mhiscox
Expedition Leader
So the way I figure it, if Scott suggest a thread, it's worth a thread.
Seriously, this is one of the nicer Samurais around . . . he said humbly
.No offense to the wheelers who put 37s and an exocage onto a Sami, but those mods really limit the flexibility of what can be a pretty useful multipurpose vehicle. The Samurai makes a fine platform for a serious wheeler if you need one, but twenty years after production stopped, it actually seems easier to find a full-on crawler than a relatively unmolested version that's good for combined street and trail use.
Here's the specimen in question: it's a 1992 Samurai JL soft top with about 106K miles. I was fortunate to get this after it had spent much of its life being towed behind a motorhome, so it wasn't as worn out as it would have been if the miles had all been powered.
Another advantage is that the 1990s-on had a taller fifth gear that made them more practical for highway travel, and 1992s got a throttle-bodied fuel injected engine that improved driveablility and increased power (by a whole 6 hp).
Here's a picture of the mighty 1.3 liter Samurai I-4, rated at a whopping 66 horsepower. Nice engine, though; it revs nicely and is reasonably smooth. Both are good traits since the engine has to be wrapped pretty tight for a freeway cruise:
My goal was to do make modifications that preserved the basic usefulness of the trucklette as an errand runner, the toad for my Sprinter, and a useful light duty off-roader. This turned out to be pretty simple to do and, while not cheap, the prices for Samurai stuff is a lot lower than for full-sized trucks.
The front of the truck has a useful brush guard that's an excellent mounting point for all manner of stuff. I've got Hella 500 driving lights, a pair of projector fog lights and a Hi-Lift jack.
The best thing is that we created mounting points on the brush guard mount to quickly mount the Samurai's implausibly small and simple tow bar.
Putting it on and taking it off requires nothing more than pulling two hairpin clips and two hitch pins. It's amazingly simple, and the very light weight of the Samurai makes it a joy to tow. Works just fine on my Sprinter, and that's with no brakes for the Sami. (In fact, the biggest issue is--and I am not kidding--forgetting that you're towing it.)
Along the sides are bolt-on rock sliders, and on the rear, there's a Calmini bumper attachment that works in combination with the stock bumper, providing a tow ball mount and some extra protection. The truck is running 29" (215/75x15) Bridgestone Dueler mud-terrains. They've been a good choice, handing securely enough on the highway and not too noisy. FWIW, I am totally convinced that 29s are the perfect size for the Samurai and that going much bigger gives up too much practicality. I'm sure others might disagree, but I think 29s or thereabouts are the key to keeping the vehicle workable for daily use.
Speaking of which . . . the stock Samurai fuel tank is 10 gallons and it has a pessimistic fuel gauge, so that when you went to the gas station with the needle on empty, you were lucky to get seven gallons in. Changing to the Petroworks 15 gallon fuel tank produced a big gain in practicality, leading to about half as many fillups. The tank also has the advantage of being translucent, so you can tell exactly how much gas you have just by looking at it, thus mitigating the inaccuracy in the stock fuel gauge. Petroworks also gives you a mounting system that pretty much serves as a skidplate for the rear.
There's also a frame mounted front skidplate. It's very heavy and heavy-duty, looking more like it belongs on a Hummer. Undoubtedly unnecessary until, I suppose, you hit the one rock that proves you were a genius to bolt it on.
I said this before in other threads, and I'll say it again here . . . the key to having a Samurai that's tolerable for daily use is to swap out the stock suspension. There's about a dozen choices for how to do this, but I believe the best investment for a truck that sees more pavement than trail, but still needs to be good on dirt and gravel, is to go for a 2-3 inch lift using the same geometry as stock. There's lots of ways to change things around a little (with longer springs) or a lot (even switching to coils if you want to throw a lot of money at it), but putting on the Old Man Emu springs with the matched Nitrocharger shocks was very cost-effective for me.
The change in shocks and springs was like night and day. Before the change, the Sami crashed into every hole then crashed back out. Seemed like a kidney belt might be in order. With the suspension change, it's a completely tolerable ride on pavement and I am very pleased with the compliance over ruts and, especially, on washboard.
BTW, if the exhaust and muffler look weird, they should. They're not stock . . . the old one wore out and it was simpler just to make up a new system than source the stock pieces.
The interior has a few useful add-ons, the best of which was the gimbaled RAM "beverage holder" to the right of the shift lever; there are no stock cupholders in a Samurai. There's a windshield-mounted GPS, an XM Snap satellite receiver (cool for being portable), a Tiny Tach tachometer, and an amazing Walmart DVD/SD/USB/CD/AUX/Bluetooth head end with a built in screen to watch movies on in vidid three-inch splendor . . . amazing because it seems to be working great and it didn't cost but about $100. I'm sure it will go tango uniform any day now, but at the moment, it seems brilliant.
Incidentally, if Samurais ever become collector cars (hah), mine will be more valuable for having the rarer brown interior. The majority of Sami's are black/grey. My seats were recovered by the previous owner in a snappy two-tone vinyl, and they are reasonably comfortable. Not so the rear seat, which is small even for children (if they have any legs) and thus was put into storage within the first 24 hours of owning the truck.
The top on it is a new Bestop replacement. My truck originally came with a pretty wacky looking hardtop
so I first changed it for the Bestop combination bimini top and tonneau cover.
That's a great setup and I liked it lot, until the rains came and the bed cover turned into a very effective way to collect gallons of rainwater. I'd been shrewd enough to previously snag a reasonably-priced salvage topbow setup, so I got the full coverage top. I'll probably put the bimini/tonneau setup back on in a couple of weeks.
So, there's a report on my Samurai. While in common with most every other build on the Portal, I put too much money into it, I'm very happy with the result. Be sure to let me know if this simple buildup leads to any questions.
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