The Build You All Have Been Waiting For!

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]What is going on? Welcome back to the channel. So, seems like most of you guys want to see the Samurai build. It seems like every video I put out, I get the when is the Samurai build starting comment. So, what we got today is we're going to pull the Samurai in the shop and I'm not sure exactly what we're doing to it just because I'm waiting. I did order some parts for it and I haven't got them yet. But I want to go through at least this engine bay and kind of start tinkering on it and just really get it in the shop and figure out kind of a game plan with this rig cuz I really have no clue what we're doing to it. Originally, I was thinking about maybe putting a diesel in it. It's already got a 22R. It's already got Toyota solid axles front and rear. It's got a W56, I believe, with dual cases already. So, it's fairly set up, but it's pretty cobbled together. So, we really need to just rip all the old fabrication off from like crossmembers, spring hangers, a ton of the stuff we got to rip off and redo. So, I'm not sure if we're going to tackle that today, but we're at least going to get this thing in the shop and figure out a game plan on what parts we need to order up. And this is I know I've said this probably almost every build, but this is going to kind of be a budget build. Now, I will have to obviously buy some parts new, but I'm going to try to keep this thing like junkyard builds from like used leaf springs and just secondhand parts just to get this thing up and running. It's not going to be a nice rig. I'm not going to go through and paint it. It's going to be a fun rig.

[00:01:33]Something you can bring out and not care about scratching it. So, that's the game plan. Either way, we got two flat tires.

[00:01:41]We got a dead battery which is charging.

[00:01:43]But for now, I'm going to get these tires pumped up. make sure these things even hold air anymore. And then we'll grab the battery. Hopefully, we can get it to fire up. When I parked it, like probably 2 years ago, it did run. I did drive it here off the trailer. I mean, I towed it home on the trailer. I unloaded. I went and fooled around a little bit in the field, but it did run.

[00:02:02]I'm hoping that the carb isn't completely plugged up. Now, it already does have a Weber uh 3236 carb on it, so I'll probably leave that. definitely needs a rebuild kit, which is on the way. But either way, let's get some air in these tires, get a battery in it, and see if this thing will even start.

[00:02:23]Well, if this gives you any idea on how the entire truck is built, this valve stem must have had a leak in it. And it's all taped up. I can't even get the threaded little hose on it for the air compressor. So, I got to cut all that tape off. I guess we'll start on the front if this one will work.

[00:02:42]Let's see.

[00:02:46]All right, let's let that puppy pump up. All right, one down. Got the tape cut off of this one.

[00:02:57]Let's see if this one will pump.

[00:03:05]Look at that. We got tires. Let's go get this battery and see if we can get this puppy to start. All right, I got the battery. Should be juiced up a little bit. Hopefully enough to get this thing to fire up. I'm just hoping that this fuel isn't so old that it plugged up the carburetor.

[00:03:26]Okay.

[00:03:29]definitely needs some some shifter work.

[00:03:35]This thing just kind of it's got the little twirly bird shifter in it. I don't even know how to find neutral. I think that's neutral. Now, like I said, it's got dual cases, which definitely needs some shifter work. Let's see. Oh, wow. Nice clutch. There's nothing there.

[00:03:57]I got nothing.

[00:03:59]Nothing.

[00:04:01]No juice.

[00:04:04]I think I found the problem, guys. We got a hot wire here that's probably supposed to be connected right there. It had some heat shrink on it, but there is no butt connector in here. I think he just tried to heat shrink the wires together without actually crimping them.

[00:04:19]Let's get Well, I guess we could just kind of shove them together for now.

[00:04:26]Just to see if that was our problem.

[00:04:31]Look at that connection. Let's try that.

[00:04:34]All right, we got juice now.

[00:04:38]Might need a little starting fluid.

[00:04:48]That ought to do her.

[00:04:53]Well, fired.

[00:04:57]I don't even know if there's gas in this thing. I better check. All right, we're going to throw some gas in it. I don't even think there was any fuel in it.

