Suzuki Club UK

Hey everyone! It's been a long while since I posted anything on here but I'm now importing Sammy (my 1.9TD Samurai) into the UK for good and I figured I'd start a build thread just incase anyone is interested in following!

Here goes...

Little bit of history - Sammy is a 1999 1.9TD (XUD9) Samurai out of the Santana factory. I bought her in Spain back in 2013 and imported her into Gibraltar. I then drove her over to Southampton where she lived whilst I was at uni but when her MOT ran out she went back to Gib, where she stayed with my parents for almost 3 years (in the meantime I moved permanently from Southampton to Hertfordshire). In September of last year I made the decision to drive her back again and import her fully, so I got myself a council garage to store her in and made the drive with my dad up to Calais (anyone interested in seeing the photos from this trip can find them on my instagram page "@marksticky" - we only had a few minor breakdowns!). I'm now in the process of doing all the MOT essentials, plus a few other non-essential jobs and in the long run will be doing a general on-road restoration, which I'll try and post on here when I get a minute. But for now... Here's what I've done so far!


The original speedo was only in km/h so it needed swapping! Luckily I had a mate breaking a Samurai so had the clocks out of that off him. A little modification and they now look like this... Whilst I had the dash out I also swapped the heating controls for a set that hadn't been bent (my fault - when I first bought her I didn't realise there was something stuck in the footwell vents and forced the lever). Next I changed the brake drums, scored a pair of brand new drums on Amazon for £20! And then on to the bushes... I decided on a set of OEM rubber ones from jimnybits. Of course all of the bolts were rusted solid in the sleeves so out came the angle grinder! Still got one pair left to do before the MOT. For Christmas my parents got me a steering wheel and light bar from Raptor 4x4. Annoyingly they sent the wrong steering boss, yet were addemant it was the only one that would fit my model... After many phone calls and emails I managed to get them to swap it for the correct one... Surprisingly the one they listed for diesel Samurais on their website!! More recently I got round to fitting the light bar. I wanted it mounted above the windscreen but didn't want to make any new holes so I made up some aluminium brackets that pickup on the original bonnet rest holes, these are then tapped for the light bar to mount to. One of the original holes was enlarged to take an M12 cable gland so that the light bar cable could be routed inside the cab. This is fed from a relay under the bonnet, controlled by a switch that allows for either on with main beam or permanent on. I also had to fit a fog light for the MOT. The original one was on the LHS so no good anyway but got replaced with a reverse lense when it got smashed a few years ago. One sunny afternoon I decided to tackle what I thought was going to be a 5 minute job... I was wrong. The job was to take off the fuel pipe guard in order to give it a lick of paint, easy right? Problem was the last bolt going into the captive nut in the floor was spinning freely but not coming out. In order to get to the other side of it meant the inner guard had to come off but this wouldnt happen without removing the roll bar, which wouldn't happen without removing the roof! What a pain! Got there in the end though and gave the guard a couple of coats of Buzzweld "Chassis in One" - first time using this, seemed to go on well and gave a nice finish! Whilst I had the roof off and carpet out I also cleaned up and painted any rusty patches, of which there are way less than a UK raised Samurai but still more than I was expecting to find... Don't think the Southampton rain and Gibraltar sea air were a winning combination! Sammy also needed a new windscreen for her MOT. There was a chip right in front of the driver which I repaired myself when I got her (good enough for passing a Gibraltar MOT). The original plan was to turn the screen inside out to put the chip on the passengers side but this fell through when I pushed a little hard and cracked the screen! £125 later and I've got a brand new and professionally fitted windscreen! This also gave me a chance to treat the rusty patches under the windscreen seal. Few other smaller jobs I've done:

New custom antenna - made out of 6mm aluminium bar. Wind deflectors. Leather Door Straps. Clock/voltmeter/thermometer in custom CNC cut panel in place of old coin tray. Only things left to do before the MOT are fit a new sump gasket, replace the gearbox rear oil seal and swap one of the BFG's onto the correct offset wheel. (Annoyingly 4x4 tyres sent me 3 of the wrong offset wheels when I ordered them for my Vit over 2 years ago but I didn't notice until I took them out of storage recently. They didn't have a 4th matching offset wheel in stock when I contacted them so ended up going for two matching pairs, I'll be running the slightly wider offset on the rear).

That's all for now!

Quick update...

Sammy passed her MOT with no advisories and is now finally registered with the DVLA and on UK plates!

Gotta change the timing belt etc., crankshaft pulley (new one needed machining as it would seem Suzuki machined a load of standard XUD ones to run the additional vacuum pump pulley off the crankshaft - nothings ever simple!), aux belt + tensioner, oh and rebuild the PAS pump as the bearing is knackered and the thing is now leaking oil everywhere!

