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Aqualu’s ability to simulate the Samurai’s body with aluminum defies description. With a coat of paint, it would be hard to tell the two apart.
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The cancer for any older Japanese vehicle is rust, and the last owner got creative in his attempts to hide the truth.
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The level of thought and detail makes installation so much easier, all the mounts, holes, venting and bracing is built into each tub.
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The body didn’t go without a fight; I destroyed many Philips head sockets trying to get rusty fasteners off. The best method was to heat up the bolts with a torch, hammer the largest Philips head into the nut, than take an air gun to it. It will either come out or blow the Philips grooves into a crater. More than a couple nuts came off at the end of a grinder wheel.
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Not all disassembly went as planned, so the plasma cutter was called upon to hasten the process of body removal.
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We unbolted all the panels and body mounts, disconnecting all wires and hoses and didn’t forget to disconnect the emergency brake before lifting the steel body off. Two emergency brake brackets and latches for the hood and doors will need to be transferred over.
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The Aqualu body comes an amazing amount of tabs, mounts and connection points so that reassembly is quick and easy. Here you can see the emergency brake mount with appropriate tabs to lock the line down.
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With the body off, I found that the frame was in very good condition, only a little bit of surface rust. I cleaned up the rust with a flapper wheel on the grinder, hammered out the body mount bushing and cleaned out the mounts with a grinder than gave all the naked steel a good coat of rust inhibiter paint. With the paint dry, fresh poly bushings from Low Range Off-Road get dropped in.
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Bryan and I picked up the body and tossed in on the frame to align body mounts and fitments.
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The front body mounts lined up perfectly. We test mounted with stainless hardware to hold the front mounts as rear mounts needed to be drilled. To keep the body from corroding, stainless steel fasteners, plastic washers and strips of rubber tubing will be used to completely insulate alloys from steel.
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Not every hole is provided considering that not everyone is after the stock look. We test fit the windshield, measured twice, then punched the centre before drilling a hole. This isn’t like building a picnic table; every hole needs to be drilled accurately. There’s no tossing a mistake in the bin and heading back down to the shop to get another.
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It’s not quite a plug and play experience. Several holes need to be drilled and some tapped for hardware. Aqualu welded double tabs in the door hinge and windshield area for added strength; we taped through the aluminum to accept the appropriate hardware.
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The current state. We have the body and upper greenhouse body test fitted. We still need to give the body an undercoat and complete more corrosion insulation before we do final fitting, stay tuned.
Story and photos by Budd Stanley
Wood screws, Bondo and 10 cans of spray foam force an about face on Project Samurai.
It has been a long, dirty, oily experience, but finally the VW 1.6L TDI engine is fully rebuilt and now ready for installation into the patiently sitting Samurai. Loading up the heartless Sammy on a trailer, I invade Technical Editor, Bryan Irons, happy place, aka his back yard shop, to surgically install life back into the Sammy. What could go wrong?
The plan was to pull the front end off the Sammy to make the process of installing the engine easier as well as clean up some of the body. There was some worrying spray foam sticking out of a couple locations, some bubbling paint and the odd Robertson wood screw found in odd locations, so I wanted to clear out the cancer and restore the Sammy back to like new condition.
Tearing into the body, a worrying sense began to fall over me. It appears that I heavily underestimated the structural state of the Samurai’s body and the artistry of the previous owner. He managed to shape pretty much the whole lower half of the Samurai from spray foam and loose sheet metal screwed in place with wood screws, bondoed over it all and gave it a good coat of bedliner to hide his masterpiece. My plan and schedule is quickly flying out the window. There was no way I was going to install the engine in a body in this state.
So, what to do? I am one of those people that would rather try to save a vehicle than scrap it. However, there was so little usable metal left on the Sammy, I’d need to completely rebuild the entire body. I’m just not a good enough fabricator to do that the right way. I could scrap the body and try to find one in better condition. With deadlines looming, I just didn’t have the time to source one. The answer, Aqualu!