[00:05:05]Somehow must have evaporated because I drove it and it parked right here. But we'll give her a gallon or two. See what it does. All right, I gave her one more squirt of starting fluid. Let's see if we can pump some fuel up here.

[00:05:23]There we go.

[00:05:26]Look at that. We're running.

[00:05:31]She's kind of purring like a kitten, guys.

[00:05:36]The biggest thing with keeping the 22R is just if this thing is a decent runner. Oh, we got fuel leaking.

[00:05:46]I see that dripping out of the fuel pump.

[00:05:50]Well, yeah, it looks like she needs a fuel pump. Let's get her in the shop before we lose all of our fuel. All right, we're going to have to get a little crafty cuz I have no clutch. We're probably just going to have to kind of start it in gear, get it backwards without running anything over, and then pop it out of gear, restart it in first.

[00:06:11]We'll get it in the shop, though.

[00:06:15]Good thing we got like four low low, so we can just kind of just putt into the shop here.

[00:06:30]I lost my steering. What's going on here?

[00:06:35]All right. Something is extra extra wrong with the steering.

[00:06:40]I can't get it to go right.

[00:06:43]Good thing we got one more left to make to get in the shop.

[00:06:53]All right, we're in the shop. Made it somehow. This thing does not turn. It is not have power steering, which I do plan on doing. If I can fit it, I'm going to try to get a Toyota box IFX IFS box out on the outside of the frame here and get rid of their uh very custom, very ghetto high steer. Like I said, some things I'm going to have to buy. I'm going to buy the high steer kit just to make it easy cuz I'm not going to try to make arms. I mean, yeah, I could make the drag link and the tie rod, but the whole kit's really not that expensive. So, I'll probably buy that. So, as far as power steering, I'm going to have to find a pump for the 22R. I already have a box, but I need the pump, some lines, probably the little reservoir, and that's probably about it for power steering other than, like I said, high steer. Now, this clutch setup is very, very custom. I'm going to have to cut all that out and I'm going to redo it.

[00:07:52]The clutch doesn't work at all and uh this setup just is not going to work for me. Looks like they just spray foamed it and somehow I don't even know. We're going to redo that. But I wanted to just kind of show you guys the starting point. So here is the transmission crossmember. I mean it works. It's really ugly. I'll probably end up cutting all that off and making a tube one because that thing hangs down like 8 in from the frame. Uh exhaust needs to be redone. These super nice uh rock sliders. I'm cutting those off. I'll make my own. Um as far as springs, what do you guys run in Samuris? I know a lot of people run like Jeep I think for the rear uh Jeep spring. Um I've seen people run Toyota springs up front. I'm kind of curious what you guys would suggest. I've never messed with a Samurai, but either way, check this out. This guy had the Toyota axle in here. Didn't relocate the perches on the axle and just kind of let these bushings do whatever they want because the axle perches are wider than the frame. So, they're all angled in.

[00:09:04]That was even worse there. Pretty custom. So, what I'm thinking is I'll find maybe Jeep springs. I think people use YJ springs. We'll have to cut the perches off the axle, get those where they need to be. I'll probably if we can save these mounts on the frame. I don't know. I don't want to redo everything on it, but they are kind of flimsy. Maybe I'll just reinforce them. Either way, we got to figure out uh front springs as well. And I'm kind of curious. Do you guys keep the shackle in the front? I've never liked the look of it. It hangs way down. I feel like it just catches on everything. I need to go do a little research and see kind of the benefits of front shackle versus rear shackle cuz I mean all this is going to get redone anyway. I'm pretty sure I'll be cutting everything off the front of the frame, cutting the motor mounts off, resetting the motor. We're going to drop this super custom body lift off of it. Uh try to get most of it off. I mean, I still want to be able to clear the 35s, but get as much body lift out as we can. But like I said, I want to cut all this off because for one, they cut the crossmember off the front of the frame.

[00:10:14]And now the frame has kind of pushed itself too wide. So we need to cut all this off. Get a crossmember up front again. Make room for a IFS steering box.

[00:10:24]Probably redo these shock hoops cuz that's pretty cobbled together. I don't know. This thing needs a lot of work.

