Samurai Part I - W.E.ROCK III

Today, you asked for it. You got it,

Suzuki. This pint size four by four works great off road. And today we'll turn our samurai into a trail monster. Plus, watch these two drivers battle it out for the stock mod world championship.

Hey

guys, welcome to Xtreme 4x4.

This little beauty right here is probably one of the most requested builds ever. The Suzuki Samurai

and to say this little truck is capable of doing some hardcore off

is an understatement.

The sheer size of the samurai is what makes it so popular off road. It can basically squeeze around the obstacles that everyone else has to crawl over and its short wheelbase makes it able to handle really tight turns when it's out on the trail.

We see a bunch of these at the local off road parks doing some crazy wheeling

but nothing crazier than our two friends van and Brandon doing a tug of war over the winter.

They basically strapped their two samurais together and just hauled on each other for a good 10 minutes

until van suffered some serious carnage and Brandon won the contest.

Now, Brandon will follow us pretty much anywhere we go no matter what rig hits the trail, he can keep up to us without any problems.

And since

Suki Samurais have such a huge following, it seemed like it was about time we put one together on extreme

and let's face it, fuel is not getting any cheaper. So building a smaller lightweight trail truck, like this is a great way to save some cash. But if that's your plan, you don't want to be sinking a ton of money into building the truck itself. So, just like you guys, we're cutting up our credit cards to do this entire building on a really tight budget. And it all starts with these two Toyota axes that we spent a mere $275 on.

It's your first time on TV. Don't you think you should at least say hello?

Hey, how's it going

play

this

now? Swamp and Toyota axles underneath a samurai is a very popular modification

and since this truck is so light, it just has a four cylinder engine, they'll survive pretty good in stock form. So they're going to stay that way. We do want a locker though. So in the rear, we're going to pull the third out and just weld up the spider gears, turning it into the spool. Now, the front end would prefer to have a selectable locker just to make turning a little bit easier so you can unlock it. We're lucky enough to find this used Toyota E track unit for only 325 bucks online.

The nice thing about welding up the rear and the Toyota

man down,

you don't have to tear the carrier apart.

This means you won't have to set up your ring opinion again,

making this easy as pie.

The front axle housing must be clearance to make room for the E locker shift for.

And then all we got to do is swap the gears into the carrier

and install the new third member

just because we're building our samurai on the cheap. Doesn't mean that we're going to skimp when it comes to safety. As you can see, these breaks are totally shot. So we're going to go ahead and replace the shoes, the hardware and the W cylinders, as well as the rotors, the calipers and the pads up front, all with brand new parts from our local Riley auto parts store.

Now, wheelbase is key on any trail truck and I like to get mine above 100 inches in length. It really helps keep the truck on all fours when it's climbing steep hills. Now, the problem with the samurai is if we stretch it over 100 with just the back end, the rear axle would actually be behind the rear bumper. So we're going to set this one at 100 inches exactly with a little bit of stretch in the front and a little bit in the rear

setting, the wheel base to 100 inches on both sides and then dropping a plumb bob off reference marks on the frame will ensure that the axles are square.

Now, the samurai is equipped with a drive line that we've never seen before here at Xtreme 4x4 and that's called a divorced transfer case. It basically means that the transfer case is mounted separate from the transmission

and then has a little drive shaft to connect the two. Now, the nice thing about having a divorced transfer case is all the way to the transfer case is usually moved back and mounted in the middle point of the chassis.

The other nice thing is you can have the transmission input coming in here and you can have better drive line outputs because the transfer cases further back, you don't have that big droop on the front drive shaft. Now we've taken this out right now because we're gonna be putting in some low gears later on.

Another unique feature about the Samurai are the frame rails themselves in the back of the truck. They actually start to get wider as they go further back. A lot of guys will go ahead and cut out all these cross members, suck these rails in and then weld in new cross members to hold them. But since we're gonna be keeping the floor intact in our samurai, we're just gonna run them as they are

coming up before the magazine covers and big dollar sponsorships. These crawlers got to make it in the stock mod class. We'll go to Vegas for the world. Shoot out.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 and our project Suzuki Samurai Tin Top

Jessi. Have you thought of a name for this one yet? I guess I haven't put much thought into it.

