87 Suzuki Samurai

[DETN8R]

Thanks Jim! I'll give that a try!

[DETN8R]

Haven't really gotten much done. The new job keeps me pretty occupied. As well as my 10 month old son and 4yr old daughter.


I noticed some cracks under the passenger seat starting to form a couple of weeks ago. I drilled some holes at the ends of the cracks to keep them from growing.








There are a couple of things I feel contributed to this.
Number 1 - Thirty Year Old Truck
Number 2 - Previous owner installed pipe flange seat risers
Number 3 - Sidekick Seat swap


I used my harbor freight welder to patch up the cracks. It went surprisingly well.








I sprayed some paint over it and on the underside of the tub and called it finished.





If I see the cracks opening or new ones forming I'll add some more metal underneath the seat mounts/sliders.


I've been noticing a bit of vibration recently as well. It became especially evident between 15-20mph recently. I had chalked this up to the new tires.
I changed my transmission oil.
I inspected the transmission mount.


And I glanced over at the rear drive shaft and noticed a shiny spot.





My u-joint was completely destroyed!





I've continued to be impressed by this vehicle. Even with this completely destroyed U-Joint the Samurai did 70mph+! The vibration was hardly noticeably above 30mph.


The flanges are pretty well ground in one the forward direction. The remaining u-joint held together well enough to keep my going forward.


I dropped it off at Bill Englewood Driveshaft and he was able to get the flanges swapped out and I had my driveshaft back the next day.







I'm still trying to battle noise inside the Samurai. I picked up some Boom Mat to put in some key areas of the tub to see if it helps. I'll keep you all posted!

[DETN8R]

I've been battling road noise in the Samurai. I thought that getting the hard top would get the noise down to what I'd consider a reasonable level for the road trips I take with the family.


I started out with purchasing an 8 pack of some 12x12 DEI Boom Mat. DEI states that 100% coverage isn't necessary and that 25%-50% should yeild the same results.
I started by removing the seats and all the carpet. I cleaned the tub of the Samurai with simple green and paper towels.


I put one full sheet under each front seat and in each front floor pan. I put 2.5 sheets underneath the rear seat. I split one sheet and put half on each side of the transmission tunnel.














I reinstalled the carpet and drove it for a couple of days. This small amount of boom mat yielded some small but noticable results.
Enough that I felt justified to order another 8 pack of boom mat as well as DEI's Under Carpet Light. A 48"x70" sheet.


I added some more boom mat to each firewall, the top of the transmission tunnel beneath the heaterbox. I added some to the vertical surfaces above each wheel.
I split one sheet between both wheel wells. During this time my daughter was playing with my phone so I did not get many pictures of the added boom mat.
I started cutting the Under Carpet lite, focusing on the front of the samurai. I spend more time in here than my family since I drive it daily.





I placed a full sheet inside each door.

[DETN8R]

My daughter also helped me remove the seats this time around. Afterwards she hung around to play on my phone and keep me from taking pictures.





I used some cardboard to make a template for the transmission tunnel.










I tried to completely enclose the tranmission/transfercase tunnel with the undercarpert lite.








I had a nice piece leftover that almost covered the rear of the samurai underneath the rear seat so I begin reinstalling the carpet.










After all this work, which wasn't much, this has yielded some significant results. I'm pretty happy with it.


I'm beginning to suspect some more transmission problems. I've been hearing a whine that goes away whenever I press in the clutch. I figured this was the throwout bearing.
Some more knowledgeable folks have said that it's the input bearing so I believe I may be having louder than usual transmission noise.
My EGR Failure code has also been ever present for the last few weeks. I picked up another head because I suspect my headgasket may be failing too. Sweet smelling exhaust...





While I had the doors taken apart I decided to try swapping in the window channel from the same 4dr sidekick from the junkyard that I got the head from. It's ok.

[Jim]

You and your daughter have been busy!

When is the trans coming out? Wait for warmer weather?

[DETN8R]

I'm not really sure. I was lucky enough that someone gave me some new transmission bearings back in August. Though when it comes to tearing into stuff that deep I'm a complete noob. Someone was selling one for $140 a couple weeks ago. I may end up just buying another one.

[JandDGreens]

Sure is looking sharp!! Nice work.

[DETN8R]

I've got a bit of an update. I was very tentative about going to Easter Jeep Safari this year but I wanted to get some things done just in case.






