Unfinished Symphony

Originally Published: April 2013 Words: Paul Looe Pictures: Steve Taylor

With so much trussing and strengthening welded on to the axles, there’s not much chance of either getting bent. At first glance, it looks as if the upper suspension link here might be bracketed on to the Rockwatt brace, but look carefully and you’ll see a dimple-died tower attaching it to the axle case itself

Springs are 225lb Rally Design coils with 14” of flex all round, and shocks are Rough Country units matching this up front and increasing it to 16” at the back. There’s more damping here at the heavy end of the truck, however, as the shocks are mounted parallel to the springs rather than being angled away from the vertical

Both sets of radius arms run out from universal cradles mounted at the chassis’ midway point. They’re on simple polyurethane bushes at this point, so their arc follows the same line as the chassis rail. The arms themselves are made from CDS tube with a 6mm wall thickness – nothing in this world is unbreakable, of course, but in this case we can’t think of how you’d actually prove that

Between them, these two views of the back axle show the geometry of the three-link system pretty well. Richard Wattam, who built it, is noted in Suzuki circles for knowing his stuff in this area: where others might just have laid into it with their welding kit and asked questions after, he calculated the necessary distance between the upper and lower links that would allow the axle to travel in a totally smooth arc when following the ground

Panhard rods take care of lateral location front and rear, with high-drop top mounts helping account for the extra height in the suspension. Rear springs are the same 14” 225lb Rally Design coils as found at the front, while here the Rough Country shocks have 16 inches of travel; as mentioned in picture 2 above, they’re angled well away from the vertical, avoiding the danger of over-damping at the lighter end of the truck

The front axle’s geometry is basically identical to the rear’s, though in this case the central upper link is mounted to the top of the diff case rather than a dedicated mid-tube tower

This is the sort of clever touch you get when Richard Wattam agrees to build your suspension for you. The radius arms have rotating joints to the axles, which swivel as the axles articulate. This means they never bind, however extreme the angle of droop the axles reach, and also dials out a prime opportunity for wear – which Paul felt would be a big issue if he used rose joints, as he off-roads primarily on the sandy terrain of sites on military land south-west of London. As you can see here, the spring mount is on the axle, whereas the shock is on the radius arm, meaning there’s no danger of binding on its bottom mount either

The top links are also on pivots at one end and traditional bushes at the other. In this case, however, the latter is at the axle end – you might have to look at it carefully to work it out, but you should be able to make out the pivot seen from end-on at the far end of the link

This view gives you an idea of the angles between the three links with the suspension at rest. That propshaft, by the way, isn’t from a Samurai. When the going gets tough, the tough get a Toyota, and what you’re looking at here started life below a Hi-Lux Surf. That’s the vehicle Toyota called the 4Runner in the UK

Axle-mounted bump stops ride high on their own dedicated towers. This goes some way to illustrating just how much extra height there is in the suspension; Paul reckons the Samurai rides about 5” higher than standard, with the tyres adding almost as much again

High suspension means… high steering. Had Paul decided earlier on in the project that he was going to take the Samurai off the road altogether, you wonder if he might possibly have toyed with the idea of a hydro set-up, but while this would have bridged the gap with ease it’s not really necessary when turning mere 34” tyres. Anyway, a Rob Storr hi-steer kit does the job just fine, with a Vitara PAS pump and Jimny steering box providing all the assistance Paul needs

Up front, vented discs and calipers from a long-wheelbase Vitara are used to dealing with a lot more weight than any Samurai will ever throw at them

At the back, stopping power comes from a pair of calipers from an 8-valve Vitara. Instead of a conventional handbrake, Paul has installed a line lock allowing him to hold the Suzuki on these alone – not something you can do on a road-legal 4x4, at least if you want it to stay road-legal beyond its next MOT, but more effective than anything else he’s tried

As you can see here, the upswept ends of the LA Supertrux winch bumper line up almost perfectly with the height at which the bodywork’s been cut to just miss the wheels at full bump. That’s no fluke: they were cut off and reshaped for that very purpose

The angles on the ends of the winch bumper are seen more clearly here. The winch sitting on it is a Warn 8274, running an XP motor and spooled with 125 feet of 11mm Dyneema

A Warn 8274-50 in the rear is mounted on a Gwyn Lewis trough between the chassis rails, with 125 feet of 11mm Dyneema playing out through a hawse fairlead beneath the floor

Paul was a fan of custom cars as a kid, and now he’s a bodywork specialist, so this is a real ‘because I can’ modification. Frenched-in tail lights, made by welding a stubby length of 3” tube into a hole cut in the body, are not something you see every day on an off-roader. But as well as looking cool to the max, they’re actually very practical – out of any thousand 4x4s, this is the one that’s least likely to break a lens

The engine conversion was done early on in the Samurai’s life as Paul’s off-road plaything, way back in 2004. It’s a 1.6-litre unit from an early Vitara – meaning it runs a nice, simple 8-valve head and gets its fuel through a carburettor