I'm thinking like slamming Sammy or suicide Sammy or my personal favorite project. Sam. I am. Who cares all you really care about is when people see this thing coming up the trail, they're screaming, get

way

well, with 35 inch tires underneath it and a little secret underneath the hood, there's no question at all. This truck's going to turn some serious heads when it's on the trail. But right now we're going to Nevada for the World finals this time, it's a tough battle between two stock mod drivers crawling their way up to the top of the rock

at the We Rock World finals. The media spotlight burned brightest on the High dollar modified class. This is the biggest event of the year. It's monstrous. It's the biggest thing I've ever been to far from the word of cameras, but competing on the same course was the stock mod class.

That's where people come and get their feet wet and from there they move up. You can't just jump into a top rig and expect to win. The stock mod class is a good building experience is where I started with the

big dollar sponsors here. Looking for the next Tracy Jordan.

The stock mod drivers know a world title can be their ticket to the big show. I want,

I

want real bad trade your finger

for it.

You know, we're going to do everything we can to bring away a title in the modified stock class

with back to back undefeated seasons in the eastern division,

Derek. The Dominator West came to the world finals as the undisputed favorite. These

are, this is a very competitive class. So we've got to come in here and really make good decisions over the last two years. There's been a thorn in Derek's side,

but

as the West division's Dan Patterson has twice denied Derek the US title. Our mistakes are a little smaller than his. So we kind of edged him out there. We've been lucky enough to be winners a lot and so losing really hurts bad

at

the world championship. Only three drivers would advance to the title shootout. I try to be a finesse guy, not a hammer down.

I think I'm more of a, a

light pedal guy, not, not as heavy on the pedal

that so called light pedal touch resulted in crush cones. And last point

for Derek West, the wheels to his title hopes

began to come

up,

literally

hit it hard coming through there and lost the, uh, the wheel studs.

So we'll see if we can find some of those. Replace it go again. Has Dan hammered his way through the qualifier.

Derek's team struggled to make repairs. I had to strand a lot of parts from different guys and trying to get it all bolted back together with only two courses complete and four to go, the pressure was on. We've got a lot to make up here,

fixed and ready to get back in the game.

There was another setback. Notice, some flood dripping out. So we've got under here and it's a banjo bowl. Dan for one wasn't riding off his arch rival. They know what they're doing. They'll get that car back together with bubble gum or tape, whatever it takes, they'll be out here, they got it back together. But Derek's confidence was in Shambles

lost that edge. I

think. So I got to get back in this force, get things going, make it happen here and hopefully I'm up in the path with all the other guys.

He caught a huge break when Dan caught fire, anything can happen to anybody. You know, his tire falls off. We catch on fire. So we'll see, we'll see what

rejuvenated. Not given up. He moved past Dan Patterson into the coveted three position. We thought maybe it was going to get cold with all the downtime, but we was able to get right back on here and kind of get a rhythm going again. Feel good. Locked in an epic battle for third. These two champions went punch for punch

with the chance to solidify the shootout spot. Derek cracked on his last run. That's the mistake you don't want to make right there. That mistake made third place too close to call. We're waiting to find out what happens with the points and, uh, we're awaiting the results here. Let's do, let's find out

that

we make it.

We're done for the weekend.

I'll have to,

uh, hit this again next year.

Work harder.

Once again,

Dan got the better of the dominator. I'm feeling good that we, you know, we got into the finals. I'm glad we caught Derek and passed him. That makes me feel real good. Derek would have the long off season to think about the one that got away. We made one huge mistake today, laid it over and

that

cost us

off some constructive ideas for next season.

Yeah, luck was just not on their side that day. No, the course was angry like an old man trying to return soup in a deli.

Yeah,

welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 in the beginning of our

Suki samurai t

top build up.

Now, so far, the stock drive train has been completely removed and replaced with a couple of Toyota axles welded in the rear and an E locker up front. And now it's time to concentrate on some suspension and we've been doing those for years using grinders and torches and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which there's nothing wrong with that.

But we just took delivery of a new tool here at extreme that you'll see in a lot of heavy duty fab shops and it's right over there.

Look that way.

Do you want me to go that way too?

This is a Scotchman iron worker. It's basically a heavy duty sheer as well as a break and a turret head with different dyes for punching holes and other shapes. Basically with one of these, you can turn plate that's up to half an inch thick into just about anything. But if you don't have an iron worker just sitting in your driveway, don't worry because you can buy premade brackets and tabs for pretty much any suspension type.

We got a bunch of stuff from ballistic fabrication like these pre made coils.

