Hello all, this is my first thread here on IH8MUD. I'll show what I've started with, what I've done, where I'm going, etc. I originally made an Instagram and Youtube page for the car, which I'll still update, but I think this thread will be much better to document my progress and discuss with you all. This has been a turbulent, exciting, and frustrating journey so far, but I hope I can glean some knowledge and encouragement from you all!
Last year, as I was wrapping up college, I got bit by the Samurai bug. Someone had parked a bone-stock, pristine condition tin top along the highway, and I became obsessed with owning a Samurai as I passed it to and from my hometown. Unfortunately, the price tag was too high, especially for a recent college grad still living at home. But the desire for a Zook remained and after getting settled into my first apartment, I took to FB Marketplace. Every Samurai was either too expensive, too far away, or was too buggy-fied for my liking. My vision was for a tastefully modified, but still street-legal and possibly daily-drivable, Samurai for light city driving and weekend adventures out to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Enter SPOOKIZUK, a 1988.5 red soft-top. When I purchased her (my girlfriend named her 'Cheri', so I refer to the car as a 'she' often) she already had:
Jeep YJ SPOA lift
Toyota Pickup axles
1.6L 16 valve engine swap
Winch front bumper
Shrockworks rear bumper and gas tank armor
Calmini roof rack
no-name (likely harbor freight) LED light bar, light pods, etc...
Here she is on the U-Haul trailer, behind my Rav4:
The front tire straps that come with the trailer barely fit around the 32" tires, they are aired down to about 8 PSI to get the strap all the way around. I picked up the Suzuki in Siler City, North Carolina, and getting it home was... challenging. I'll tell that full story in the next post. Here's the Samurai with the rising sun at a rest stop outside Petersburg, VA:
I have since learned that buying a vehicle at 11 PM after a 6 hour drive is not advisable. I was so intent on getting the car and starting my return to the DC area that I made a half-@$$ed inspection of the car, and should have at least considered if I was prepared for the scale of the project this car would become (as you'll read in later posts). After a quick test-drive around the seller's farm, we loaded the car up, secured the tires, and I was on my merry way at a blistering 45 mph. I did not rent a flat-bed trailer from UHaul, as the combined weight of that trailer and the samurai would likely have exceeded my Rav4's towing capacity. In retrospect, the best plan would have been to borrow my best friend's truck, rent a trailer that gets all four tires off the ground, and inspect the vehicle in broad daylight, prepared to walk away. But, despite all the problems I would come to discover, I'm still happy that I purchased the car I did. I just had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Prior to buying this car, I had ~0 mechanical/automotive experience. I had changed my own oil and brakes once, and 10 years ago, I welded two plates of scrap together at a summer camp just well enough to earn the Welding Merit Badge. So this thread is going to put my inexperience on broad display, and you're going to see a young man learn a lot of lessons 'the hard way'. I welcome any advice, tips, criticism, etc and I invite you all to tell me where I can do better. A year into this project, I still feel like I am totally in over my head, but I think that in going off the deep-end, I've forced myself to adapt.
It's getting a bit late but I'll catch the thread up on what issues I've discovered, what I've done to address them, and what I plan to do next. Thanks for reading, I'm excited to learn from this community!
Last year, as I was wrapping up college, I got bit by the Samurai bug. Someone had parked a bone-stock, pristine condition tin top along the highway, and I became obsessed with owning a Samurai as I passed it to and from my hometown. Unfortunately, the price tag was too high, especially for a recent college grad still living at home. But the desire for a Zook remained and after getting settled into my first apartment, I took to FB Marketplace. Every Samurai was either too expensive, too far away, or was too buggy-fied for my liking. My vision was for a tastefully modified, but still street-legal and possibly daily-drivable, Samurai for light city driving and weekend adventures out to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Enter SPOOKIZUK, a 1988.5 red soft-top. When I purchased her (my girlfriend named her 'Cheri', so I refer to the car as a 'she' often) she already had:
Jeep YJ SPOA lift
Toyota Pickup axles
1.6L 16 valve engine swap
Winch front bumper
Shrockworks rear bumper and gas tank armor
Calmini roof rack
no-name (likely harbor freight) LED light bar, light pods, etc...
Here she is on the U-Haul trailer, behind my Rav4:
The front tire straps that come with the trailer barely fit around the 32" tires, they are aired down to about 8 PSI to get the strap all the way around. I picked up the Suzuki in Siler City, North Carolina, and getting it home was... challenging. I'll tell that full story in the next post. Here's the Samurai with the rising sun at a rest stop outside Petersburg, VA:
I have since learned that buying a vehicle at 11 PM after a 6 hour drive is not advisable. I was so intent on getting the car and starting my return to the DC area that I made a half-@$$ed inspection of the car, and should have at least considered if I was prepared for the scale of the project this car would become (as you'll read in later posts). After a quick test-drive around the seller's farm, we loaded the car up, secured the tires, and I was on my merry way at a blistering 45 mph. I did not rent a flat-bed trailer from UHaul, as the combined weight of that trailer and the samurai would likely have exceeded my Rav4's towing capacity. In retrospect, the best plan would have been to borrow my best friend's truck, rent a trailer that gets all four tires off the ground, and inspect the vehicle in broad daylight, prepared to walk away. But, despite all the problems I would come to discover, I'm still happy that I purchased the car I did. I just had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Prior to buying this car, I had ~0 mechanical/automotive experience. I had changed my own oil and brakes once, and 10 years ago, I welded two plates of scrap together at a summer camp just well enough to earn the Welding Merit Badge. So this thread is going to put my inexperience on broad display, and you're going to see a young man learn a lot of lessons 'the hard way'. I welcome any advice, tips, criticism, etc and I invite you all to tell me where I can do better. A year into this project, I still feel like I am totally in over my head, but I think that in going off the deep-end, I've forced myself to adapt.
It's getting a bit late but I'll catch the thread up on what issues I've discovered, what I've done to address them, and what I plan to do next. Thanks for reading, I'm excited to learn from this community!