For those who don’t know of Aqualu, they are aluminum fabrication specialists in Kelowna, BC who ship all over North America, and they just happen to be very dedicated wheelers. As such, the company builds complete aluminum bodies and body panels for several rust prone 4WD’s, such and the 40-series Land Cruiser, several Jeeps and lucky for me, the Suzuki Samurai. An added bonus is that the Suzuki riveted the VIN plate to the dash, so the Sammy will still be street legal. I gave them a call, and a couple hours later, I have a full Samurai tub, two front fenders and a front grille support tossed in the back of a truck and heading for Bryan’s.
With only the two of us required to lift it out of the truck, the first thing that we noticed was just how light the body was. Yes it’s made out of aluminum, so of course it will be light, but Aqualu don’t play around with thin metal, this stuff is thick, and is it ever sturdy. The old steel body was like a wet noodle when we pulled it off, while the Aqualu body felt like it has three, maybe four times the structural rigidity, and I’m accounting for the rust on the old body. But what really impressed me was the quality of workmanship. Each one of these bodies is a work of fabrication art. The amount of detail built into this tub is staggering, they almost completely duplicated the pressed steel original with heaps of welded aluminum. The firewall alone is crafted from 27 separate pieces of aluminum all welded perfectly in to the shape of a Samurai, complete with cutouts for steering, brakes, HVAC, wiring harnesses, speedo cable and even holes for fasteners. And it is the same throughout the whole tub, everywhere there would be a cutout or bolt hole on the original, the Aqualu tub comes ready to simply just swap everything over with minimum fuss. A couple were even pre-tapped for the right hardware. Both Bryan and I sat staring at the silver tub taking in all the details and thought put into it, so taken back that a little drip of drool began to run from both our mouths.
But it’s not going to mount itself, unfortunately, Suzuki in all their brilliance, decided to use Philips heads on all the bolts that hold major body parts together. Of course, they used the cheapest metal found on the face of the earth, so the bodies rusted at the first sight of rain, welding each fastener into its socket with impenetrable rust. So, while I was turning Philips bits into twizzlers, Bryan was swinging his plasma cutter around like it was Excalibur, and we had the body off in a couple hours. We made sure we kept the hood, doors, windshield frame and B-pillar hoop as these body parts will be placed back on the aluminum tube. We also made sure to disconnect the front hood latch, shift boot rings, and a couple brackets for the emergency brake. Inside, the entire dash, steering column, pedal box, seats and seatbelts will bolt back into their original locations.
With such a cool body, I didn’t want to cheap out on all the other little details that go along with swapping out the body, so I gave Low Range Off-Road a call and ordered up their high quality Polyurethane body bushing kit, some door limiting straps and some aluminum quick-release door hinges. The bushing kit is very nice, as Low Range make nice soft poly bushings, slightly stiffer than rubber but without the annoyances of hard poly that offer a harsh ride and likes to squeak. Likewise, the door hinges may look a little blingy, but the craftsmanship of machined billet aluminum matched the whole theme of the vehicle well and come anodized in black. I’ll dive a little deeper into them next issue.
One of the biggest things I had to take into account, and Land Rover people can back me up on this, is keeping the aluminum parts from touching steel parts. Yes, aluminum won’t rust, but a lot of people don’t realize that it does corrode through electrolysis. The science is all too much for my feeble brain, but the short story is that steel has different electrode potential to aluminum, so when the two are in contact, the aluminum will essentially corrode into a powder. So great care must be taken to insulate anywhere where the two different metals come in contact, usually with the steel bolts. In my case, I am using stainless steel nuts and bolts to mount the body and ancillaries and using plastic washer to further upgrade the insulation. Any other areas that may come in contact will get a piece of canvass or a patch from an old bike tire to keep everything segregated. It’s a bit more work and cost, but the end result is a Samurai that will never rust or corrode. And that is a very good feeling.
While I got the body and most of the panels mounted, there is still a lot of fine-tuning and alignment that requires my attention. Be sure to check back next issue to see the final fitting and finishing of the Samurai’s new body.
Aqualu
1 888-765-6714
Low Range Off-Road
1 801-805-6644