I was never satisfied with the way I mounted the power steering reservoir.













I had it mounted above the drivers side fender in front of the air intake. after thinking about it for some time I decided to mount it on the radiator above the power steering box. Unfortunately this meant that I needed to relocate the coolant reservoir/overflow bottle. I don't like committing to mods (in case they don't work) and I love to have options. So I ordered another drivers side radiator mount from Tony with Highway 83 Suzuki.






I cut off the radiator clip and drilled a 1/4" hole through an already existing hole in the metal welded to the back of the radiator clip from the mount. This holed lined up nicely with a hole on the passenger side radiator mount, allowing me to simply bolt this clip to the radiator mount. I attached my coolant reservoir and ran a longer line from the top of the radiator and I was done!



























With the area above the power steering box freed up I was able to begin making a simple bracket to attach the power steering fluid reservoir.


I used a 3/4"x1/8" piece of aluminum flat stock to attach the reservoir to existing holes in the drivers side radiator mount.













I ran new lines from the bottom of the reservoir to the power steering box and a new line from the return of the pump. I used some spiral wrap around the hoses to keep them from kinking and collapsing by keeping even pressure all around the hoses. This did not work so well when I went to MOAB.













The new mount fit pretty nice with the air box installed.













Some time passed before I finally committed to going to Moab. Once we made plans to go I knew I need to get some things done.






When I got the hard top I had to lose the roof rack and my CB Antenna mount. I was skeptical about getting the roof rack back on with the hard top before heading out so I used my time to wrap up other lose ends. My son helped me fabricate a new CB Antenna mount days before heading out. I used some angle iron to make the mount bolt to the old tire carrier mounts.













I used the bandsaw to trim the excess material and make it look sleek.













I painted it black with some bedliner. (No Pic at the moment)






Somehow I had KINKED the hose for the windshield wiper fluid again! I fixed this before heading out and modifying the roof rack to fit with the hard top.

















I decided to try using some sugru to seal some holes in the hard top. It worked pretty well. I was afraid it would not cure next to the (vulcanized?) rubber seals on the hard top but it did.













I had an idea to raise the rear of the roof rack enough to clear the rear piece of the hard top, which was the reason I removed the roof rack. I had to modify the windshield bracket supports to clear the front piece of the hard top. To raise the rear of the roof rack I drilled one hole on each side to put the u-bolts that support the roof rack higher than the original position. This worked quite well!













I'll post another update detailing the trip to Moab soon!

[DETN8R]

With the roof rack mounted it was time to get packing. Like last year we took the car as well. So we were able to split all the gear between the two vehicles.


With the vehicles packed we headed out LATE for Moab/Grand Junction.





To supplement the road communications I purchased a couple of Baofeng UV-5R's for the trip. One for the Samurai and one for Abby's car so that we could keep in touch.





We stayed at Abby's parents in Grand Junction since we got in so late (1AM).


The next day we grabbed some lunch before heading out to Moab. I left the doors and rear glass at Abby's parents because the weather was warm enough. As soon as we got into Moab I started having trouble shifting. I asked my nephew to drive the Samurai to the gas pump and he was able to back out of the parking spot but could not get it back into 1st.


We went to Kane Creek campground and got a site. After getting camp set up and dinner going me and my nephew Jason got to swapping out the clutch cable with a spare so that we could go wheel Day Canyon with EJS in the morning.
















We woke up the next morning and begin heading to the meeting spot for the EJS group running Day Canyon. I guess we were running late because we never saw the group. But on the way to the meeting spot the Samurai was making a squealing noise. We popped the hood and saw that power steering fluid was leaking out of the reservoir. We had to loosen the radiator support when we swapped out the clutch cable and must have caused the power steering hose to kink and fluid started spilling out. This was an easy fix but annoying.


With the group nowhere to be found we decided to the run the trail ourselves.









Moab is beautiful and we enjoyed the trail.






Back in camp the kids were having fun playing in all of the dirt at Kane Creek campground.












We returned Easter Sunday, once again running extremely late. We had missed the raffle and all the vendors at EJS but it was a fun trip none the less.






In other news. I've acquired some leaf springs.


I got a set of stock YJ leafs from someone on craigslist a couple months ago.





I also picked up some Old Man Emu 2" HD springs as well.





I don't have the bracketry to run the YJ's but I think I could easily run the OME springs. I'd just need some longer shocks.


