to find the rear wheels spinning and no drive to the front, clearly one or more front hubs didn’t lock.  After each time I jacked the car and checked the hubs, perfect.

What I am saying is the vac hubs don’t always work and to me if you can’t guarantee that they will engage every time, then the time you really need Themis when they will fail.  You just don’t get that with manual hubs and to me that’s more important than switching the hubs to the lockposition before I set off.

We have a few cm of snow here and t is -4C, I switched the hubs over two days ago and they are still in the locked position, but I only engage 4wd when needed, like getting up the hill from where I live.

Regardless of which system you use, check your car goes in 4wd and 4wd-L now before you need to use it for real.

Robin
 

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Regardless of which system you use, check your car goes in 4wd and 4wd-L now before you need to use it for real.

Robin

 

Actually my first experiance with Jimny 4WD was a non locking hub on a muddy beach.  The plan was to pull up our boat on a trailer. The focus quickly shifted from the boat to get the car back on the road again with 2WD.

If it’s under warranty and you are not happy with having manual hubs then insist that they fix it to original specification. They should have checked this and if it wasn’t righ should have stated that the 4wd wasn’t working.

If the vac hubs are ok it will be the vac lines and a better solution to Suzuki’s original arrangement of rigid and flexible pipes is to run new flexible pipes from the solenoid valves direct to the hubs with no joint.. Put the T piece up there as well and run two pipes to each hub, a lock and unlock. That was what I was going to do with mine last summer but never got round to it and I now prefer manual hubs.

After they have completed the works get them to jack each wheel in turn and demonstrate that each front wheel locks and unlocks.

Robin

Ill will go for manual hubs. Since it can be locked in and still go 2WD it feels more reliable. Besides the use of 2WDL when manounvering with our boat trailer sounds good!

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Ill will go for manual hubs. Since it can be locked in and still go 2WD it feels more reliable. Besides the use of 2WDL when manounvering with our boat trailer sounds good!

I don’t think you will regret having manual hubs.

i would ask for the vacuum hubs back before they take them off, there probably isn’t much wrong with them and if you wanted to go back to vacuum hubs in the future you can just get some new vac pipe installed.  Even if the hubs have a fault they are probably straight forward to repair.

I don’t suppose they will mind they are probably going to throw the old hubs away, in fact you might be doing them a favour.

Robin