Modified JB74

I have had my Jimny since December 2022, we never really set out to buy a Jimny and although I’ve liked them for some time now I could never convince my wife we needed one..... That was until we went car shopping as she wanted an electric car and we stopped at our local MG dealership, which also happens to be the local Suzuki dealer. Parked outside as you drove in was a bright yellow (although she calls it green) 4 seater Jimny that looked to be in as new condition.  Straight away I nudged my wife towards the Jimny and after telling the salesman how much I liked it we ended up going for a test drive in the Jimny and a new MG4 to compare (not really a direct comparison I know). As much as I wanted the Jimny my wife was more keen on the MG4 – because it was new and had a rather nice flash interior but the salesman was more keen on selling the Jimny so he really gave her the hard sell. The pitch he gave was how rare the 4 seater ones are and how the guy who owned it had to part with it due to losing his job and how despite being £26K it was the cheapest one on Autotrader. I suspect it was more than he’d make £500 on a new MG4 but a couple of grand selling the Jimny.After looking at the figures and how the 2 year old Jimny after 4 years had a higher residual value than the brand new MG4 we went for the Jimny.While waiting to collect the car I started watching various Jimny Youtube videos and came across Jimnystyle and all the bits you could get. Now I’d been really into building and modifying cars before my son arrived and I’d managed to even get one of my Honda Civic Type R’s featured in magazines in the UK and the USA (Banzai, Honda Tuning etc.) but after my son was born I sold my highly modified Type R and bought a 2017 model which to this day is still standard (apart from a remap). Seeing what Jimnystyle offered and then watching various videos of Jimnys from Japan and the Late Brake Show I couldn’t help myself!Modifying a Honda Civic is totally different to doing a 4x4, where the Civic would want lowering with lower profile tyres fitting the Jimnys I looked at all got lifted and bigger tyres fitted, the more I researched the more stuff I came across I wanted!Like most people I started off with the standard upgrade of interior storage, ordering a dash storage tray and centre storage tray / cup holder from Jimnystyle.Initially when we first saw the Jimny parked outside the Suzuki garage I loved the look of the standard alloys and Bridgestone Dueller tyres but Jimnystyle video’s I’d watched introduced me to even more chunky and aggressive looking tyres so I placed an order. Not really knowing what to go for I initially went for 235 tyres that I intended to fit on my standard wheels but the research I’d been doing was giving me conflicting information, some people said they would fit fine, others said I’d have to trim the arches then people were saying the bigger wheels would really stunt the Jimnys performance..... I was really confused and that led me to change my order with Jimnystyle from 235 to 215 with a set of their 16” J01 HIGH PEAK wheels – I liked the retro look of these wheels and how they were a direct fit with a slightly more aggressive offset.

 

  At the same time as ordering the tyres / wheels I also ordered the Jimnystyle classic grill with vintage Suzuki logo and their own lift kit which is a combination of Bilstien dampers with H&R Springs. Again the choice of lift kits really confused me. If I wanted to lower my Civic Type R I’d either order a set of lowering springs OR coilovers but looking at what was available to raise the Jimny confused me, some kits included longer brake hoses, some didn’t, some included castor correction bushes, some didn’t, some included a panhard relocation brackets some didn’t – I didn’t even know what a Panhard bar was! Being familiar with Bilstien and H&R from my Civic and Jimnystyles videos and excellent service so far led to me going for the Jimnystyle lift kit rather than one from someone like OME who at that time I’d never heard of! 
 
