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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
1. The Clutch cable is attached to a bracket that hangs from the RRO engine mount, and adjusted for proper pedal travel.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
2. The Samurai’s throttle cable is connected to the VW mount via slotted washers provided by RRO.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
3. The supplied wiring harness looked well built, until we noticed the wires were not in the right terminals. Editor Irons made it all right as editor Stanley tends to light things on fire when he plays with electricity.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
4. RRO’s relay mount was a nice piece but suffered from the same issues as all the hardware we received in the kit. Openings needed to be filed to allow the intended components to fit properly.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
5. The RRO install manual suggests a remote fuel filter in the engine bay, and we agree. With the new engine sucking fuel from a ratty old fuel tank, keeping diesel as clean as possible is ideal.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
6. Our own Mr. Irons doesn’t mess around when he comes up with temporary solutions to big problems. Still not having the proper oil filter housing, he whipped this piece of billet art up in a couple hours late one night.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
7. Oil is passed from the JIC fittings on the block, through large high pressure hydraulic lines to a remote filter making use of the old Jetta oil filter housing and another piece of machined billet.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
8. Our RRO install manual also gave us a step-by-step process to building our own coolant lines. While the materials and some questionable bends are not completely to our liking, this will get us up and running until we sort this issue out properly.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
9. Likewise, our little Samurai radiator is not the ideal candidate for cooling duties, now that we are running a turbo diesel in the little engine bay. We rang up Summit Racing and had them send us a Flex-a-Lite TrimLine electric fan. Install was as easy as centering the fan on the radiator, fitting four mounting straps through the radiator mesh and locking them down with the lock washers. Wire the fan to the temperature switch and mount in location.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
10. The Flex-a-Lite fan proved to be just the right size, slipping in between the radiator and engine cover. With our coolant lines in place, we can now top up fluids and spark life to the VW for the first time.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
11. Like any first start, our hearts were in our mouths in anticipation of a smooth start with no horrific metal on metal sounds. After several hours of trying, we found that injector number one was spewing diesel fuel all over editor Irons lovely garage floor, and we had some significant feed issues. However, we did get her running on idle and put the first heat cycle through the VW. The Samurai lives, even if it’s coughing like a 70 year old smoker.
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Budd Stanley photos
Project Samurai - A Second Rocky Marriage
12. With the Aqualu front kit back in place, we now have a good looking Samurai, that’s almost ready for the road. Next issue of 4WDrive, we’ll sort out all the little gremlins and tell you all about those fancy tires and wheels.
By Budd Stanley
A Second Rocky Marriage - Sparking life to Project Samurai
The marriage between Samurai and VW has been a rocky road. Last issue we finally got our rebuilt Volkswagen 1.6L turbo diesel engine fitted into the little Samurai, but just getting to this point not only took several months, we lost a little bit of our sanity with four nightmare situations.
To recap, our engine was in running condition, but required a full teardown, rebuild, some machining, and new parts to be as reliable as we require. We picked up the Axis engine swap kit from RRO (Rocky Road Outfitters) to mate the fresh VW engine to our Samurai, but ran into some roadblocks with missing parts, hardware that required additional machining and a lot of pieces that just didn’t fit right. We found that our gearbox also needed a rebuild, had a hard time finding a machinist that would whittle down the flywheel, and we still don’t have the proper oil filter housing.
We begin today’s story with the engine mounted to the gearbox, and the whole package now sitting in the Samurai. While the old engine mount bushings have it all sitting a little low right now, it fits like a glove and looks as though the VW was made to sit in the engine bay of a Samurai.
Sitting nice and snug in its final resting place is one thing, getting the little bastard to run is another. Life support must now be brought to the VW and this is where a few more sleepless nights come in as the nightmares continue!
Working step by step through the processes laid out in Rocky Roads installation manual, we slowly starting hooking all the Samurai’s controlling tentacles to the engine. The driveshaft was connected to the rear of the gearbox, clutch cable connected to the actuation lever and adjusted. Using a VW throttle cable connector and RRO’s adapter washers, we mounted and set the throttle cable.
A couple of Suzuki sensors are easily plugged into VW ports, and the RRO kit is supplied with a wiring harness for the glow plugs, complete with relay. We really liked the work RRO put into the harness when we first pulled it from the box, weather proofing the connections into the relay with silicone is a nice touch. However, upon closer inspection, we found that they had wired it wrong, mixing up the ground wire and a power wire. We’d have to pull it apart and rebuild it. We also found that our last piece of hardware, the relay mount, was also in need of machining to allow the relay to fit, so another trip to the vice with a grinder. It was almost getting comical at this point.
Turning to the go-go juice, we syphoned out the varnish that had been sitting in the Samurai’s fuel tank as best we could, and blew the lines clean with compressed air. We picked up a universal remote fuel filter and mounted it on the Samurai’s bulkhead and plumbed the fuel tank through to the diesel injection pump. The return line from the injector pump was simply connected to the Samurai’s return line.
We had two more rather important fluid systems to go, oil and coolant. Our 6-month search for a VW Fox oil filter housing had turned up nil, and it was time to get creative. Editor Irons being the evil genius that he is, stayed up late one night and tinkered with some alloy kicking around. The next morning I arrived to find an ingenious solution to our oil filter housing dilemma. He had machined a block of aluminum to mount to the oil ports. He machined another block to fit to the old oil filter housing, tapped each with fittings and ran some very nice high-pressure hydraulic lines between the two. Voila, we have a remote oil filter system ready to go. He even tapped in a line to the turbo. Nice work Irons, I knew there was a reason we keep you around.
With our oil nightmare now sorted, we still needed to keep the engine cool. We reverted back to the RRO install manual that gave us a rough idea of how to map out the coolant lines. With several trips to the parts store to grab piping and some interesting connectors, we hacked together a rather ghetto looking coolant system. Like a growing number of systems in this build, it will work for now to get the bloody thing up and running, but we will be coming back to do the job right.
With the bigger turbo engine, we were now going to ask much more from the radiator. We also didn’t have the crank-spun fan, so we made a call to Summit Racing and they supplied us with a Flex-a-lite TrimLine electric fan. With clearance issues between the engine and radiator, this ideal solution proved to be the easiest job of the whole project.
The moment of truth was upon us. With all the connections mounted, fluids topped up and power connected, it was time to swing the key and hope that all our hard work was not, all for naught. Priming the injector pump, we loosened the injector lines to bleed the system. As diesel spewed from all four lines, we tightened them up in anticipation. However, there wasn’t a whole lot of pressure for a diesel engine. Cranking the engine repeatedly, we filled the garage with a toxic cloud of half-burnt diesel that required several evacuations. Finally, coughing and sputtering the engine sparked to life under its own power, clearing its throat of the toxic mess and barking from only a down pipe for sound resistance. However, with a blip of throttle, the engine killed itself, and would not start again.
We have some gremlins to sort out, that’s for sure. But finally breathing Project Sami to life was a momentary shot of excitement and satisfaction. Tune in next issue as we diagnose all the little issues. The nightmares are not over just yet, but we’ll push on to get Project Sami on the road for the first time.
Click here to read Part 1 of Project Samurai - A Rocky Marriage.