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Lame small tire build

My first samurai had 4.62 diffs, stock tcase and 31’s. I didn’t do a lot of difficult trails with that setup but somehow it did highway pretty well. Maybe that motor wasn’t as tired as my current one is.

I could see that, 3.73 to 4.62 is a pretty good jump. I think with lower tcase gears, 4.62s would be fine also, just depends on off-road VS highway.

The stock low range is pathetic though, they should have came with 4:1 stock :laughing:
 
Got adventurous and drove it the 10min to work today. However it blew some coolant out of the cap on the way back from lunch. Never had that happen before, temp gauge looked normal on the drive. Hoping just a bad cap?

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Yep I have an overflow bottle hooked up. It has some coolant in it but feels cool to the touch.
 
Commuting in a Sami is pretty entertaining. :laughing:

I've been driving mine for a few weeks. It's only 2.5 miles but up a decent grade so it's like 35-40 if I'm lucky, although I did pass a loaded semi the other day :lmao:
 
When I was young I drove my old tintop on the freeway long distances all the time no matter the weather and thought nothing of it. Now I’m middle age and the ten minute commute to the office is too much :laughing:

I ordered a new radiator cap, let’s hope that’s the fix. Don’t really feel like building my swift motor and swapping that yet.
 
When I was young I drove my old tintop on the freeway long distances all the time no matter the weather and thought nothing of it. Now I’m middle age and the ten minute commute to the office is too much :laughing:

I ordered a new radiator cap, let’s hope that’s the fix. Don’t really feel like building my swift motor and swapping that yet.
This is why I don’t give up shitboxes. You get out of practice and it turns you into a massive pussy. Heck, just driving the Ranger or Aerostar after driving the Lesbarus feels like a huge downgrade even if they’re all the same age and the difference is just a reflection of car vs pickup vs van. No way you’ll have the motivation to drive a crawler or classic car on the road if you are driving a modern car for 99% of your mileage.
 
I drive brand new stuff at work all the time, I still like the old junk, it has character.

The samurai drives so bad with bias tires at 3 psi, it just makes you laugh.

Although a 30+ min commute might be a different story :laughing:
 
This is why I don’t give up shitboxes. You get out of practice and it turns you into a massive pussy. Heck, just driving the Ranger or Aerostar after driving the Lesbarus feels like a huge downgrade even if they’re all the same age and the difference is just a reflection of car vs pickup vs van. No way you’ll have the motivation to drive a crawler or classic car on the road if you are driving a modern car for 99% of your mileage.
I know, i've gone soft. even my 20yr old subaru is like driving a luxury car.
 
I find it hilarious when people end up with having similar fleets even though they are from all over the place. I had a subaru as my DD since I was 16 (different ones not the same entire time) and then usually had a lifted squarebody or a samurai as my playtoy and had multiples of each through the years. Currently have a 96 Impreza EJ18 as DD but no playtoy since selling my last samurai.
 
weird coolant leak issues ate up some of my weekend. New radiator cap and thermostat just made the leaks reappear elsewhere. Poured some blue devil stop leak in it, never doing that again because it just filled the heater core with jello for awhile. Eventually it worked itself out.

Ran it without the cap for awhile and saw some bubbles, feared the head gasket was bad until I saw the water pump pouring coolant out of the weep hole. Theorized that the pump had a bad seal and was sucking/pumping air into the cooling system. New water pump and everything seems ok so far……
 
Well. I fawked up today. Went out to Cline Buttes OHV with the local club to do some real wheeling. Haven't been on a real 4wd club trip in years. Super hot dusty day. Flat towed the samurai out there (tcase neutral, trans in second). Thought I heard a little noise coming and going from the sammy on the way out but ignored it as just towbar//chain rattles. Mistake #1.

I have flat towed it before with the 2nd gear/neutral setup with no issues. probably never again though.


Wheeled ok all day. I bypassed a lot of hard stuff, but did some things that were harder than i'd done with the samurai before. brakes felt like shit all day, pedal kept creeping down and felt mushy all day. repeatedly looked for leaky calipers or wheel cylinders but found no leaks. Master cylinder is leaking pretty good around the booster though when I got home.

