1984 Suzuki SJ410

[DavidB]

I found some damage so got a cutting

 

I wish I had joggled the edge of this, but it's done now.

I made a new corner bit,

 

I made both sides, left side used no body filler, right side is stronger though.

I found some rust in the roof. I’m not saying "this is the last of the rust sorted on this thing" anymore.
I think this will be easy to do maybe, it's just bent metal and I'll joggle the edges in so welding will be simple.

 

thetes a ‘dent’ in the front corner that is visible when you close the door, it has always bothered me, so I reckon I’ll be able to pull it out with this roof repair.

 

I’m glad to say I’ve only used a tiny bit of filler on the whole car so far. The difference a really good mig welder makes.

 

 

 

[DavidB]

The fella next door also cleaned up and sprayed my bumpers - i put a load of Raptor on the insides. I’ll keep these at home, I’ll only ruin them somehow.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Brilliant work! Great to see it looking so solid. I still love the look of SJs - honestly can't remember the last time I saw one in the wild. 

[Minimad5]

Smashing it Dave 😎

[DavidB]

I rebuilt the engine on this (pistons, rings, valve, stem seals, gaskets etc), I got everything clean and shiny, haven’t done the carb yet as it works fine and I don’t want to take it apart. STILL waiting (three weeks) for new water pump to come! I can’t do anything til then.

 

 

 

I made a start on that roof which was a mess, I was a bit worried about this as it’ll probably warp or something with the heat but I reckoned on just cutting out lung strips as it would at least be the same shape along the whole length.

I wanted a joggler but how hard can it be to make a ridge for ace welding?

This worked better than I expected

Rain stopped my weldering so I’ll finish off next week, or this week, depending on my motivation to burn my hands.

Has anyone tried that lead loading thing, or is it pointless vs body filler?

[DavidB]

I’ve fully built the engine up, everything’s timed up and ready to go on the chassis

I got every single bolt nut and bracket zinc plated -professionally- on the car, there’s about 8kg of metal in a big box, and took a month to get back, wasn’t expecting it to be this shiny. Worth every penny and the wait IMO.  I can’t remember where most of these go unfortunately

 

im waiting on some other bits to come so hopefully will arrive this week so I can get it fully mobile and can get the body in for tidying up and last bit of welding.

[DavidB]

I spent the weekend weldrogificating the roof and did a good job I reckon wit only a skim of filler, also managed to pull out the crunch on the front roof corner with a crowbar. I think Suzuki decided against using tin foil for the body on these and went a bit thicker, you have to be careful with the angle grinder cleaning up the welds as the welder will blow holes in it. My poor welder had its work cut out over the past year.

 

[DavidB]

I got the powder coating stuff back - they only gave me half the leaf springs back, as they had mislaid them. Half an hour of searching, and they were in with a set of gates and were a different colour (black) to the rest of the springs (anthracite). 🤷‍♂️

Could finally get chassis back together again and get it rolling, and get space back in my garage.

 

After finishing off the body, I manually mounted it back on the chassis, manhandling it with an engine crane and all manner of things, and finally got it up and over the engine,

I started to put a base primer coat on the exterior, was gr8 fun, but remembered about a the mudflap mounts I made about eight months ago, so welded them on, and made little tidy mounts for the bottoms of the plastic arches.

I can't believe it's been off the road for four months, hopefully closer to completion now, but I think I said that last August.

Some hero made these on 'thingiverse', and they're really a good fit - apart from being grey, but I think I'll redo them in black.

I really like the dark grey, but not sure on the VW/Audi grey I want or the other shades of blues, or even more neutral shades like coffee or olive. I really like the current British Gas van colour, I like the blue in general as all the hardware on the car is black.

[Asimo]

Marvellous progress with this.

Colour? What about this new Jimny yellow? Keep the colour in the family and contemporary with the rebuild?

[Sir Chocolate Teapot]

Great work as always. This will be fantastic when finished

[hpi_matrix]

@DavidB any updates on project (or ready to sell ;))

[DavidB]

I spent ages flatting this back so there weren't any imperfections.

 

I got round to buying 2.5 litres of Porsche Crayon Grey, never knew paint was so expensive, and I had to buy more of it.

 

Off comes the body again

It went up on the ramp:

 

Everything got covered in fancy filler primer which hides a many imperfections as my Suzuki body is like the surface of the moon

After a bit of flatting and cleaning up, managed to get the first, second and third coat of M9A on. Did everything, including the interior and underside. Used 2.5 litres on the whole thing, and still have to do the doors, odd metal panels and the final coat.

How to get the ramp back down because it depends on the weight of the car but the body weighs nothing ... ?

This should be back on the chassis on the weekend and then I have to figure out where everything goes (again).

[Parky]

That’s a thing of beauty.  Always liked these and that colour is perfect.  What  sort of paint did you use and is there a clearcoat on it?

[Sir Chocolate Teapot]

Always a pleasure to see this updated, as always, great work.

[DavidB]

On 25/09/2021 at 01:12, Parky said:

That’s a thing of beauty.  Always liked these and that colour is perfect.  What  sort of paint did you use and is there a clearcoat on it?

It’s ‘Direct Gloss’, no idea what that means, painter said get it, there’s no clear coat needed fortunately. I wanted the underside and interior done as well so used quite a bit, it was just over £250 for 3.5 litres, it’s nice though.

[Parky]

It is nice, a lovely finish with it.  Looks like it’s a 2k acrylic.  Haven’t heard of it before, will have to see if it’s available over here

[Fumbler]

10 hours ago, DavidB said:

It’s ‘Direct Gloss’, no idea what that means, painter said get it, there’s no clear coat needed fortunately. I wanted the underside and interior done as well so used quite a bit, it was just over £250 for 3.5 litres, it’s nice though.

