Offroad-Express

To try keep my self honest and to possibly help someone forum dredging in the future I thought I'd do a bit of a write up on my little sj


The story starts about 11 years ago when visiting family in wanganui I went to the dairy and saw a little silver sj on the side of the road thought nothing of it and carried on with my dad mentioned it to my father who jumped up and off we went to knock on the door of the house to see if it was for sale

Knocking on the door a fella comes out and said yes its for sake but it's a bit of a pile of junk ,it uses oil and water and it's pretty slow we walked over to it and I saw it had a ruc slip in the window ,turns out someone had swapped a 1700cc cd17 nissan diesel into it

We ended up buying it and took it home .I was in the final stages of my solid axle swap in my surf and was over it ,dealing with junky toyota stuff I started to look further into the sj

I purchased it off my father and started to get it cleaned up

It had a duct tape drivers seat and no shift boots on the t case or gearbox ,wooden tray was buggered and the sat tyres drove terrible

Ticking through the list I ended up putting 30" muds and steelies on it thrashing it for a while doing a few trips and progressively modifying it

I ended up turboing the cd17 and still wasn't happy with how it was on and offroad

We purchased a vitara that had been stolen and recovered ,we had planned on taking the susoention out and putting it in my father's vitara and selling the rest when I started to look into the g16a swap

Ben T (now zukparts.com ) had everything I needed and even had powersteering stuff in stock

Doing the swap was super simple and rewarding

It was the BEST it had ever been so much better than the diesel

Fast forward a little bit my now wife and I were getting serious about buying a house so it was that horrible time of selling toys and the sj was on the list

I ended up selling the ute to a guy in wainui and he had plans of putting wide track diffs under it etc

As far as I wasconcerned it was do e and gone case closed


About 8 9 years later from selling it I was oicking up 2x suzuki wrecks on my trailer in a holden colorado when it shit the trans.after playing musical tow wagons I was headed to my uncles in the BSc of wainui and what did I see under a tree on a lean my old sj!

After talking with the farmer who didn't own it it was a freind of his I had a number !

A few days if trying to get in touch I found out it had wide track diffs partly under it and never finished

The price he said was out of my budget and I lost hope to get it back .

As we were painting our house to sell I get a snapchat of my old sj for sale still live rego and as crap timing as it was had to have it back so I brought it

It was delivered to my work on a trailer with no diffs ,gearbox ,t case ,steering ,shocks, springs etc but....it had live rego and I get it back


Pic to follow

As I had no where to put it I had to get it semi pushable and into storage while the house was on the market


A month later we moved into our new house and that same day I grabbed the sj and put it in the garage and started tracking parts down

A tubbed / virtual lift front clip came up so I grabbed that along with a set of wide track axles complete with air lockers and rcv cvs ,I managed to get a few sets of old leaf springs and make a set

Fitting was super easy and totally worth it

The front diff got a rebuild and shave with knuckle gussets ,4.3 gears, tre locker , rcv , solid pinion spacer and I used the samurai pinion flange (more on that soon ) ge uine asin hubs and studs with cone washers etc lwb vitara brakes

Rear was shaved and trussed, 4.3 gear set and solid pinion spacer with arb air locker ,zuk parts disc kit

I had been sitting on a set of 6 stud axle bits from a weird jap import 660cc jimny that I used on my W/T axles

Leafs are bastard packs front and rear and I've got Ultima shocks at the moment done my lengths to cater to the set up

I did a deal and ended up with a tubular tray so on that went and mounts to suit etc

I added a xj jeep radiator with 3 electric fans and a shroud I folded up along with a Davis craig waterpump

Touching back on the samurai (wide/ big pattern pinion flanges ) I have chosen to run these as they are the same patten as vitara so yolks / uj and later on drive shaft tube will be easy to sort

A nice dude came past work and offered me a arb style bull bar from a range rover classic free he just wanted it gone so that followed me home and the saga of that began making it fit the sj

And being the over thinker I am i decided while doing a bar let's mount a winch and hooks ,so I dusted the runva evo off the shelves and use that finding the chassis width of the sj limiting I made a winch plate that steps the winch up 100mm and got it up above the steering box since I'm running rear radiator the front is pretty open

Chopping the bar was fun but would have been easier to start with fresh material rather than making one work and change every aspect of the bat to suit me

Looking good, I started 4wding in the 90s in a 413 so this brings back memories.

Love a good story. It was always meant to be eh

Keep up the good work

Wow reading that you can tell I work with my hands not a key board huh !

I'll try be more gooder at my typing (fat fingers )


So a lot has happened since the last post !

We are now all legal with a very pretty sticker on my window!


Bull bar finished
Cage built
Sliders
Scrub bars
Serviced
Sound deadner added

We have a trip this weekend with a few good mates to give our wagons a bit of a shake down since most are finally assembled and ready to go

I'm the smallest truck from the line up

3x gq
1x80
1x sas terrano
A vitara

Hopefully nothing falls off or goes pear shaped !