My Nissan Livina Geniss - Strut Brace and Lower Tie Bars

One of my biggest complaints about the Nissan is that in the designing of the car, Nissan seems to have concentrated on trying to bring in as many MPV features into the car that they even brought in the wallow and soft suspension from the larger form factor MPV into this small car too. As a result, bone stock, the Nissan Livina Geniss rocks like a boat being tossed about in a tidal wave as soon as you hit a bump. Even a small one. In speed bump happy China, this made for an extremely bouncy ride which I personally dislike intensely. If I wanted a bouncy ride, I might as well take public transport.

This meant I had to retune the suspension completely. The first part I did was to brace up the chassis to reduce the body roll from bumps and corners. This is done by the addition of a strut brace that holds the two front shock absorbers together under the bonnet. At the time when I made this change, the Nissan Livina Geniss was so new that no parts were available at all. Fortunately, some experimentation found that the Nissan Sylphy (Blue Bird) also had the same dimensions and the aluminium alloy strut brace made for the Slyphy fitted my Livina Geniss perfectly. Hallelujah for platform sharing. Upon fitting the strut brace, the car's handling improved dramatically. Cornering was noticeably flatter than before and the car handled the bumps better by holding firm.



However, I was not finished. I found with the help of some helpful friends, that a Hong Kong company was open to producing the lower tie bars for my Nissan Livina Geniss if there was enough pre-orders for them to kick off production. Happily, I placed my order and waited. The aluminium alloy lower tie bars came in a pair and were installed beneath the car. One slightly up front behind the front axle and the second slightly ahead of the rear axle.






Sorry about the car being a little dirty underneath. These pictures were taken after the modifications were run for more than 20,000 km. The addition of the lower tie bars added a little bit more stability to the car although the effect was less marked compared to the initial addition of the strut braces. The cornering became slightly sharper and the body roll became virtually non-existant. The Nissan's handling and precision of steering was a complete change from the original stock condition.

The lower tie bars and strut brace, paired up with a change in shock absorbers and springs, made the Nissan Livina Geniss a joy to drive in city traffic, especially if you love to weave in and out.