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 with Jeff Pollock Back to the Basics Remember when Samurais first hit the USA auto market? They were hot, so hot that dealerships had a hard time keeping them on the car lots. What made them so appealing? Well, the fact that they were cheap, nimble, economical, reliable four wheel drive vehicles that in stock form performed surprisingly well off road. Initially, there were very few aftermarket products for Samurais but as time passed the aftermarket industry began to manufacture lifts, gearing and other amazing products to make these “cheap” little four wheel drive vehicles into exceptional off-road vehicles that rivaled the other four-wheel drive vehicles on the trail. |
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 As
our zook's evolve, some of us myself included, have made our rigs into trail
only rigs and have lost the ability to drive them on the road (legally),
which is hard to accept since the majority of us enjoy driving our rigs to
run errands. Recently I purchased another stock 87 Samurai for my wife and
we agreed to keep in mind the basics of the Samurai as we built this zook. |
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 The
goal was to build an inexpensive daily driver that retained more of the
stock appearance yet be more functional than stock for trail rides.
Basically it boils down to this, my wife wanted her own zook to drive back
and forth to work and on mild trails. With these goals in mind we began the
build-up. |
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 Since we knew the tire size we
wanted, we needed to find a mild lift that would fit these tires and provide
a nice quality ride on the road yet work well off road too. Furthermore we
wanted to keep the suspension modifications to a minimum. The less
modifications required, the better. Luckily we found a great deal on a used Calmini 2” Shackle Reversal Lift Kit. This lift combined with NAPA Deluxe
Gas Shocks provides a smooth ride and excellent handling on the road. The
lift only required two other modifications to fit the 30” tires, massaging
the inner lip of the front and rear wheel wells and trimming of the front
factory bumper corners approximately two inches. With a 48 oz. hammer and a sawzall that was quickly accomplished. |
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 The zook was finally taking shape
and beginning to look respectable but there was something still missing. It
needed a slightly wider stance so a call went out to Spidertrax for a
complete set of 1” wheel spacers. When they arrived we pulled out the floor
jack and began installing them. Combined with the 2” lift and BFG MTs the
two-inch wider stance make a big difference in the appearance of the zook.
Now as my wife says, it looks beefy! |
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| Now that we had the lift and tires, we needed to decide on how we were going to gear the zook. After doing some number crunching we decided to use the Petroworks GRS 2 transfer case I had in the garage. This would make up for the power loss due to the bigger tires on the road plus provide a decent crawl ratio (66:1) on the trail. To hold the GRS 2 in place we utilized our old Hardcore 4x4 and Custom Fabrication reinforced transfer case arms and a Spidertrax poly mount kit. This should more than hold the transfer case in place. The motor in this zook seemed fairly peppy so we decided to leave it stock for now. We will be keeping our eyes open for a 1.6L 16 valve MPI engine to eventually install in its place. You know the saying, “More Power!” | ||
 As we were changing all of the
fluids in the zook we noticed that the stock gas tank skid plate was
beginning to loose some of it’s integrity due to these wonderful Ohio
winters so we decided to install a Hardcore 4x4 Gas Tank Skid Plate to
replace the old decaying factory skid plate. This is a beefy plate that will
ensure the gas tank will remain undamaged as it sees trail time or the
occasional backing incident! ;-) |
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 Moving to the interior of the zook,
which was a JA model, it needed some creature comforts added to make it just
right. We decided that first we wanted the factory gauge cluster with the
tachometer so after searching through my boxes of spare parts I found an old JX gauge cluster. I removed the old cluster and plugged in the new cluster
and “bingo” we now have a functioning JX gauge cluster. |
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 Next on the list was the steering
wheel. On our other zook we had swapped in a 4 prong Sidekick steering wheel
and we really liked the feel of that wheel a lot more than the standard zook
steering wheel so with a quick call to Hawk Suzuki the ‘kick steering wheel
was on its way. The steering wheel sits about an inch or so closer to the
driver and has a thicker wheel so it is way more comfortable than the stock
zook wheel plus it is a simple direct pull and swap modification. |
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 While I had Hawk on the phone I
also ordered their poly bushing and shifter pin for the zook transmission
since the tranny shifter was extremely loose. It was so loose that it
difficult to determine if is was in gear and if so, what gear it was in. I
had heard that this swap really makes a difference so I was anxious to make
this mod. Well, after replacing the stock rubber bushing with the poly
bushing I was genuinely impressed with the firmness of the shifter. Now it
is obvious what gear it is in. |
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| As I was messing with the sloppy shifter we decided to order a Samurai Special Edition Shifter Knob from the local Suzuki Dealership to add some more comfort and character to the zook. This shifter knob is considerably bigger and is more of a rubber knob, which makes shifting combined with the firm shifter a lot more comfortable than before. | ||
 The lame stock JA seats in this
zook were trashed. There are quite a few different seat swaps on the market
so we needed to decide what we wanted to do. Luckily, a friend of mine said
he had some seats he was thinking of putting in his zook that he would be
willing to part with in trade so the trade went through and the seats were
ours. The seats were out of a Ford Festiva. These seats were a little bigger
than the stock zook seats and with some very minor modification would bolt
to the stock zook seat rails. This was definitely a worthwhile swap. These
seats are very comfortable and supportive due to the molded bucket
construction and side supports. Now we moved back to the exterior
of the zook and with summer around the corner we wanted to make the doors
removable. Once again I enlisted the help of the sawzall and within a few
minutes the hinges were cut and the doors made removable. |
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| We still have a few more “things” we want to do to our newest zook but that will be down the road. These “things” include a rear locker, roll cage, stereo and other items of that nature. The best part of all of these modifications we have made is the zook still retains all of its original attributes that make it such a great vehicle to drive on the street as well as the trail. | ||
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09/15/04 14:53:03
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