How To Improve The Ride Of My Jimny

Hello all, i just bought the New 2021 Suzuki Jimny, however i didnt buy it for off-road use, still want to put little bigger tyres and probaby a 1.5 inch lift kit... However its a daily driver. Are there any suggestions to improve the comfort of the ride?

I am new to Jimny's etc i look forward to your advise

Hi and welcome,
The Jimmy is a ridged axle 4x4 and will never get close to independent suspension ride quality, its design is very off road focused. You may change the feel for the better (or worse) by fitting aftermarket suspension or a lift kit, but I would recommend you try to get a ride in a modified vehicle to see if the changes suit your needs.
Dampers have a big impact, adjustable damper let you change the feel of the vehicle and may be your most flexible option. I would suggest these even if you decide to go with a lift, they will let you tune the vehicle "feel" to your requirement, which is after all a personal preference.
Good luck and enjoy



 

The Jimny is an old-school live axle 4x4 and as such it will never drive like a car.
However, Suzuki have done a pretty good job of making such a small off-road vehicle drive OK on the road.
lt's much better than my Land Rover Defender, which is a similar design.
I am not sure you will make it much better, after all that's why car manufacturers moved away from live axles about fifty years ago.
You might change it by replacing the dampers and/or springs, l think some say that better dampers improved things.
But you are always going to be limited by the Jimny being designed primarily to work best off road.

Thanks for the advise, can you send me a link or a suggestions of adjustable dampers that are available.

l fitted adjustable dampers to my Defender and they did make a difference to the ride.
However the Defender rides quite hard as standard, so there's room for making it more compliant.

Making the dampers softer improved the ride on my Land Rover but made the on-road manners worse, particularly on poor road surfaces.

The Jimny seems to be set up fairly soft as standard, l am not sure l would want it any more so.

The best solution would be to fit adjustable dampers that are adjustable from inside the vehicle, if they are available.

Then you can alter the settings easily depending on what you are doing in the vehicle. You can get them for the Land Rover but they are over £1,000
Not sure if they are available for the Jimny.

It depends on what aspects of the ride you want to improve. In my experience fitting aftermarket shocks is likely to stiffen the ride - which may be a good thing if you're trying to reduce body roll, but bad if you want to make it smoother over poor road surfaces.

Also be careful with fitting larger tyres and pay attention to the load rating. Lots of larger size tyres have a higher load rating with stiffer sidewalls, so will make the ride harsher.

wrote:

Hello all, i just bought the New 2021 Suzuki Jimny, however i didnt buy it for off-road use, still want to put little bigger tyres and probaby a 1.5 inch lift kit... However its a daily driver. Are there any suggestions to improve the comfort of the ride?

I am new to Jimny's etc i look forward to your advise

First thing to look at is tyre pressures. The dealers tends to over inflate the tyres. Make sure they are at or slightly below what the manufacturer recommends.

The Jimny however was designed as an off-roader, so on road comfort was a secondary consideration in the design of the suspension, and there won't be a lot that will improve the ride.

wrote:

Hello all, i just bought the New 2021 Suzuki Jimny, however i didnt buy it for off-road use, still want to put little bigger tyres and probaby a 1.5 inch lift kit... However its a daily driver. Are there any suggestions to improve the comfort of the ride?

I am new to Jimny's etc i look forward to your advise

What specifically don't you like about the ride? Figuring out exactly what is wrong will be the best of trying to address it.

saxj wrote:

wrote:

Hello all, i just bought the New 2021 Suzuki Jimny, however i didnt buy it for off-road use, still want to put little bigger tyres and probaby a 1.5 inch lift kit... However its a daily driver. Are there any suggestions to improve the comfort of the ride?

I am new to Jimny's etc i look forward to your advise

First thing to look at is tyre pressures. The dealers tends to over inflate the tyres. Make sure they are at or slightly below what the manufacturer recommends.

The Jimny however was designed as an off-roader, so on road comfort was a secondary consideration in the design of the suspension, and there won't be a lot that will improve the ride.

Absolutely agree on checking tyre pressure. All vehicles bought last 2 years were way over recommended pressures.

The gen4 was 2.3 bar (33psi) on delivery. What a miserable drive to the nearest garage. Took it down to 1.7 bar (25psi) and it is such a pleasure driving it now.

Definately check tyre pressure.

Sent from my SM-A505F using Tapatalk

Good call on checking the tyre pressures, ours were at 42psi all round and the first owner had never noticed or checked them.
Probably assuming that the dealer had checked it before delivery.
They had done 1,300 miles with those pressures. l imagine it was a bit bouncy.