I'm going to paste in the content of my new member's introduction post for context:
Hi, Tommo from North Devon here.
I previously owned a '99 Jimny which could not be cured of a coolant drinking problem, and a Discovery 2 which ate my wallet followed by a few of my less-important organs.
Kicked off my 2024 New Years resolution to not waste money on crap cars by picking up this lovely little 1995 SJ413 for a grand, down in deepest darkest Cornwall. It's been sat for a few months feeling sorry for itself and was sold as spares and repairs with some MOT until the 19th of this month.
Plenty of patches and welding in evidence on the underside of the body, we shall see what horrors some poking around reveal. The outside of the body looks pretty good, although god only knows what's under the plastic sill trims.
The chassis seems ok in comparison though, and (hopefully) certainly better than my Discovery, which i had to saw in half shortly after purchasing.
Engine wise, she starts with gusto, but won't run for more than a couple of seconds before conking out. I'd assume a fuel issue. (These ones are early FI right? I'm used to either carbs or diesels so this will be a learning experience)
The OEM airbox has been replaced with a much cooler wireless bluetooth K&N style filter that's rolling around in the passenger footwell for some reason. Technology, eh?
The seats are really nice and must be from something else entirely, which is kind of nice, but I'm 6'1" and it's something of a magic trick to get behind the wheel.
Stevie Wonder and Helen Keller collaborated on the wiring, which is in equal parts amazing and terrifying.
I'm hoping to slowly bring it around, and with a bit of luck there might be a diamond in there somewhere.
Anyway, I'd love to go on but the mrs is angry at me for some reason. Can't think why.
I've been working today, but I went in early and stayed late for a couple of hours to have a dig.
The first order of business, after getting it into the nice dry workshop, was to wind up a particularly gormless coworker (Lisa is his mother's name, it's a long-running joke).
My sensible car also has a homage in her honour
I'd like to show you a photo of his response when he saw it, but this seems to be a family forum, so instead here's a photo of my dog dressed as a fisherman:
Next step was to throw a battery charger at it and let it gently cook all day, and then after work I had a poke to see If I could get to the bottom of why it wasn't running.
The ad said 'Not starting right, will need to be towed away'. You could bump the key and It would catch for a second and sometimes idle, but wouldn't rev or keep going at all. If you gave it a bit of starting fluid it fired right up, and sounds sweet, so I figured fuel might not be getting to the throttle body.
The first obstacle was figuring out which pipe was the fuel feed from the pump, because the absolute clusterf*** of pipes and hoses surrounding the throttle body and manifold, this must have had the EGR disconnected at some point because there's vacuum lines with bolts stuffed in them laying absolutely everywhere.
- A quick question for the gurus on here, does the G13BA have a mechanical pump in the side of the block as well as the electric one in the tank? I couldn't really make heads or tails of the mess of hoses.
The in-tank fuel pump ran as expected though and sounded good, and pulling the feed line off the throttle body and cycling the pump yielded some interesting results:
Yeah, I guess that'd probably cause the engine to not run.
The next line of thought was that there's probably water getting into the fuel tank somehow, perhaps it's got a hole rusted in the top or a bad sender unit gasket, etc.
I decided to drop the tank and pour it out in any case, to see what was inside and to start fresh with good fuel. This thing must have been talking to my other Suzuki, an early SV650, as just a few days ago I had the same problem with water in the fuel.
Tipping the tank out into a 20l container yielded this (the leaves are external) :
That's a lot of water, but at least there's no evidence of rust or other detritus swimming about in it. The fuel tank itself seems to be in pretty good nick, a few bare rusty bits on top and on the seams, but not bad for 28 years old.
The bottom half is covered, along with the rest of the chassis, the running gear and the rest of the underside of the car, with some sort of sticky black underseal stuff (the mark of an honest motor as i'm sure you all know). We'll see what horrors it's hiding in the future I'm sure.
I hit the bare bits of the tank with a wire brush and some red oxide primer just to give it a fighting chance. Before it goes back in I think I'm gong to wash it out a few times with fresh fuel as there's definitely some liquid in there that I couldn't tip out of the filler neck.
While I think about it, the advert also said that the car had just had new fuel lines, among other things. I've not seen any evidence of that on my travels under the car, but there were a lot of sad perished looking looking rubber hoses, cut and joined and joined again, and a LOT of jubilee clips.
The fuel neck breather hose seems to have been replaced with what I can only assume is the kind of gas hose you find on a portable BBQ, which apparently doesn't play nice with unleaded:
I'm hoping to pick up some decent hose after work tomorrow if I get time and plumb the tank back in properly after a good rinse out and a quick blow over with some black paint, and we might see if it'll start and run properly. Maybe even drive, who knows. This is how it's sat at the moment, looking sad for itself but out of the rain and cold at least:
I'd like to leave you some photos of the wiring situation that I'll need to address in the very near future, to whet your appetites:
That's the isolator switch from what I assume is some sort of heavy equipment, the original key switch is destroyed and there's a smaller one bodged into the dashboard so that if you crash the keys become part of your knee cartilage. I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that there's some kind of substantial parasitic drain on the battery without that, despite the car only having about 8 wires in it.
From under the bonnet, the headlights have been wired using large spade terminals for some reason and could very easily double as firestarters if those uninsulated terminals were to touch:
And some other random part of the loom that isn't wrapped up and is free to rub on the starter motor and the steering shaft, feat. electrical tape and badly crimped connectors.
I'd also like to point out the exhaust system, which is made of random bits interlaced with flexible pipe, hanging off the chassis with strips of conveyor belt, and about 6 inches too low. The hump that's supposed to clear the rear axle is about 6 inches behind the rear axle as well. I think this might be a complete new exhaust job but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
I disocvered some other fairly horrific bodges which I'll share in the near future. The poor lass I bought this from seemed really genuine, I wonder if someone saw her coming when she bought it and ran off with her money. She did seem sad to see it go, though.
I'll catch you in the near future for more reasons why my mrs was probably right and I'm an idiot.
that’s a lot of water, no wonder she didn’t run.
I’ll dig one out.
) but because that damn exhaust hangs so low I had to give it a miss. 
She named the Land Rover Dorothy, so maybe the SJ got off lightly...