Unmodifying a Samurai

I guess it's my turn to start a thread. The time has come put my OG samurai back on the road.
I've been wanting a fun stock samurai, but without the stock samurai bit. Big motor, soft ride, power steering etc. and instead of building another samurai, I'm gonna undo the rock crawling mods. I'm going to a larger rim, bigger brakes, smaller tires, and better gearing for street driving and weekend warrior stuff.
Here it was after final assembly when I was 15.



Then mercilessly beatened by an adolescence and wheeled some really hard core trails up and down the east coast.



Jumping it and other overall Tomfoolery.



Currently it's sitting on 33's, 4.88's, spooled, chromos, and completely flat YJ 4 pack springs and IIRC it flexed to the 900 level on the RTI.
So I went ahead and got it in the shop.



Started by striping the front end. The front yj's went to a friend for their build. The old housing was tweaked and needed replacing.



And got some 265/65/17s mounted on the jeeps 17x9s for mock up. The plan is to use the f150 ebrake calipers to have cutting brakes.

There are 2 different styles of yj missing link/jeep eater/etc suspensions. The trail tough one and the other style like what DR. Z Fab/rocky road have. The trail tough (what I have) is about 2” lower slung than the others.

My front yjs went to this build, aDr. Z Fab Kit, and 215s and that equals to about a 3” lift over stock. It sat higher than this, because he had the axle ratchet strapped to the frame. Those springs were also clapped all the way out.



Here you can see how the top shackle points down.



Also the hack fab shock mounts he made out of the stock spring perches and how he would have done them The second time around.





It’s a bit lower than I want, so I went with the 2” skyjacker soft ride rear yj springs and took the overload springs out. I’m curious to see where mine is gonna sit. Worst case scenario, I’ll swap someone the yj kits around and get the drz kit. I already have his low profile Spring under mounts on order, but he’s talked to me and pushed it back a week so he could get new customers out. Standard stuff when you have a big sale.

The end goal is to have something like this samurai used to be. 31s, spring under, all the power and this Setup rode smoother than the newer “overland” kit that most people sell. Believe it or not, this used to be someone’s daily driver and one of the best handling rigs I’ve ever driven.



Here I am teaching him how to flatland jump it at the Uwharrie test track before that picture was taken. You can see us lean it on the doors in the outside corner and with me in the passenger seat, it didn’t roll.

I wonder how the body got tweaked.

Banned for off topic. This section is for build threads, not unbuild threads.

following dot 👉🏻 ⭕️

JR4X said:

following dot 👉🏻 ⭕️

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Got most of the backstory filled in.

bad zuki said:

Got most of the backstory filled in.

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Pictures of progress back to stock-ish… I’m here for it.

Welp First round of spending is starting to trickle in.

Thanks again to Zach at Dr. Z Fab for making quality stuff at reasonable prices. Really happy with the low profile mounts. I know it's not a ubolt flip kit, but this is the closest Suzukis get,





Also, got rid of the BS leaf spring bolts that felt like pot metal and turned down a set of grade 8 hardware.

Sweet. I know I have said it before in threads but the next one I do I want to be a nice driver. Sound deadening, AC, power steering etc. **** maybe even air ride on links just to try for a good ride. I have been tempted to do a tracker\sidekick TT but I just don't love them like I do Samurai's

350TacoZilla said:

Sweet. I know I have said it before in threads but the next one I do I want to be a nice driver. Sound deadening, AC, power steering etc. **** maybe even air ride on links just to try for a good ride. I have been tempted to do a tracker\sidekick TT but I just don't love them like I do Samurai's

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Just buy a tracker.