Direct gloss means it's a single coating that will come out glossy and shiny without needing use of a lacquer. It's brilliant stuff.

[DavidB]

I finished everything on this a few weeks ago, and got it booked in for an MOT last week at 8.30. Unfortunately woke at 8.29 as I was knackered and they wouldn't rebook me in, so went with another place for tomorrow!

There was a weird clonking from the front slowing/coasting to a stop - I rechecked every bolt underneath the front and a few weren't exactly tight.

As I tightened the very last one (possibly the LAST thing to do on this car), I noticed smoke pouring from inside the cabin and on investigation, the interior was one fire. Throwing whatever containers of rainwater I had lying round didn't help so connected the water hose up and dowsed the entire thing with water. Not sure what or why it decided to self-immolate itself at this moment, took the new paint off with it though.
So close to getting this on the road as well. Does anyone know of anyone that breaks these - they only made this specific dashboard/wiring loom etc for a few years and the later one won't fit.
 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

2 minutes ago, DavidB said:

I finished everything on this a few weeks ago, and got it booked in for an MOT last week at 8.30. Unfortunately woke at 8.29 as I was knackered and they wouldn't rebook me in, so went with another place for tomorrow!

There was a weird clonking from the front slowing/coasting to a stop - I rechecked every bolt underneath the front and a few weren't exactly tight. As I tightened the very last one (possibly the LAST thing to do on this car), I noticed smoke pouring from inside the cabin and on investigation, the interior was one fire. Throwing whatever containers of rainwater I had lying round didn't help so connected the water hose up and dowsed the entire thing with water. Not sure what or why it decided to self-immolate itself at this moment, took the new paint off with it though. W T F

Frustrating as you were so close to the final hurdle! Did you work out what the cause was?

[DavidB]

I think it was the radio as the actual wiring loom didn’t look damaged (only the plugs directly above it from flames).

I drove to Wiltshire to retrieve replacement bits today from an SJ that’s been rusting away in a barn, but it appears they made things slightly different in this 85 version to my 84, and then again in 86. What a pain. A 12 hour round journey thanks to m6 so I’ll make them fit. Grr

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Frustrating, but at least it survived the flames after all your hard work. 

[grogee]

I let out an actual "Ooohhh" as I read your post about the thermal event. 

Mrs Grogee thought someone had died!

It's worse than that. I'm so, so sorry that this happened to you. I don't know how you weren't morally crushed after watching all your hard work go up in flames. 

We're all rooting for you, this is a solid gold resto. I'm in awe of your bodywork skills. 

[DavidB]

I found someone who had a spare mouldy old SJ of a similar age rotting away in a barn! Unfortunately he was 200 miles away. What else am I going to do, so I set off and returned 12 hours later (M6 😥) with everything I needed.

I removed most of the dashboard, which looked mostly like this

And attempted to fit the new stuff - alas they changed the design slightly for one year (relocated the intake grille from side to centre) and literally none of the dashboard internals fit properly. I hashed it up so at least I had a working heater for MOT.

The fire had melted the wiper linkage plastics, and attempting to take them off the mouldy SJ resulted in the plastic cracking, so I ordered a new set from India.

Alas, they wouldn’t fit because changed the position of the etc etc you know the story by now.

Here's some post fire damage photos - apart from a couple of melted plugs, the wiring loom was completely undamaged. Weird. I think it was the wire to the stereo.

[Matty]

Keeping plugging, can't let the bastard beat you

[DavidB]

Spent most of the day on it, those heater bowden cables are an absolute swine and either work or don't, in my case the latter. I set them all on the settings I wanted and there's no chance of moving them by the levers as the cables are probably not routed correctly.

I cut and rewelded the wiper linkages (made one shorter, the other one longer) and they appear to work OK, but have ordered new wiper arms from India (£5 free p&p and it gets here in less than a week - ridiculous). The quality isn't always the best, but the linkages were pretty good, and I've not really had problems the multiple times I've bought from there in the past.

I put everything back in, and ran the car for over an hour. It seems to start and run without any choke, I just wasn't turning it over for long enough. It felt nice to get everything warmed up without fear of something catching fire/exploding and get the interior dried out.

I stuck it back in the garage and put the badges on I lifted from the barn dwelling SJ. Painted them with a brush and spray paint in the rattle can lid.

 

[mercedade]

Holy shit, the patience of a saint.

Two of the best threads running here, and both of them involve levels of misery and setbackery that I'm not sure I could handle even on my best days.

Gold stars, man. Gold stars.

[DavidB]

I MOT’d this a couple of months ago, it failed on a completely seized rear brake cylinder and plate lights.

it’s been nice to drive really, new suspension has made such a difference!

How much do y’all reckon this would be worth as I’m thinking of selling, worried it’ll end up fifty foot in the air covered in chequer plate and painted matte green.

[tom13]

This is so good. I'm sure it's worth more than I can afford at the moment though.

[Back_For_More]

This has kept me riveted for the last hour - I love these things but would've thrown in the towel for sure....... Patience and persistence to envy. It's looking absolutely fantastic and a mobile showcase for sure. 

In it's current state it's got to be worth a fair chunk - but that could mean you end up with potential buyers all belonging to the checkerplate OLLI brigade....... Not much you can control once it's out of your hands though.

It's a corker - just to make that abundantly clear. Well done mate

[warch]

Great thread, completely passed me by last year. I also know the pain and embuggerance of seeing all my hard work getting destroyed (albeit by crash damage rather than fire). I've always loved these little 4x4s, they're unbelievably capable and pretty cheap to own and run.