[00:10:30]But luckily, a lot of it is just metal work, which I got a plasma table I can make all myself for basically the price of steel. I mean, the price of steel for all the bracketry for everything and all the crossmembers and motor mounts, I can make all that myself. So, that's not a huge cost. I'm not worried about that.

[00:10:49]But, I want to keep this thing cheap. I don't want to go spend a bunch of money on it. But, either way, I need to figure out what we're doing right now. So, I think I want to tackle for sure this clutch system. Obviously, we need a clutch and I want to tackle that. I want to clean up and figure out what some of this wiring is for. Obviously, a lot of it's for the factory engine, which the 22R really needs a couple of wires, some for the alternator. It needs one wire, which they don't even have hooked up for the electric choke, and then a couple wires for the coil distributor tape.

[00:11:27]Well, distributor really just runs off the coil there. I mean, that's really it. So, we can really get rid of a ton of wiring on here. All these vacuum lines really are unnecessary right now because we only need really one which is hooked up here for the vacuum advance for the distributor and then there's one for the brake booster here that goes to that little splitter. And I mean that's really it for vacuum line. So I can pull all this hard vacuum line off and clean all this up. Now I want you to check out these super sweet radiator hoses. One runs from here down here resting on the radiator. Runs all the way around the back to a filler neck and then back up to the front. And then this one runs from the same side down here. Does a big loop with some copper fittings there and then down to the timing cover where that fitting is. So, we need to redo all that. And then header needs definitely needs some work. It's missing a bunch of bolts. It leaks and looks like it's actually hitting the frame. So, we need a ton of work on this thing. Well, I think I'm just going to start ripping this thing apart. We got to find a bunch of wiring. I mean, these headlights, there's no wiring at all to these headlights. I assume they're probably in here. I really need to get a a wiring diagram for the Samurai and figure out what wires are for what, cuz there's that harness. I thought there Well, I guess there's only a couple on this side. Maybe that is kind of the main harness. So, it's probably headlight wires in here. Um, but I want to just I want to clean the crap out of this bay.

[00:13:06]So, I want to get I'm going to pull all the radiator hoses off, pull the wiring off that we don't need, and just clean it up. It's such a mess. I can't even figure out what is what. So, I'm just going to start taking parts off. I'm going to pull the carburetor cuz I'm going to rebuild that anyway. So, pull the carb off, pull this vacuum junk off that we don't need. Uh, probably pull the header off. We got to redo the exhaust. I mean, it's completely rotted out underneath. So, maybe we'll pull the header. Um, either way, this motor, I don't know. I haven't decided how far I want to take it because honestly, if I pull the body off, it's going to be so much easier to work on everything on this frame. But, in order to mock up like suspension, we kind of need the body on. So, I don't know. I'm going to leave it on for now. But I guess for now, what I'm going to do is just start ripping stuff out of this bay and kind of figure out our wiring situation, our vacuum, our cooling system, and then number two on the list is definitely that clutch system. I need to redo that.

[00:14:07]So, I'm going to cut all that junk out of there, make me a new plate for that, mount that uh master cylinder back up.

[00:14:15]And I don't know, this thing just needs so much work. It's so hard to know where to even start.

[00:15:07]Well, guys, I'm at the point where I'm just going to pull this body off and I'm going to rip I'm going to go through the frame, cut all the junk off we don't need. Uh here's the radiator that was in it, which is way too small, I believe.

[00:15:21]I'm going to try and fit a 22R radiator just because I think that'll be the easiest for radiator hoses. It's going to be sized correctly, but the problem with that is they move this engine so far forward that there's no room for it.