This new cross member will not only act as a skid plate for the transfer case, it will also provide us a mounting point for the new lower lanes.

I

now Jesse's gonna show us how we save money by choosing a different link material

as soon as the links were determined

in when I had and Dr

and tap

this in and a half half inch wall to be

to go ahead and accept these Q A one rod.

And

now by doing it this way, instead of using to be adapters, not only doesn't make our link stronger, but it also makes them cheaper. So the total cost for link set up for and where the $400 for the rod and

$140 for the coils, $400 for the shocks, 60 BS for the rock, totally $1000. Even

both lower links, front and rear are 44 inches long and the uppers are exactly 70% of that. At 30 inches. We have a foot of vertical separation on the axle and eight inches at the frame making this for

length, low, long and level. We have great Andy squat numbers.

Now, obviously, this rear suspension has been changed from a leaf sprung rear axle over to a four length set up with coil springs and shocks. Now to choose the right coal spring, we talked to a lot of Suzuki guys and a lot of them are running these 14 1 75 springs and we got ours from Q A one. Now, the shocks we're using are Edelbrock extreme travel shocks. Now, they have a unique

ias valving feature which is inertia activated, which means the more the wheel travels, the more fluid is allowed to pass through the valving in the shock, which makes it ride a lot smoother. But I'm sure what a lot of you guys want to know is the actual four length set up itself. How do we choose where to put the bars and how, where you put them? Does it affect how the vehicle acts on the trail? Well, for that, we're going to the chalkboard.

Now, this truly will be an abbreviated version of four length design. We can honestly talk about this for the rest of the entire day and I'm sure there would still be a lot of unanswered questions,

but we'll start with a couple of simple issues. One is anti squat. If you have the rear axle mounted and the links travel up to the frame at a very steep angle, you're going to have a large

anti squat number. That means when you try to drive forward the tires actually trying to drive underneath the truck and the actual frame will rise, it will go up in the air. If you can take those same lengths, drop them down and try to get them a little more parallel to the ground, your anti squat number will be lower because the vehicle will actually be pushed ahead by the tire instead of trying to drive underneath it.

Now where you wheel actually depends on whether you want a large amount of anti squat or none at all. If you're climbing a lot of hills, you don't want a lot of anti squat because it can take the traction off the rear tires. Another issue is what's called roll access and that is created by the actual convergence of the links towards the center and actually changes how the vehicle twists when you're off road.

Now, if this is something that you're really interested in you, I want to know more about designing A four L

the best thing to do is there's a bunch of books out there on the subject. You can look up a bunch of stuff on the internet but nothing beats trial and error. If you build a two buggy, build a bunch of different attachment points, both on the frame and the axle, you can try a bunch of different setups and find out which one works for you.

In the case of our Zook, our hands were really kind of tied because we could only tie into certain parts of the frame unless we cut the whole body up. And we didn't want to do that.

We're back on extreme and we're elbow deep in our latest project that you guys asked for a Suzuki samurai. Now, so far today, we've done a pretty good job of putting together a decent little trail truck on a realistic budget.

Two used Toyota axles for 275 bucks

locker for the front. A used Toyota E Locker for 325 bucks bought online,

the rear free welded up

a grand to link both ends of the truck with coils shocks and

hes

for a total of 1600 bucks.

Now it's time for some wheels and tires and I know you guys are probably thinking all right here they come out with some expensive tires and some custom deep

offset

the locks for a budget be.

But wait just one second,

these wheels actually started life as the stock

and Toyota many truck project, a

copperhead fab well, on

the block, it can turn any steel w to be block at only 55 bucks per K

and they fit perfectly right near our budget.

A little D

color truck bed liner paint and some powder coating on the other ring will look great and will keep them from rest.

Then the tires can be installed.

Now, admittedly, we did spend some money when it came to tires. But if you're gonna drop some cash on your rig, this is a good place to do it.

We chose Pitbull Rocker 35 by 14.5 inch tires. The deep lugs and sipping will help with clean out

and the heavy duty side wall as well as rim protector will help this tire when we have it aired down

and considering how light the Suzuki is, we're probably only gonna be running about 3 to 4 pounds in each corner. Well, there you have it a great trail truck on a realistic budget, but we have one small problem right about here and we'll be taking care of that next time as well as doing all the exo

caging and getting this thing ready to hit the trail. Maybe with a big cut right about.

It'll be a little bit straighter than that cut though.

This is the

cycle like that, fix it

kind of like that.