...no, not really. No offense to the previous owner, but this Suzuki Wagon R is actually a bit dirty from months out in the elements, the car, inside and out, didn’t look a day cleaned since I sold it.

The once bright white front two Advan Rally wheels were black from brake dust and the Bridgestone Nextry front tires are worn beyond safe usage. The rears, luckily, have a fair amount of tread and are still usable. Though they are inappropriately sized, off they go onto my Alto Works.

I thought I could salvage the second set of wheels, Maruka Service 14” wheels and winter tires, and put them on the car. It turns out that they weren’t rotated at all properly, so that two are extremely, dangerously worn and two are in good shape. So if I plan on driving the car to any degree safely, I’ll need to replace at least two tires. For now, I put them on the car and will just drive on them carefully out of the rain.

Mechanically, the car seems pretty good. The previous owner did proper fluid and air filter changes with receipts to prove it. The front brake pads are pretty worn down, so those will also have to be replaced eventually.

Overall, not the worst condition car I could pick up, but arguably less of a value than I previously considered. However, the biggest issue is that the shaken is up pretty soon, so if I am going to renew it for service, a few things will need to be done. The question is now, should I fix the sensor issues and renew the shaken, potentially costing me over 150,000 yen ($1350 USD)? If I were to fix it up, it’d be unlikely for it to sell for any reasonable amount of money and I definitely don’t need a third car to tool around in. On the other hand, I could just swap parts off of it and give it to my other friend who has a similar model car… then just scrap this thing. It would be a bit of a waste, frankly, but that would be a better option than just letting it sit at my friend’s garage or paying taxes on it next April.

Soon after bringing it home, my friend told me he is going to go back to stock on his newer MH21 Wagon R, which is currently riding on coilovers. He actually donated me his lowered front suspension springs and stock struts to my MC22 Wagon R early last year. (It may not look like it, but my Wagon R is actually “lowered”.) The plan is to swap the struts over to his MH21, bringing it back to stock. Then put stock struts and springs back over to my Wagon R. Eventually, we’ll try out the coil overs on my Alto. I’m honestly not sure how that will work out, but let’s give it a shot later, shall we?

I’m really glad I didn’t end up trashing the stock struts. We found these cast off in a random bin at my friend’s garage.

Pulling the simple front struts on the Wagon R is a really easy task. There are only two bolts holding the top of the strut, two connecting it to the control arm, one screw for the ABS line, and one clip for the brake hose.

My friend was running some decent Sport-Service RSR Basic Coilovers and they also came out just as easily.

After doing this about half a dozen times, we were able to pull out his front springs quickly, going back to boring stock height on his car.

The rear shocks were part of the RSR Basic suspension set and also included height adjustable rear perches. Two bolts removed were the only two needed for each strut and the rear springs and perches were replaced easily.

We pulled those 14” Maruka Service wheels off and threw on my co-worker’s old Suzuki steel wheels, since it will be sitting around for awhile and we don’t want to damage the existing, partially usable rubber. Now my Wagon R has been raised back up, it really looks pedestrian now. Sigh. Not exactly the most exciting mode of transportation, is it?