Nice job, coming along good.

Does the credit card hurt yet?? 

thank you Drone637

FBJR, no i dont have one, but my wallet has been very empty since i started working on it. hasnt seen much green lately! lol but thank you.

got her on the road today!!!! she was running great, people were staring left and right. had a few people talk to me while i was sitting at a red light. then i decided to go to the local sand pit and run her around there for awhile. ran well in there. and when i left and was heading home it started to spit and sputter, it wouldnt go over 30mph. when i shut it off the battery was completly dead, then in the dark i could see the ignition coil sparking from one bolt to another by the tower. the plug wires were doing the same thing where they touched the cam cover. what the heck is wrong?! one fellow offroader said it was the ignition coil, and my local samurai guru said it was the fuel pump. so idk where to start

changed the fuel filter, got new plug wires and a new ignition coil. now i cannot get it to start!!!!!!! it turns over but will now fire? idk what is wrong 

well here was the problem.... the previous owner left a loose wire under the hood that was attached to a positive on the coil(no idea why). i never thought of just ripping it out bc it didnt cause any problems until the other day. the wire actually welded itself to the frame shorting out. which in turn blew the fuse that is in the ignition coil system. i checked to fuse, it was blown, replace the fuse and it fired right up first shot. now my battery is staying charged, no more sputtering and i now have a new fuel filter, coil and plug wires.

learned a lesson with it all, sometimes its the little stuff that messes everything up. sometimes just gotta slow down and think simple.

Glad you were able to get it working again!

me too.  im having a ball finally driving it on the road(and off)

well to it to Mudders Day on saturday. was having a blast and made it through the smaller mud holes just fine. slipped a bit bc my tires arent very good. but i got ballsy... i went into the big mud pit! where my cousins International Scout with 38" boggers and a chevy 350 had just gotten stuck, needless to say i got stuck. well he went to pull me out and ended up pulling me towards a tree stump and my left rear tire hung up on it. all his power pulled my whole sammi out except the one tire. snapped my main leaf into two and bent my bumper at a 45. ratchet strapped the leaf up in the bracket and drove her 10miles to my house. all in all a very good day. it was a freakin blast. second time i took her out in the mud and i had the most fun ive had in awhile!!! even with the breaking

after much thinking, researching and alittle bit of joking with my cousin i think i have planned this winters major project(roughly). im thinking a heart transplant a a new set of axles...  4.3 V6 and a dana44 front and dana60 rear. my cousin wants me to buy his axles from his internation scout so he can put 1tons under it and that got me thinking. so im currently on the search for an s10 or a blazer with a decent 4.3 to start overhauling, a basic tune up for it, make it look pretty and convert it to a carb(mainly for simplicity). going to try and keep it a manual. and since im going to be so much wider with the axles probably going to try and find 4-6inch lift YJ springs  to make her even taller. or possibly 4 link with charged shocks so no need for coils or springs. gotta work out the finer details but thats a rough plan. what ya'll think?

Going to be big.    Are you stretching the wheelbase and flat fendering at the same time?  One of the issues with performing a full swap like this is that your removing a lot of what makes it a Sammy.  Instead of heaving a small, light wheeler that can get through stuff by tossing it around your going with a larger, heavier big hp rig that just doesn't have much interior space and took a lot of work to get there.

You might be better off just sticking with the S10 you find and putting the axles under it.

i only want to stretch it alitttle bit, still be under 100 thats for sure. i dont want it looking too stretched out and lose my short wheelbase.

and i've thought about losing the narrow width, and thought of possibly toyota axles or wagoneer axles bc they arent as wide as dana 60's but alittle wider than samurai axles. just dont know if they will hold up to the 200hp of the 4.3 and 37" boggers..

my samurai is more of a mud/open trails rig. there isnt anywhere im really going to go that a J**p on 1tons and an International Scout on dana 44's hasnt gone. plus i like the open top, no doors, small interior space of a samurai. an s10 just wouldnt suit me as well.