After all that she'll be on the road!
Also got a couple of custom bits done...
Cheers!

So much want.
I'm throwing $1 bills at my screen, but nothing's happening.

These vehicles are still expensive out in the Iberian peninsular.... One day, they will come down. I want the LWB "Pick-up"
I'd really be interested in your opinions of the TDi.

Rabid Rhino wrote: ↑

Sat May 19, 2018 2:36 am

So much want.
I'm throwing $1 bills at my screen, but nothing's happening.

These vehicles are still expensive out in the Iberian peninsular.... One day, they will come down. I want the LWB "Pick-up"
I'd really be interested in your opinions of the TDi.

Aha! Yeah, they're not cheap and seem to hold their value over there much more than in the UK, I paid 3000€ for this one back in 2013! I think this is partly due to many of them still being used as daily drivers... and of course they rust a lot less out there!

The TD (no "i" as its indirect injection) in mine is the Peugeot/Citroen XUD9, they also put a Renault 1.9TD in some later ones - though from what i've read these weren't as good. It's very torque-y but lacks in BHP a little (63 when new), not really an issue in an SJ though! Top speed is about 70mph though i've had it doing 80 down hill before It's a pretty bomb-proof engine if maintained properly and although a little tight in the SJ's engine bay it's relatively easy to work on. I'd choose it over any of the Suzuki petrol engines in a Samurai. Does about 30MPG too!

So, as I said in a previous post, Sammy's power steering pump needed a rebuild due to the bearing being knackered. I figured I'd document the process here incase anyone ever has a similar issue (only help I could find online was in Russian, although this proved very helpful in the end!).

First of all, yes I could have bought a new pump from abroad but this would have cost over £200 plus a deposit, repayable on the return of my existing pump. Second hand pumps were available for approx. £65 but at only a few years newer and from an LDV Pilot (with probably a fair few miles more on it than Sammy has) I didn't want to take the risk of it failing in the near future so decided against those too. Some other XUD engined vehicles also used the same style of pump although these all ran higher pressures than the Samurai and LDV Pilot - 100-120 bar compared to 80 bar.

My first mission was to work out how the thing came apart... After spending a while investigating I came to the conclusion the only thing holding the shaft in the pump chassis was the bearing so I set at it with a bearing puller to try and push the shaft and bearing in one out of the chassis. I guessed correctly! But the bearing fell apart instead of coming out whole :(

So then I was stuck with bearing races still attached to the shaft and chassis... I did now have access to the shaft seal and so could order the parts I needed. Like the bearing, the part number for the seal returned no results in the UK so I matched the dimensions and ordered what I thought to be the closest equivalent seal and SKF high temperature sealed bearing.

I first tried to press the pulley off the shaft in order to get to the inner bearing race, in doing this I managed to crack the pulley in two places. DOH! Then I moved on to cutting the inner race off the shaft instead, success! This gave me access to support the pulley better in order to try pressing it off again - the tool I made up to press the leaf spring bushes out (it didn't work for this as they were in too tight) worked beautifully in this case along with a bit of heat! I then pressed the pulley back in the opposite direction to close up the cracks and put a dab of weld on each to stop them getting worse over time. Then I moved on to the outer race. This is where the Russian forum post I found came in handy, they talked about the bearing being retained by the pressed aluminium housing, this is why my first attempt at pressing the whole thing out in one failed - what a pain! The aluminium covering the bearing needed to be cut away first, then I welded a piece of flat bar with an M12 nut on the underside to the bearing race and used a slide hammer attached to this to pull the race out. I then reassembled everything in the reverse order, only difference being that I used high strength Loctite bearing retaining glue to glue the bearing back into the chassis as now it wouldn't be being held in permanently by the aluminium lip. The trickiest part was probably getting the pulley back on the shaft as it is such a tight fit, heat and a heavy copper hammer (supporting the opposite end of the shaft so as to not knock it back out of the bearing) did the job in the end though! Note: the rear of the shaft sits in a needle bearing housed in the back of the pump - the needles are loose and will fall out when you take the back off - fun! Once I'd got them all back to where they were meant to be a bit of grease held them in place nicely. The veins will also fall out when you take the rotor out so watch those too! Only time will tell if this has been a success but I see no reason for it not to work...

What were they doing with locating the parts..... Find the most obscure manufaturers so you have to go to Suzuki ?
Well I did want one but if this is how hard it is to find parts, I'm not so sure.

Oh who am I chiding ? The dash alone is all the reason I need let alone the grill.

Can't wait to see it with a UK plate.

Got the timing belt done today and everything else back together in time for a bit of green laning this afternoon!

Great to see another one getting the attention it deserves. Still amazed Suzuki made a bleeding diesel though lol