What did you do to your jimny today?

Daniel30 wrote: Thanks Steve yeah sounds like a plan, I like to dabble with the detailing but I'm no pro but understand the basic routine :laugh:
My god no I couldn't imagine a seagull dropping its guts on that lovely roof I think I would cry :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

One of the main reasons that I like to get some decent protection on the paintwork, is that it is not unusual to get it bombed two or three times a day.

One of the benefits of living a couple of hundred yards from the sea. :whistle:




Steve.

Today I focused on sorting out the radius arms that I had bought second hand. I still have mine on the car but I wanted to just do a straight swap. As previously mentioned I picked up these (actually bette condition) radius arm set for £30 locally on facebook marketplace. They were thick of mud, but when you scratched them they had layers of paint and underseal - looks like they had been looked after at some point! Here's what they looked like at the start:

Spend a few hours carefully cutting and knocking out the existing bushes - some came out dead easy, others took a little bit more grunt:

Got the angle grinder out with a sandpaper end and started to grind away the layers of gunk on the arms. Worked really well and only took about an hour for all 4 of them to clean up around the edges. Also used a soft wire brush on the end of a Dremel to lightly scrub some of the marks from the inside of the bush housing.

Took a drill with a wire brush end to them after to get the other bits:

Got two coats of red hammerite on, still might put another 1 or 2 on:

The whole experience reminded me of building a model car when I was younger, hence why I snapped this picture with one of my old model paint brushes!

While layers of paint were drying, I was getting soaked under the car as it decided to bucket down mid steering damper installation.

Whilst I was soaked, and the car was still jacked up I decided to pop on a rear diff protector as most of the 4x4'ing I do is in a local quarry where there are jagged rocks all over the place (had a close call last time I was out). Front one will fit next week, hopefully with the new radius arms and bushes.

I installed a kill switch for battery under the hood.

I installed Alexa in the jimmy today, prime day deal echo input £15.00 now i can choose millions of songs just by voice and everything else you can do with Alexa turn on heating and lights at home :lol: traffic updates in the area etc

Today was a long day! The plan was to swap out the battered radius arms on the Jimny with some that I recently picked up cheap and had painted. The new radius arms had brand new standard bushes in at the axle and polybush orange at the chassis. The plan was simply cut out all of the bolts - don't even attempt to unbolt them. I did not anticipate 20 year old bolts coming out nicely even with plenty of WD40 or blowtorching!

Firstly we got the car jacked up and started on the driver side rear. After about half an hour of hacking away the bolts the arm came loose.

Bad news, the front mount on the axle had snapped and was completely detached from the axle. Looks like it was very thin after knocking the crud off it, I think it's simply been flexed too much and torn, due to the bush being absolutely hollowed out in that area.

Got to work creating a template bracket with some spare metal sheet (5mm thick) and started to shape it:

Little test fit. Bracket closest to the hub reaches from front to back to reinforce the whole mount, and a smaller bracket was welded to what was left on the other side. The brackets were made a little bit bigger this time to make them more robust.

View from the back - same test fit with the new radius arm:

Not having ever welded before, I was fortunate enough to have a go of my dads welder - its old...(the welder)...and its' from the early 2000's when he used to go greenlaning in his Suzuki Samurai. I dragged up a couple of photos of what that used to look like - coincidentally I recently recovered a load of the photos from some ageing CD's!

Welders look away now... got the brackets tacked on in position, then got to work "welding" (if you can call it that! Not the prettiest job, but it seems to be damn strong!) - took my time to not heat up the axle too much so did max 30 seconds of welding then gave it a few minutes to cool down in between as to not upset any bearings or oils.

Seemed to be holding well when the wheel was put back on. No splitting or popping from the metal.

Fitted the arms with some of those protector plates on the chassis - they were an arse to get on as the mount needed to shaved a little bit, the plate itself had to be cut and it was just a pain in the arse, but hopefully it will serve the car well longer term!

Did the same for the other side which was a straight swap. Also fitted some rear shock re-locator brackets as it was a 5 minute job when I still had the tools out:

Next weekend I'll try to get the front ones done as the bushes are equally as shot there. It's going to the garage tomorrow to get a new exhaust and clutch, so fingers crossed that will make this little thing sound and go properly

Fitted a center armrest.

Two usb ports on the front.

Three to the rear, along with a cup holder.

Steve.