Sounds like a lot of work, $$$ and a ton of extra weight! Its your samurai and you can do what you want to it, but I agree with Drone about it being too big, not that it wouldn't be a cool rig, but it's a little to soon to be tearing it apart again! Drive it for a while and have some fun with it first and then decide if you want to go bigger and how big you want to go, and by then you could have some $$ saved up for it and once you find some diffs and a motor and have them all fixed up and as close to being ready to bolt up as you can before you tear your Sammy apart, that way you get the most drive time with it, instead of it sitting on blocks and jack stands for 6-8 months at a time like mine has been, it's missed the last two springs of muddy trails(my favorite time to go wheeling) because of it being tore apart. I'm not saying don't go bigger, just try and have as much fun as you can with it before you have to tear it apart again.  

As for Toyota diffs not holding up to 200HP and 37's, maybe not stock but if you get longfield shafts they should hold up fine since longfields website says they are stronger then a stock Dana 60 axle shaft! and Toyota diffs would be way lighter then a dana 44 and 60, and if you want to be a bit wider then the stock toy diffs then get TrailGears Rockassalt diffs (3" wider then the stock width) and you can get the front diff offset to the right or the left, so you could spin the left hand drop one around to make it a right hand drop for a rear diff for 4 wheel steering! But plan to spend 7-10 grand to build the diffs with ARB's and get hydraulic steering.
 
As for the motor a 2 liter 4cyl (125HP/135 ft pounds of torque) with a aluminum block would be a lot lighter then a V6 with a steel block, and it would still be double the HP of the stock 1.3 liter.


    

well getting the parts together this summer, im starting to look for axles and a motor and what not. i want to get the motor within the next month so that i can start rebuilding it now and get it done before this winter, along with axles. and i will be doing the motor rebuild myself. i live in upstate NY so i will only get the summer and fall to drive it anyway bc my samurai has alot of holes and is not a winter vehicle. and for where i wheel width is not a problem, i drive down trails that are already widened by my cousins jeep and international scout, both on 60's. we have found one place where it was a problem and it wasnt even that bad. i have found my weak points, with what little wheeling i have done i have found what could be better, im not going to keep wheeling something that i know could be better. 

i would do toy's but the extra money it would be to go through them and build them to take 200-300 HP would make them ridiculously expensive. when i can buy 60's and be just as strong only doing a minor rebuild of them. and like you said 7-10grand to build toys is ridiculous.

there is a guy with a tube buggy samurai with a motor(not sure exactly what) putting out 150HP and 37's and its a dog. i have alot of woods trails, alot of mud, a few sand pits and alittle rock. the mud and pits are the usually spots and i need all the HP i can get. 150HP just doesnt give enough to make the thing move and climb all the washouts. by going with the 4.3 V6 it puts out 200HP stock, slight mods to the motor and i can easily be putting out 300HP. the biggest i want to go is 38's so i'd have plety of power.

also, most of the samurai's i have seen have tracker motors, 2.0's, toy axles, blah blah blah all the same types of mods. i want to go big, i want a more unique sammi. big, alot of HP an keep the body as samurai looking as possible(i love the look of em). i enjoy just going out and having fun in my samurai, but when i try something and dont make it, it makes me want a rig that can. i've always lived by the go big or go home mentality. im going big bc i wont go home without making every obstical i try. it'll be a big samurai, it will take away from the light and small meaning of the samurai, but its what i want, i can see it being a badass rig and being something i would love. so thats what im going to work towards.

i've done a good bit of research and from what i can tell rebuilding the motor(will be done before its tore apart), fitting everything and doing a 4-link front and rear will be the hardest parts of the build. but im confident in my ability to build it and have it done by this time next year. i'll have the motor and axles rebuilt before i tear it down. i want to mock everything; motor, driveline, 4 link together. test them then tear it down and go through the frame, strengthen and make "rust proof". then go through the body and replace panels, floor pan and "rust proof" that. and for all that i'll have 5-6 months of cold, snow covered weather where i wouldnt be able to drive it anyhow

Im suprised to see you didnt get more responses to your posts when you ran into trouble. Did you post elsewhere for help?

no, i just went outside and figured it out. wnt through everything i could go through to figure it out.