Hey all!
This weekend I picked up my greatly anticipated new toy, a 1988 Suzuki Samurai Tin Top. I picked it up on Saturday.
Here it is loaded on the tow rig
By Sunday, I tried it out at Gen’s place…and it was indeed fun!
I’m totally and completely impressed by a worn-out, stock, Samurai’s offroad capability. Granted, we’re not experienced offroaders, and we probably didn’t take it anywhere worthy of respect…but I’m still impressed! Heck…the tires are on their wear indicators…and they’re certainly just street tires.
The Samurai has a really soft brake pedal right now…so the first thing to address is the brakes. I need to see where the leak is (the reservoir was basically empty), fix it, and then bleed the system. The front bumper mount tube is rusted out…so it was barely hanging on. A little .032 safety wire did the trick nicely to get us out into the pasture.
This thing has lots of little issues…but none of them, at least that I’ve found yet, include the drivetrain. It’s rusty as can be, the interior is a best defined as a combination of “broken” and “missing.” The door limiter strap on the driver door is gone, the passenger door handle on the outside is broken and the window regulator is shot (with signs of previous vicegrips-instead-of-crank-handle action), the headliner is partially gone, and the rest is falling, the cheesy aftermarket tach doesn’t even work, and the list goes on ad nauseam.
At the finish of the day, I ended up riding a fallen tree trunk into it’s respective stump which further boogered up the front bumper. It was pushed back enough that the bumper was rubbing the tire. The same tube that was rusted out on the driver side was almost as rusty on the passenger side (big surprise, huh?) and it bent easily with just the slightest tap against the stump.
We were worn out enough that we decided not to get out the chain and pull it back out…but that’s probably the next mission for the little Samurai. The brakes and the front bumper situation are certainly at the top of the list for it though…