I've noticed some pretty bad rust on the exterior of the body underneath the passenger rear fender brackets. I'm almost committed to attempting the virtual lift.

[DETN8R]

Another update!


After MOAB my brakes started grinding pretty bad. This was out of nowhere but not completely unexpected since I have not had to do the brakes since I bought the Samurai in 2015. The rear drum brakes went easy enough. Probably the easiest drum brake job I've ever done.
The front's were a little harder. I had to drive to two separate auto parts stores to get the pads and the shoes. When I got the tires off and examined one the rotors the passenger side was pretty horrible. Probably the worst rotor I've ever seen.








I could not find rotors in stock anywhere in town. Finally I gave in and started calling brake shops to get them turned. I got them turned at PepBoys downtown.
Looked way better after having them turned.





I knew I'd be doing some extensive mods to the Samurai this year. I started with remounting my turn signals inside the grill and removing the portion of the crossmember that extended from the frame to in front of the tires. I used a pipe cutter to get a straight cut. My son helped out!











With that done I decided it was finally time to remove the rear fender flare mounts. One of them was rusted pretty bad and I needed to assess any rust on the body.











I was not happy about this.... I expected some surface rust maybe but not gaping holes. This isn't the worst rusted samurai that I've seen but this one was mine.


I covered the rust with some spraypaint for a week while I thought it over....

[DETN8R]

Finally I said screw it.
I picked up some trailer fenders from the trailer supply store in town. I'd go with the virtual lift route.





I picked up a sheet metal nibbler that attaches to my drill, some more sheet metal, a roll on raptor liner kit and committed to completing the drivers side fender first because I'm still not sure how I want to work around the gas filler hose.








Removing the boom mat was a bit of a pain. I found that by balling it up I could stick it to the remaining boom mat on the body and pull it free.








The Samurai is first and foremost my family vehicle. I would need to notch the fender to clear the rear seat.





I busted out my harbor freight welder and cut some sheet metal and got to work.











I used some seam sealer to cover the gaps and seal out the elements. I used some bondo to to fill in my horrible sheet metal welding skills. The Samurai body is PAPER THIN! and I'm not the best welder. I used a orbital sander to smooth the bondo out.





At first I was planning on just mixing up a small amount of the raptor liner so that I could save it. After a while I figured that I would paint the lower part of the drivers side door too.

[DETN8R]

I sprayed some adhesion promoter on the bare metal parts and rolled on the raptor liner. I couldn't be happier with the results and I can't wait to get the other side done.











The carpet still mostly fits in the back of the Samurai, the seat still fits. The seatbelt is pretty tight between the wheel well and the seat but still works fine.


Now, I'm driving around with the drivers side done and the passenger side, with the worst rust is still how it was. I'm a little nervous to work around the gas filler and tank but I'll tackle it in a week or two. Not sure when I'll get the front done.

[DETN8R]

One Year Later: Still haven't done the other side. I've done tons of other stuff in the meantime but not the fender. I'm getting serious this year. I picked up a millermatic 211 and intend to make some decent mods. I'll try to post an update soon.

[DETN8R]

I'll see if I can get the old images working soon but in the meantime I'll give a run down of what I've done to the Samurai since my last updates. Glad to be back on this forum!

I managed to come across some 85 4Runner Axles with 4.88 Gears, TruTrack Lockers and High Steer
Toyota Drive Shafts - Shortened in the Rear - Lengthened Up Front.
Installed YJ Leaf Springs all around
6.4 to 1 Gears in the transfer case with a ZOR Cradle
35" Bald Tires!

[speedkills]

What a beast! The breakover angle on that is nuts.

[DETN8R]

speedkills previously posted:

[Jim]

While there is always something that could be tended / fixed / upgraded, is it trail ready (enough) as-is?

[DETN8R]

Jim previously posted:

[Schmitty]

Sammy's are rad. Can't wait to see what you do with it!

[DETN8R]

Thanks! Yeah. I'm planning on heading out to the Easter Jeep Safari again this year. My family has made that a yearly tradition. I love driving my Samurai around at a Jeep event. (I've got tons of love for Jeeps still)

I should mention the old pictures of this build thread. I've got backups but it looks like I've lost the domain name they were hosted under. I'll look at creating a gallery for them. My hope was to just upload them in the same web address and the old images would just start working again but it's looking like I wont be able to do that until I get the domain again.