Suzuki Club UK

Hi Everyone!!!

This is a bit of a late starting thread!!! Seeing as though I've had the zook for 4 years!
I thought I should start one anyway, seeing as though I'm always doing bits to it!!!

When I got it

Here's the beast when I got it!!!
I paid a whopping £700 for it, with a full years MOT (minus 2 days) and a years tax as well!!!

Bargain!
It was totally standard when I bought it, except for the white fibreglass hard top that came with it!

Washed and soft top put on

I gave it a good clean and some polish to get it all shiny... then put my fastback roof on it!
I had the roof from my previous SJ already... originally came from Monsoon soft tops for £170
Testing Time!

I thought as it was sunny I should get out there and test it... so after work me and my mate made a pallet ramp to drive up
It actually had some reasonable flex... shame about the crappy tyres though!
Here's my mate's SJ that we were testing it with...
Next comes Armour!

I'd had this SJ a month or two at this point, been offroading around... and decided that I needed some frontal protection.
I just went and got some standard bullbars. Popped down top Rhino Ray's in Brighton... he was in a good mood that day and I got the bullbars for £10!
Mind you, they weren't exactly in mint condition, but I thought I would just be crashing them into stuff anyway!!!
Here comes Autumn, so we need Tyres!!!

By this time it was getting a bit later in the year and starting to get colder and wetter!!!
I still had standard 195 road tyres on the zook, so thought I had better do something about it...
After scouring Ebay I managed to find some tyres from a jimny... same size and everything.
Insa Turbo Sahara / Greenway macho tread pattern. I would recommend this pattern to anyone after a tyre that's good on mud, and on tarmac!
I got the set of 4 tyres... £90 from lewes, which is about 15 miles away from me


Here comes an actual mod!

Snorkel!!! I seem to like driving in deep water, so I though a snorkel would be a good idea!
I got myself a length of aquarium water hose... it's about 45mm diameter, very durable, yet flexy enough to take a few tree hits.
One of my mates gave me a hand with the connector in the wing.
A B&Q pipe elbow, some filler and some paint later...
... but while I had the paint out I thought I would do the wheels as well!!!
Looks much better!
I attached the snorkel pipe but didn't get a piccy of it... until the next day, after a night out on my mates farm!!!
We had fun that night
You can see the snorkel pipe in this pic
To be continued after my lunch break

Back from lunch now...

Breakages!!!

Here is one of the not-wear-and-tear breakages!!! I was trying to push a tree branch out of the way with my windscreen and look what happened!!!
I managed to rip the wiper arm out of the windscreen surround! Ooops!
I went to a metal workshop nearby, helpfully recommended by turbo-tom, and got a nice long offcut bit. I then just rivetted it over both the windscreen wiper holes, drilled it, painted it and put the wipers back on!!! Theres a pic of it unpainted later...

MOT time!

Heres a picture pre-MOT time a couple of years ago!!! I didn't have an MOT at this point so missed out on driving around in the snow that year! :(
I had to take the bullbars off as I had knackered the mounts!!! (had a slight tree crash incident)
Also note the turquoise wheels I borrowed off a mate for the MOT... Mine were knackered!!!
Note that I hadn't put the other wiper arm back on yet
Post MOT Flex Test

Got this pic the afternoon following the MOT. Popped round to my mates after the test and he happened to have a big pile of hardcore outside where his parents were re-doing their garden! I couldn't resist... Check out the lovely turquoise wheels again
New Tyres!!!

Seeing as though I had only borrowed the horrible wheels off my mate, I went on the hunt for some new tyres! I noticed a guy in the garage across the road from my office had a Ford maverick with some off road tyres on it so I went over for a chat. Ended up on tyre talk, and it turned out he had just bought the new set of tyres and had his old ones for sale.

They are Kumho KL71s, size 235/75r15... Think it works out around 30"? Anyway, he wanted £150 for 5 tyres... 2 which were part worn... 3 basically brand new!
So I snapped them up



Here's what it looked like with the new tyres! ... and with some not-horrible colour wheels back on it!
Some off road action

Obviously cos I'd just got some new MTs I thought I had better take it out for a test run!!!
This picture I took at about 6am on the way home after the whole night out...
Did a few byways, and found some fords... was a good night!!!
More Flex!

I decided to make a ramp and drive up it... Just to get a few poser snaps!
Prizes for if you can guess the standard SJ part I borrowed for the snorkel

Also see the nice lack of paint on the bullbars... they are getting a bit battered by this time!
Piccadilly Wood

After a great day out at the Piccadilly Wood off road site with "Jonalong" from difflock, here's a very muddy version of me fixing my throttle cable!!!
Nothing serious, just the cable clamp had broken off the end of the throttle cable... I borrowed the choke cable one for the drive back
New Bumper!

Next on the list was a new front bumper! I had absolutely annihilated the bullbars by this point!!! I was reversing past a steel post, caught the edge of the bullbars and managed to bend them down forward to about 45 degrees
I "fixed" it by ramming a bit concrete block until they were at the right angle again, but the bullbar was FUBAR by then!

I got the bumper for £170 from a nice chap from difflock... I liked it because of a) the price and b) the looks. I always liked the calmini bumpers, and this one is virtually identical to the C3 bumper then make... and the offroad armoury bumper!

Here's the winch bumper... the fairlead hole has the number plate over it in this picture though
here's the Calmini bumper...



off road armoury one

Next bit! (Had to swap computers to get camera pics)

Rrrrrright....
The next lot isn't really in any particular order... I just went around the truck getting pic of stuff I'd already done!!!

Mods

Here we go!