  Believe it or not but the plan was to use the Jimny as a family car as my Civic Type R was getting more use than I wanted. Since COVID we had been doing more UK based holidays that resulted in more miles than I’d usually do so to make more space inside and I guess to make it look visually more like a hardcore off-road vehicle I decided to order a roof rack. I had considered the Suzuki roofbars but really wanted a full length rack. After watching more Youtube videos from “Life of Smokey” I came across the Front Runner Rack which I thought looked great, being low profile, however the price gave me a shock! After doing a bit more research I came across Jimnybits and there roof rack which is around half the price of the Front Runner one. I think Jimnybits rack is a Chinese made rack that is available on the likes of Alliexpress (cheaper). Construction wise its aluminium and comes flat packed for self assembly, which wasn’t too difficult. Visually it has the look of some of the Japanese made racks in that it’s got higher sides on it than the Front Runner one. What I did like about it was it included two small light bars built in which after I ordered the Jimnystyle LED light bar switch – which fits nicely in one of the spare slots – works really well and looks factory fitted.Now as I mentioned earlier when I was making my tyre selection, I knew from research that the more aggressive offroad tyres and wheels would stunt the cars performance and it was true, where the car felt “peppy” before the weight of the wheels and tyres kind of took that “peppyness” away. I did consider going for the Forge intake and HIGH PEAK exhaust to try and give the car a few more BHP but the plan was to use the car to do some Greenlanes as I live on the edge of the NY Moors and what I didn’t want was an intake that would potentially suck in water, not did I really visually want a snorkel fitting. I also looked at what was available in Japan and all I could find was open cone type intakes from the likes of Greddy which I could imagine would just suck in water.  I also had my doubts over how much BHP the intake and exhaust would add so in the end I opted to just expect the performance but because I wanted the car to sound a little better I started to look into if anyone made backboxes for the Jimny, something stainless that would look the part and sound a bit better. After a trip to Japan on holiday where I went to a huge parts store called A Pit AutoBACs I same across the HKS Legal Muffler which is for the JDM JB64 / JB74 Jimny. I had hoped to bring one back in my suit case but after seeing one display it was clear it would never fit so when I got home I ordered one and had It shipped over.
 

 

My plans for the future include a new front bumper from Japan and maybe some new front seats once my wallet has recovered  

Hello and welcome, nice mods so far.

A Jimny welcome from N/WALES

Thanks for the welcome guys 

I spent a bit of time over the weekend looking at what front bumper to get from Japan. While I was over there I picked up some Jimny magazines from AutoBACS, one of them is a Hyper Revs which I’ve had before for my Civic Type R, they are basically like a catalogue of almost every single tuning you can get for a particular model.

I have a black JB74 so your ideas interest me, and I would imagine, a few others as well. Any ideas you have regarding front/rear bumpers would be appreciated.

Roger

I’m tempted by either the High Bridge First bumper from JIMNYSTYLE, I’m sure I’ve seen one fitted to a Uk Jimny on Instagram but can’t remember the guys username

jimnystyle.com/collections/jimny-bumpers...riant=42880682361059

The other one I like is by Showa Garage and would have to be imported from Japan so although it appears cheaper with postage and import duty it’s not far off being the same price as the High Bridge one from JIMNYSTYLE.

Showa Garage make some interesting parts though and these guys are the real deal and compete in various off-road competitions in Japan. They feature heavily in the magazines I picked up while out there
 

I’ve picked up a replacement gear knob from Monster Sport, I’ve always liked there parts when they had a European shop and produced some very cool Swift Sports.

The selection of bits for the Jimny isn’t the best though, they do a grill which is interesting and I can’t make my mind up if I like it or not.

Anyway this is the gear knob I went for, although I can’t for the life of me removing the existing one! I’m twisting as I figure it’s screwed on but it won’t budge

 

 

Just tried to remove mine, and yes it's tight! My suggestion is to heat it with a towel soaked in hot water, as hot as you can.

Roger

Thanks I’ll give that ago as brute force doesn’t seem to be doing much!

wrote:

I’m tempted by either the High Bridge First bumper from JIMNYSTYLE, I’m sure I’ve seen one fitted to a Uk Jimny on Instagram but can’t remember the guys username

 

You might be thinking of GeordieJimny, his is black with that front bumper.

GeordieJimny - that’s the car I’d seen online