About to buy a Jimny in Japan...

It's the same with any classic car , trying to buy the best you can offset against your ability to keep up with the maintenance and repairs. Personally I'd spend more now as I'm not as happy laid on my back welding patches into cars as I used to be.

fella wrote: great info thanks kindly. The one we liked was original paint and had been stored inside as there was not even sun fade and had no rust other than the creeping in at the body mounts. the wind screen wiper is a great tip, i'll shall make sure to look at that.

the body mounts and riggers are my biggest concern at the moment, i have had sills done before on vw's as its relatively easy to obtain pattern panels and not so stressful. on this though, its the cab mount sections that scares me. i am starting to think maybe better to drop a bit more cash here to get a good one in these areas and suffer the extra duty/vat to be paid on import.

Riggers on the frame are very seldom rusted here. Most old SJ's have severe body rust with large parts lost, but the frame has just surface rust.
body mounts and front floor and inside sills are the most pain to fix.

And do drop more cash into it. If i had bught a better starting point i would probably be driving it now, but it still hangs in the body roller waiting for me to get the inspiration to weld and fix all of the rust.
I bought my current 1987 long weel base for approx 400£ 3-4 years ago, sold parts for 300£ off it, and planning to throw parts for 10000£ on it..

Here is a project of mine from years back for inspiration. Body was gone, but the frame was good.
used a body tub from another car and the frame from this one.
Never completed it but was sold on when i was done doing the rust on the body..

So after being let down by banks and all sorts of faf, we have finally bought one!

Attempt 1 was a '89 limited edition 'scott' with tinted windows fancy alloys and was rated 4/5 on the auction sheet. Signed sealed contracts and made the transfer, only for the sellers bank to refuse the transfer as he gave us the wrong business name. That brought great shame upon us and they refused to try agian and cancelled the deal.

We had now given up as this was 2 weeks before we were due to leave, only for something to come up 48 hours before we left town. A friend knew a friend....

Will update with pictures when i get them, only saw the car for 5 minutes before i had to go to work but it's newer than i wanted but was cheap and in very good condition. The only snag is see is that these cars were never int he uk in under any guise so parts may become interesting if need be... we bought a

ja22 Landventure, 0.6 litre turbo intercooler!

pictures to follow.

Remember to rust proof it before you go near our roads.

Japan does not use salt on their roads, so the JDM cars are not treated like the ones for export.

Other than that- enjoy!

I give you the Ja22w or Sj413. Coil sprung on the same basic chassis as the british Sj's. Previous owner treated the underside. It has a couple of small blemishes on the paintowrk, has been resprayed relatively recently and has a lot of wax thats not been buffed off, hence the paint looks a bit dodgy in the pictures.



Arrives in June!