Another green laner build

Les Im interested .Have you got a plan / neat idea for where to carry the hilift jack on the jimny?

I'm not sure about the hilift. I'm not a fan of carrying them outside on the door. I have removed the rear seats so I have a reasonable amount of room in the back. I'm looking for a light weight shorter hilift. The Jimny doesn't need the strength or lift height of  a standard hilift. If I can't find one I'll probably shorten a normal hilift. It should then be possible to mount it upright in the back.

I did some testing on the receiver locking mechanism. With a 6mm locking plate it fails at about 7 tonnes. This is a test using an 8mm locking plate. Interestingly it only went to about 7.5 tonnes. Either way, it's no going to break in this application.
 

I had hoped to use 40x40, 4mm wall box section for the receivers with 30x30 inserts. However after some testing I found the inserts are plenty strong enough for towing but due to the overhang, when jacking they fail at about ~750kg. It's probably enough but it's a but too close for my liking. I ended up stepping up a size with 50x50 4mm wall receivers and 40x40 inserts. That will be plenty strong.

The front chassis legs have crumple zones. If I just weld a chunk of 2" thick wall box on top it's going to mess with the crumple zones. After thinking about it, I machined off a lot of the box section. Here's one done and one being CNC machined.
 

With the box section in place the gaps bridge the crumple zones.
 

The front bumper is cut away for the receivers. This amount of material removal has weakened the bumper quite a lot. I think I'll have to make some extra bumper mounts to add support. Once the receivers are painted body colour they shouldn't be too glaringly obvious.
 

The rear ones a a bit less obtrusive.
 

From the other side. There will be triangular braces extending the rear of the chassis down to the receiver to add strength.
 




 

Les, you are out there man, in the creative flow it is a form of mechanical art man. Really enjoy and envy your ability and creative imagination, it's making me think beyond the reassembly that I do.

Thanks. I've involved in manufacturing and software most of my life so I've had a bit of practice in solving problems and making things work.

More progress. Rear receivers installed. They aren't going to break!
 

Fronts welded in place.
 

An expensive present. I'm still waiting for the locking diffs to turn up.  These two purchases pretty much equal what I paid for the Jimny.
 

With the welding about done, time to deal with the head gasket. After removing the head I checked it for straightness and it was pretty good with a tiny bit of twist. Clamping it to the milling machine was enough to pull out the twist. It looks like I found the problem. The head has sunk between the cylinders, probably due to overheating. This is after the first cut. You can see how the edges have cut but the middle is untouched. It took about 0.08mm total to clean up, which is a heck of lot less than I needed to take off the Copelander's head. I'll grind the valves and reinstall it tomorrow.
 
 

Ho hum, less progress than I hoped today. I ground and reinstalled the valves then made the mistake of checking the valve clearances. All are bigger than spec. Even the biggest shims Suzuki supply won't be enough. On closer examination all of the buckets are worn where they contact the valve heads. My options are:

• Buy new buckets and shims. Likely to be pretty expensive + possible availability issues.
• Buy the biggest shims Suzuki supply. The clearances will be up to 0.05mm out of tolerance.
• I believe some Toyotas use the same diameter shims so maybe try to locate some bigger Toyota shims.
• Say F it and just reassemble as-is. The engine ran fine before. The clearances are up to 0.1mm out of spec. I can't see that making a lot of difference to power. It will affect valve train life slightly but this car isn't going to do major mileage. I bet most of these engines with decent mileage have the same issue.

Well, problem solved. Buying all Suzuki replacement parts would cost £500+. Rather more than I'm willing to pay considering it will probably not make a noticeable difference to performance. I went for plan E and made thin shims to put under the existing shims.  About £15 in shim stock plus a couple of hours cutting them roughly to size then finishing on the lathe.
There's not much to show here but the head is now done and reinstalled. I need to wait until the painting is finished before I can test it.

While I was waiting for the Suzuki dealer to get back to me the diffs arrived. I started a separate thread on my experience with them.

The end is nigh! I just need to repaint the front, spray more waxoyl and and put everything back together. It's nice to see it finally off the ramp after 2 months.  I moved it to the 'spray shop' (basically a tent made from 2x4 wood and plastic sheet with a big fan blowing outside).

Many roloc discs later and all of the rusty paint is removed and all surfaces sanded ready for primer. I'm not going for a show finish here. I just want a uniform colour without rust bubbles.

 

2K epoxy primer on and drying. This stuff covers a multitude of sins. I may just have enough time for at least one colour coat later this evening.

 


 

Base and clear applied. Not the best spray job I've ever done but it does the job. I ony had just enough 2K clear. You know it's tight when you end up washing the last traces out of the cans with thinner to make sure you get all of it. This was left over from a previous project and when I checked a few days ago the cans they felt like they had more in them than they actually did. As it turns out I ran out pretty much as I finished the last coat!

 

Looking good

Shame about the faff around with the diffs. They looked promising.

Yes, the front diff was a bit disappointing. So far the response from HF has not been great. The sales lady doesn't seem to really understand what is wrong.

Today was mostly spent reassembling everything. When I started the engine for the first time after doing the head it spat about a pint of water out the tail pipe. I had a minor heart attack until I realized it was probably left over from the original leaky gasket.
My previous intermittent starting issue came back as well. The good news is that I finally figured out the fault. The bad news is that it's a sensor that has to be ordered in so that kills my plan to take it for a test drive/green laning run this weekend. At least I managed to take it for a quick play in the field and prove the lockers work.
Oh well, I can spend the weekend tidying up and making the towing/jacking inserts. I may even get time to rig up some mounts for the sand ladders. They should fit neatly on the roof rails.

First the good news - the jacking/towing insert idea works.  It even looks fairly close to my cad drawing.

 

Here it is installed on the front.

 

Now for the bad news - I took it for a bit of a test drive and there was a lot of bearing noise from the rear diff. When I installed the locker I cut corners by leaving the pinion alone. It turns out the large pinion bearing is toast. I don't know why I didn't notice the bearing noise on test drive when I bought it. Hopefully the new bearings, seal and crush tube will be in sometime this week. Lesson learned - when fitting lockers don't half ass the job. I did the same on the front but that diff has had very little use and it sounds good so it should be fine.