"SPOOKIZUK" - 1988 Suzuki Samurai Restoration

[spookizuk]

You had any more time on the Sammy project?

Never as much as I'd like - since the shutdown ended its been pretty non-stop catch-up at work. But I did get the chance to swing by the garage and pull the heater. I think I'm just about good to go to pull the body off, once I pull the front clip too and remove the steering column. I also pulled the wiring harnesses, there's so many random crimps, splits etc that I'm just gonna try to make a fresh one with the old stuff as a reference. That should really clean things up under the dash since I have the samurai harness + tracker EFI harness. That will be...fun?

I don't know if I mentioned this here, but I got a Harbor Freight cherry picker to help pull the body. Once that's up I plan to roll the chassis out from under the vehicle, and then set the body on a wooden frame so I can work on welding up the tub.

Fortunately it's not too cold in the garage, even though it was about 18 degrees outside. I'm really glad that the Sami is inside for the winter- this time last year, I just had to wait until spring to uncover the car.

 

[spookizuk]

Onward crawls the project!

The day after Christmas, I was finally able to pull the front clip. With the engine swap and all sorts of messy wiring this was quite a job, but I feel really good about pulling the tub off soon. Its also super easy to access things around the engine (duh).

Today I was able to come back to my parent's and disconnect some of the vacuum lines and other bits and bobs connected to the firewall. Nothing really worth showing but I'm happy with it.

 

[spookizuk]

Big update! I finally made the leap of pulling the tub off the frame today. It came off very easily, after I disconnected the brake booster from the firewall and undid the body mount bolts.

Before:

During:

After:

I put the body up on stands in the garage for easy 360 degree access to all the rust spots. While it's off I'll also clean up some surface rust on the frame.

Now the fun begins!