Some progress

Our last post we mentioned we are still after some tyres for our SJ. After getting tired of hunting around for bargain tyres that don't exist we splashed out on a set of all terrain General Grabber AT2 tyres. These are excellent tyres for giving us a balance of both road use on tarmac and off road use. They should do wonders for our fuel economy and power while giving us the off road traction we need (except perhaps in mud).

So the tyres went on without much trouble at all, we removed the spacers that were on the car, but we still have all of our wheels offset which gives us a wider track for more stability.

Tyres were done and we decided to take a break from the mechanical work and look at the electrics. We revealed a can of worms in the electric system. Bad earth connections were making the car light up like a Christmas tree, hit the breaks and the indicators come on, that kind of thing. After spending half a day with it, we tracked (by sheer luck and fortune) the bad earth, so we now have rear lights, brake lights, full beam and indicators. We still lack rear fog lights, reverse lights and side lights. We spent a number of hours working on these, but we can that we're still going to have to invest more time to sort it all out.

We did have some success with wiring in some new front fog lights, they look pretty good on our bumper, a photo of them will follow.

For now, here is a picture of the car (taken in the dark) with our new tyres.

We also have a problem with our hand brake. It doesn't work because the cable snapped. We did make an attempt to fit this today, it involved removing the rear prop shaft, which wasn't too bad, but we didn't get much further than that. So all in all, some progress, but we've also revealed some additional work!

Car details and progress

The car we've chosen for our Moroccan Road Trip 2010 is a Suzuki SJ413 Samurai. If you've followed our trip to Mongolia, you'll know that the Suzuki SJ is not a new car to us. We used the SJ410 to drive our 8,400 miles to Mongolia.

After driving the last one to Mongolia we decided that while it was a very fun car to drive, we'd never get one again. Primarily because of the suspension trouble we had, yet here we are, 3 years on, with pretty much the same car.

Well it is a very fun car to drive and actually fairly economical despite what some people say. So we bought our car for £750 in the beginning of February.

When we picked up the car, we knew there were some problems because the exhaust had a hole in it that seemed to be growing by the minute, the engine had been rebuilt but needed retuning and the tyres were a bit too wide and heavy for a car that only kicks out 64bhp.

We went for this car though because the body and chassis were in pretty good condition overall and the engine had been rebuilt and was also in excellent shape.

After driving the car away, on our very first mile, we broke down. We went up a hill, or attempted to, but the car did not have enough power. We had another problem, the battery was flat so we couldn't start it up again. So we had to turn the car around by pushing it and jump starting it by driving down the hill. This eventually led us to a different route that didn't require us to climb any big hills! Our drive home was almost without event, till once again, about 3 miles from home, the car stalled. It didn't start at this point, so we had to push it off the road into a car park. After a quick inspection, we noticed the starter motor had fallen off and was stopping the car from starting. The other problem was the bolts for the starter motor were missing. At this point Alex held the starter motor with his hand while I started the car. I think it is probably worth mentioning at this point that this is not a recommended way to start the car. It hurts, it burns and you can't get your hand out of the engine area quickly! Anyway after that we got the car home.

The following weekend we fitted a new exhaust to it, replaced the battery and refitted the existing starter motor. We then got the engine tuned and gave it a test run. It ran very well, but there were still issues with the steering and power due to the size of the tyres.

So we're currently on the hunt for some good tyres.

The car we bought had been set-up for mud plugging. It had 9" of lift and the tyres that I mentioned that were a bit too big for it.

The other major problem with the car was the suspension. The first thing we wanted to sort was the suspension, so we removed the leaf over axle conversion and removed the high lift shackles and replaced those with standard length reinforced shackles and uprated 3" leaf suspension. The leaf suspension we picked up is quite special because it has an extra leaf on the front and rear, something that can be quite tricky to find. The existing set-up is fine for mud plugging but not really suitable for long distance off roading adventures.

We spent today fitting the suspension, taking 9 long hard hours of bashing the car and fitting the springs.

You can see Alex in the photo above bashing away at the leaf springs. We spent most of the time bashing leaf springs, it kind of reminded us of the Mongol Rally. You can see the photos below of the car as we've worked on it. We've developed a technique with a scissor jack that allows us to control the axle to get the springs placed in the perfect position. It still isn't easy to fit, but certainly helps. This is probably not the safest way to fit the springs, but if you don't have a car lift then it does become quite a challenge!





And here is the car with the all new suspension system that we fitted.


Now onto the next thing, replacing the tyres! We'll let you know how we get on with that.

Moroccan Road Trip 2010 starting up

For those of you familiar with the Rusty Rhinos, you'll know that we did our first rally in 2007 going from London, England to Ulan Bataar, Mongolia. We completed the rally and caught the road trip bug on route. Since then, we completed the Saharan Rally 2009, driving deep into the Sahara in Algeria before eventually heading back to London.

We're heading out into the wilderness again, in fact, we're going to the Sahara again, but this time to the western region in Morocco.

We bought our car on the 30th January 2010. It currently isn't very mobile, but we're sure a few weekends of work and we'll have it rally worthy in no time.

You can use this blog to follow our progress or if you are after our headline news, then head over to our www.rustyrhinos.com site.