[00:15:36]So, I'm going to have to remount the motor transmission farther back. Now, the rear drive line is very short right now, but I do plan on stretching this thing out. So, I'm going to probably gain I'm hoping at least six to eight inches in the rear and I don't know, four to six in the front. Just stretch this thing out as far as I can. I'm thinking of going with Toyota pickup rear leafs because they have a really offset pin. So, I can flip the leafs around, move that axle back as far as I can. I'll probably have to extend the frame in the back and I'm planning on extending the frame in the front a few inches. Well, probably more than a few, but somewhere to mount a winch and have enough room for a steering box. And obviously, I'm going to have to redo all these mounts because the steering box is probably going to mount right about here. And so, all that's going to have to be cut off. This whole front frame, like I said, is is all messed up because I cut the crossmember out and it's widened out way more. So, I need to strap that frame back to where it should be. Build my extension, build a crossmember, and redo. I mean, I got to redo. I can't leave that that crappy looking fabric in there. So, I want to redo all the mounts on this thing. And like I said, it needs to be moved back anyway. So, I think that's the plan. I'm just going to pull this body off, start cutting away, cut these shock mounts off. I'm going to plate the whole front of the frame just to strengthen all that up. redo the shock mounts, redo the crossmember, redo the rock sliders, and like I said, I want to drop this body lift down as much as I can. Um, I do have to source a bunch of parts for like leaf springs and everything before we start mocking up suspension. But for now, I think I'm just going to pull the body and start going through this frame and cleaning all that up. And then I'll probably I mean, it'll be so easy to pull the engine and transmission out anyway because we have to redo the mounts. So, I'm going to pull that out, give it a good cleaning, pressure wash it, and uh yeah, we'll see where it goes. But like I said, this is a budget build. I didn't say budget on time.

[00:17:42]Budget for money. So, I'm not worried about I'm not worried about spending the extra time pulling the body off and doing this right.

[00:18:16]Heat.

[00:18:20]Heat.

[00:18:40]Look out.

[00:19:19]Well, there's the chassis. Like I said, this thing needs an absolute crap ton of work. So, what I think we're going to do in the next video is I'm going to pull engine and I'm going to get rid of all this crossmember, the motor mounts. I'm going to cut all this old motor mounts off, cut all of the shock hoops off. We'll get the steering box off. We'll just basically strip this frame down other than like body mounts.

[00:19:44]We'll leave this crossmember in uh these body lift brackets that they did. I haven't I need to figure out how much body lift I can get away with. I'm going to at least drop that in half. So, that's 3 in. I'm at least going to go down to inch and a half. If I can drop it even lower, I will. But, I'm going to cut those all off. These are all welded in place. Um, as far as motor goes, there's a 22R. I'm not sure. I'll have to pop the cover. I'm not sure if that's a dual chain. It might be because looking at the which is an L52, which honestly I'm not too bummed about.

[00:20:19]The L52 is not quite as strong as a W56, but it's way shorter. And you can already see how much rear drive shaft I have. Now, I'm going to get a little bit longer shaft once I stretch this wheelbase out. But I'm also moving the engine and transmission back about 3 in, maybe even more. So that shaft probably will be maybe 3 in longer than it is now, which is pretty short. So if it had a W56, it would be even longer. The W56 is quite a bit longer than this one. But either way, this isn't a high horsepower engine. It's completely stock. I think the L52 will hold up. But either way, like I said, it's got dual transfer cases already, which are extremely dirty. We're going to go through and kind of try to clean this up as best we can. But that is the game plan. Anyway, next video, like I said, we're just going to start cutting this thing apart, get a blank slate for our new engine mounts, transmission mount, rock sliders, um, spring hangers. Like I said, I'll probably end up, depending on where the Toyota leafs land, I want to stretch this as much as I can. So, I'll probably end up extending the frame, mounting the shackles off the back of the frame, and probably have to do the same up front. And like I said, I want to extend the front anyway, so I can mount a winch up in front of the grill.

[00:21:40]That'll just give me more room for everything, including our steering box.

[00:21:44]Because once we move this axle forward, I'm I'm guessing I don't know if I'm using that spring hanger, but I'm guessing the front axle is going to come four, five, 6 in forward. Once we do that and throw a steering box right here, we're not going to have enough room for a tie rod. So, that's the game plan. We'll have to cut this body mount off, get our steering box mounted up, make a new crossmember, and yeah, that's the that's the game plan with this one.