Vitara 1.6 cuts out

Since you do have A fully charged battery and also you do receive fuel smell after crank start and the car wont start,either you do have an Ignition fault means not giving the spark,advice remove the spark plugs and check whether are wet with fuel,see whether are black,if so change them and before start check by leaving an HT lead off a spark and use one of the old ones connected to the HT lead and earthed to the engine,ask somebody to start the engine checking for any spark comes out. If yes then put the HT lead back to the new spark on the engine and try. If ther is not any spark,then you have to go backwards from the HT leads to distributor,Rotor Arm,Electronic igniter,Coil if is fitted,Fuse and relay. Good Luck.

You did not specify which engine your Vitara has, the 4 or 6 cylinder, so here are both layouts. For front of vehicle, read ' side of engine where pulleys are'. If your distributor layout is different, locate the position of #1 wire with the engine at TDC compression and follow the firing order around the cap in a clockwise direction:-

check your radiador fluid
your fan also might not be working eficiently
might be good to put some radiador fluid

camshaft sensor need repalcing, simple fix is, have a bottle water with u, when engine cut out pour slowly some water on top of engine where the sensor is located, it cool down fast then u can start again and continue drive until it too hot again,
sensor is located on top of engine close to firewall in the middle.

You could have 2 problems. The hard start in the AM could be a bad fuel accumulator and or check valve in the fuel pump. The engine cutting out could be a bad idle stabilization valve, dirty throttle body and housing or a bad 02 sensor, could also be just a CO adjustment. Where are you located?

Check first the wire connections to your ignition unit. Are they properly plugged? If all wires are good, try to measure the voltage from one of the wires to the ignition unit while the ignition key is in "on" position. If there's no voltage, have someone check your ECM. If there's a good voltage reading, try replacing your ignition unit with a good one.

Try replacing the fuel filter.

I was having the same problem. None of the explanations actually helped. Finally, a friendly mechanic recommended to me that there is an aftermarket splash guard that can be fitted on just inside the the front wheel that kept the water from splashing onto the distributer, etc. This worked like a charm. I'm having the same problem with another Jetta now, but can't find where to buy the spash guard. My friendly mechanic doesn't remember. But this is definitely the answer.

Girlfriend's 99 Polo had same issue. In fact it recurred yesterday! Anyway, am not expert, but it seems to be due to deposits building up inside distributor cap area and then getting damp in wet conditions, causing shorting of ignition 'signals'. Found solution is to clean inside cap every 6 to 12 months with a cloth and IPA (or water if you're stuck - just make sure to dry it properly!) and the problem goes away. Silly thing about her Polo is that there's no decent splashguard to protect the engine area from splashes from puddles etc. I've lost all respect for VW coz of the amount of silly things that have gone wrong with her car...! Hope this helps - sounds to me like it's exactly the same problem.

check spark plug gaps are set correctly and that leads are in correct order if you took all leads off at same time its easy to mess up just one or two