Free wheeling hubs

I first got these after a trip to slindon!!! I ended up killing my drivers side CV joint... was stuck in the petrol station for 3 hours
I got my mate to bring me down to free wheeling hubs... put them on in the petrol station car park and drove home!
I ended up buying them off him for £50, as they are SO useful for long distance!!! I get about 30mpg on the motorway with these on.
Heavy Duty Rear bumper and LED light clusters

This is kind of 2 different mods, but I only have a picture of the LED lights in the new bumper.
basically the original SJ lights are rubbish, as the earth bar on the back of them always corrodes away to nothingness - leaving you with disco lights!!!

I used to work at a Forklift truck company, so I got hold of two of these light clusters from a Hyster forklift!!!
The are 12v, submersible, and have rear, stop and indicator lights built in!!!
The only problem is, I broke one when I reversed into a bank... When I had them on the standard bumper they stuck out a bit...
Now they are in the newer bumper they are well recessed!!!
I have to get another and the are £65 per cluster!
I guess they do have a 4 year warranty though!

The standard rear bumper I had on gradually got more and more broken... Eventually it was mainly just held on with 2 bolts going down through the top and into the number plate light mounts
I decided to get a new bumper... found one of these on ebay from "nofearzuks" for £100... The standard bumper he was selling had round holes for landrover lights, but he agreed to make me one with the recessed box section instead!

The other 2 small lights are for fog and reverse... think the were about £4 each from ebay
Front sidelights/indicators

Where I've taken the bumper off i've obviously lost the standard side lights and indicators. So I got these LED ones from ebay... You may notice they are the same as the fog/reverse lights on the back... Just in white and orange. I've just attached them to the grille with bolts and washers!
Suspension Lift

Well you may have noticed in the new tyres picture that I had some terrible shackles on there!!!
I traded a set of awful 3" lift shackles with my mate matt aaaaages ago... I think I traded them for some beers or something

When I put the tyres on, first off they rubbed on the arches and the bumper. Bumper was an easy fix for the angle grinder
Arches were slightly different. So I put the 3" shackles on just as a temporary measure to clear the tyres!
That lifted it up OK, but then I noticed that the tyres rubbed on the springs on full lock...

Rrrrrigh what can I do about it then... So back to ebay I went. Found a guy local to me selling some. They didn't sell as he refused to post... so I got the spacers (and a full exhaust while I was there) off him for £30 for the lot!!!

Here's a pic showing the offending shackles... This is a rear one, and I still have them on the rear cos I have yet to buy more add-a-leafs...
They're HUGE! The back one's aren't so bad because a) there's less weight on the back and b) by the time you get stuck on the rear shackles you're normally past the obstacle anyway!

I acquired a couple of add-a-leaf springs! Thanks to mudinstructor from difflock!
So I put the add-a-leafs in but couldn't find my original shackles, so I altered the stupid lift ones a bit!

Here's the result, much better!

Add a leaves... you can't really see them now cos the leaves are all muddy
New shackles:
Oh yeah I polybushed it all as well while I was doing it

Interior

I've made a few mods to the interior while I've been at it...
Mudinstructor also sorted my out a collection of bits and bobs... among which I found a dash gauge panel!
It fits over the cubbyhole next to the samurai clock. In itI have put a water temp (super important ) and a voltage gauge.
I also got fed up of all my tools and recovery equipment bouncing around in the back!
So I popped down to my local army surplus shop and got some nice big ammo boxes!
They are bolted into the floor in the back, so don't go anywhere!
This way, the tools are easy to get at from the front, and the strops and rope are easy to get to from the back.
So I don't have to drag muddy ropes through the car
Excuse the lack of tailgate cover and the wires hanging out!
SU Carb

This is probably the best mod I have done to the Samurai so far!!!
When I got the SJ it had a standard aisin carb on it which, rather predictably, broke.
The auto choke broke so it was doing the usual idle at 3000rpm, either that or cutting out when you take your foot off the pedal!
Pain in the arse!

So I thought it would be a good investment to get an SU carb (after reading A LOT about the carbs themselves, and about the conversion). I bought my SU from ebay... some guy had just ultrasonically cleaned it and rebuilt it... I got it for £53

I had already decided that carb adapters are rubbish, and went to Rhino ray for one of his adapted manifolds... cost £120 + my old manifold, but by god is it worth it!!!! It now works perfectly, all the time!
(Except when I drowned it in slindon)
To show how good the carb is, it ran my engine on 3 cylinders for about 6 months.... and I was still using it as my daily drive to work

1600 engine

Theres not a huge amount to say about this one!!! My 1300 was knackered, so I used ebay (again) and found myself a vitara 8v engine for £100, went and picked it up the next day!!!

Took me ages to put it in, mainly cos I'm lazy! I used the no adapter plate method, I don't see the point in spending £45 on something you don't really need

I love the engine, and apart from busting the sump gasket, it's been pretty good!
One random thing is, after putting the 1600 engine in, the gearbox appeared to be about an inch further forward!!!
So I got a prop spacer and put it on the transfer > gearbox prop... like so:

Good Read

... and here's a few poser pics of what it's like at the minute:

(Ignore the big dents )
More to come!
Winches!
...and bucket seats

twiss wrote:Back from lunch now...

I decided to make a ramp and drive up it... Just to get a few poser snaps!
Prizes for if you can guess the standard SJ part I borrowed for the snorkel

looks like the bit of pipe that goes from the airbox to near the exhaust manifold




oh and good right up too

Close, but no!!!
It goes out of the airbox and up the inside of the drivers side wing

No prize for you

ahha i dont know it was worth a bash

Don't worry tom, as a runner-up prize, you get to keep the bit of pipe if you want!!!

nah im good , you can save your petrol rather then driving to me

and aways i gotta enough crap in the garage

not including the sj