January, 2004

The Story of the SJ

Ah.... the SJ!

Maybe two years ago we picked up this quality Suzuki SJ 410 for the princely sum of £200. The idea was to use it for the Plymouth - Dakar rally which involves buying a banger, driving it from Plymouth, all the way down to Dakar, then auctioning it off when you arrive and giving the proceeds to a local charity. It all seemed like a fantastic idea, but due to Pete and I both being at university, time, work and budget constraints prevented us from going on the mission. Furthermore, the rules were changed such that only left hand drive cars were permitted entry.




Nevertheless, we decided to put a bit of work into the beast and maybe even sell it one day... possibly...

So it was pretty tired when we first picked it up, first up we gave it a good clean, and polish; it ended up looking OK.


 Next, we gave it a mechanical once-over. We figured some brake fluid would be handy in the brake system since it seemed to be running on air, so we topped that up, and then checked all the brakes. A couple of the rear pistons had been sticking, so they were dismantled and cleaned. One of the seals had come loose which was what resulted in the loss of fluid. The hand-brake was also tightened to get it working nicely.
The brakes seemed to be better now, but needed to be used for a few miles in order to clean up the front disks. Interestingly this beast doesn't even have a servo, so you get a beefy right thigh when driving this thing.



 The engine and transmission seemed Ok, although there's a slight leak in the lower gasket. It's really not worth the effort taking the engine apart though for a couple of drops of oil. The 4WD system appeared to be working a treat. The free-wheel hubs up front also were all working. It seems these jeeps don't need much love to continue working!

The distributor contacts were cleaned up, and the plugs + HT leads replaced as they were proper tired. For a two hundred quid POS, the SJ was mechanically pretty good. The bodywork needed a bit of attention, though. The wheels and protective bars were sanded and given a lick of paint. The big problems were a 1-inch wide 'speed' hole that went straight through the bonnet and extensive rust on the folding windshield. The windshield rust had formed from where the mounting hinge was mounted and ran the entire length of the frame.

The bonnet repair was quite straight forward. Pete ground out the hole and cut back until he reached clean metal. The hole was bridged with mesh and filled with fibreglass, then carefully sanded with fine grade paper until flush with the original bodywork.



The windscreen surround was significantly trickier. Not only was the rusted region structural in that it supported the windscreen, it was also in such a bad way that far too much metal had come away for a simple fibreglass bridge to be effective.

Before cutting away rust areas, a template of the front was taken so we had an idea of dimensions. Next, all the rusty areas were ground away until decent metal was found.
The net was sent to a local metal fabrication company along with precise dimensions. A few days later we received a nice aluminium plate. The original plan of having the mount wrap around the edges was rejected at this stage as the new plate didn't quite fit perfectly. It was therefore trimmed down until it would sit in place perfectly.
Primer was sprayed to cover up any of the original exposed metal, otherwise the whole thing would be even worse within a few months. We then used pop rivets to mount the new plate in place. Pete applied body filler to the edge and sanded it down to make it all that bit more weatherproof. Holes for the wiper mechanism were created and the wipers installed.

Finally, the bonnet and the screen surround were masked up, primed, painted and lacquered. Another couple of coats of lacquer would have been handy, but it was a crazy price and the four or so coats it already had should be enough for the beast (it's not exactly going to be entered into concours competitions!).

Overall, yeah it's a piece of crap and the repairs are pretty much just hole-plugging, but it's always good fun to put some TLC into a dying beast...