Vapor-locked a lot also. the pressure regulator for the Weber was mounted to the valve cover and was boiling fuel inside it. Unmounted it and zip tied it off to the side and fixed that. Might just delete it entirely.

Felt like there was a lot of play in the t-case or front driveline. Wrote off that in my head as just noisy front locker. Turned out the front pinion has a little less than a 1/4 turn of free rotation. seems like way too much when the rear has much less. Either I set it up shitty or somethings broken. haven't got to the bottom of that one yet.

Now for the big fawk up.....flat towed it home (15-20 miles) with the fawking e-brake on! can't believe i did that. smoked the rear brakes, and they are probably trash along with the brand new rear wheel bearings. I only noticed because the little noise in paragraph one was actually loose driveshaft bolts. When I pulled into town the magnetic tow light wire unplugged itself from my truck, (mistake number 2,3, or 4?) got wrapped up in Mr. loose rear driveline, which came all the way undone and spit out from under the samurai. :lmao: magnetic tow light wiring is destroyed and i have no idea how or why it decided to leave the chat. Noticed the rear brakes were smoking and the e-brake handle was up when I stopped to assess WTF just happened.

Got the rear drums off which have some slight heat discoloration. Rear diff fluid looked and smelled normal so hopefully my air locker is ok. haven't looked at the front diff fluid yet. Front d-shaft is missing several bolts too. rear driveline pieces all fit back together and actually look relatively undamaged. not sure how or why those bolts all loosened up.


So at minimum I think rear shoes and drums, rear wheel bearings and seals, driveshaft bolts, brake MC, pull the front diff and figure out what it's problem is.


No pics of anything yet.


Also ordered some chinesium 4.57 gears a few days ago so i'll install them too when I'm putting this all back together.
 
Unfortunately there can only be one king and he has you beat by a set of double D's, Distance & Damage:lmao:
 
Maybe I can be the Queen... Now wait a minute... I meant Prince!.... Not Queen, but Prince... That's it, Prince...:emb4:
Butch
 
finally got this bastard mostly back together. I think my diff armor welding warped the housing a little because the third was impossible to get back in without a little grinding :mad3:. But the shafts slid into the diff and it all seems to work again. If I ever get a front air locker I think I’m ordering a new housing from India just for shits.

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Haven’t driven on the 4.57’s yet. Also needs a wash
 
Got invited to go wheeling this past weekend, so I needed to get the new 4.57’s broken in somehow. I ran the rear end up on jack stands for awhile but didn’t seem like it was getting enough load to heat up. So I decided to do a bunch of driving around:

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Until it died and left me stranded. Wife came with the tow bar and dragged me home. Would only run at throttle and couldn’t idle.

Started tearing into the carb and found the two piece adapter and all hardware was finger tight, likely causing a giant vacuum leak.

I threw the 3k carb back on just to go wheeling the next day. I might find a 1-piece adapter for the Weber later.

3k ran great while wheeling, ran rich but ran all day.
 
After the carb fiasco I thrashed the rest of the day to ghetto fab up at-case skid plate. Started with a big piece of 12x12” square tube, 1/4” wall. Drilled holes and bolted to frame, made a wing that bolted to an aluminum puck that threaded onto the left tcase mount. Will probably refine this later but needed something quick.

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How do you like the gearing?
It’s much better. Drives more normally on the street. Could always be lower off-road
Dont kid yourself:flipoff2:
I can dream that I will take something off and re-do it lol

One of the other Zuks I was wheeling with had a TT rear disconnect. Would love to have one instead of crawling around to pull the rear driveshaft for flat towing
 
It’s much better. Drives more normally on the street. Could always be lower off-road

I've wondered if the 4.9s might be the perfect tcase gear.

Although probably hard to justify when you already have 4.16s.

I am curious to see how much the 2.0 helps with low end grunt. I know my 8v felt similar in single 4.7 to the 1.3 in 6.4. :laughing:
 
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