And here is that carburettor. That’s it poking up through the middle of the air box; both are from, and we know you’re going to like this, an Austin Metro. Paul needed to modify the box so that the air intake was angled back towards the bulkhead, as in standard form it pointed directly at the radiator… listen carefully and you can actually hear the clatter of bent valve stems coming out of the page

Paul describes the snorkel as a ‘Sunday afternoon’ job. Sounds a bit modest to us. He didn’t want to take the normal route of lashing something up out of plastic drainpipe from B&Q, so he used exhaust pipe and topped it off with a very nifty air scoop made from two Land Rover jacking choks welded together. The intake runs back through the bulkhead from the Metro box then comes up through the scuttle panel, so it doesn’t ever extend outside the line of the vehicle’s body – excellent news for its longevity, as many’s the owner of an off-the-shelf unit (or the mangled remains thereof) will agree

Downstream of the engine, a 5-speed SJ413 box mates to the 5:1 ratio transfer case you see here. Future plans include replacing the lot with a 3-speed Vitara auto and Richard Wattam twin tranny conversion

Paul Ruddick has been building his SJ413 for ten years, but he still says it’s not finished. There’s more to it, though, than most vehicles achieve in a lifetime.

Ten years ago, Paul Ruddick bought a Suzuki SJ413. No big deal, lots of people have done that – including Paul himself, actually, who’d already owned a couple of SJ410s by this stage in his life, modding them as you do and having fun in them at playdays and on green lanes.

A feature of his early off-road toys was that he tended to use them, kill them and replace them. But having done enough of that, he was ready to start developing a truck worth keeping. He started, very wisely, with a roll cage, hiring a bender and buying a batch of tube then setting to over the course of a weekend. Working with his boss (not something you hear all the time), he made a set of rock sliders which also acted as mounting platforms for the front and rear hoops of a six-point exo structure.

As the build went on, he dropped in an 8-valve 1.6 engine from a Suzuki Vitara, which he mated to the original gearbox using a Muddy Zook adapter. This breathed in through an Austin Metro carb and air box, the latter modified to keep water at bay, and was cooled by a higher-capacity rad from a 16-valve Vitara.

The SJ was already coming along very nicely, aided by a prototype KAM diff-lock in the back axle, and Paul was pondering on the idea of upgrading the suspension using leaf springs from a Jeep Wrangler YJ. But then he was offered the chance to buy a Samurai – with 3-link coil-sprung suspension and ARBs in both axles. A big step forward, surely?

Yes… and no. The coiler was, in Paul’s words, ‘80% finished.’ When you see a car like that up for sale, all too often it’s because someone’s started it with great intentions and got a long way down the road before realising how much they’ve done wrong, and maybe that was the case here. Either way, Paul got Richard Wattam to take a look at it, and that really is not what you need to see happening if you’re trying to sell a car whose suspension doesn’t move properly.

Sure enough, Richard was concerned by the amount of axle-steer going on under the Suzuki. The price was right, though, so Paul bought it anyway… and stripped it for parts.

Among these was a set of Fox coil-overs, which Richard coveted but Paul now owned. Paul coveted something too, though, which was Richard’s know-how with suspension geometry, and if you can’t work out where this is going, you need a strong coffee already.

And so a plan was hatched. Paul would take his still leaf-sprung Suzuki to a playday at Kirton Off Road Centre, which is just a few miles south of where Richard’s based. He’d head home with an empty trailer and a couple of months later, he’d be the owner of a coil-sprung SJ413 with a three-link system to be proud of, not scared of.

And that’s exactly how it turned out. Paul is no slouch in the workshop himself, and there’s no a lot that he hasn’t turned his hand to, but he knows when to leave it to the masters of the art. And he’s generous in his praise of Richard’s skills, both at the design stage and on the coal face.

‘I didn’t want to do something that would make the car worse than it was,’ he says. ‘I’d fallen out of love with it because of the way it rode on the leaf springs. The choice was to coil it, or buy a Land Rover instead. Richard worked out all the dimensions so that the three-link system would work properly. I just supplied him with a set of shocks and springs, and everything else he manufactured himself from raw materials.’

Those springs were 14” Rally Design coils, rated at 225lb all round, while the shocks were Rough Country units with 14” of travel up front and 16” at the back. He reckons the whole lot cost about £330: ‘Cheaper than buying a good set of leaf springs!’

The system Richard built around them uses linkages made from CDS with a 6mm wall thickness, so it’s not very light but sure is strong. Front and rear radius arms are attached to the chassis at a pair of common mounting points, and centre links at each end run to the tops of the axle cases. So as to prevent binding on the bushes, the axle ends of the radius arms and the chassis ends of the centre links are attached using rotating joints, and up front the shocks are mounted ‘before’ these on the links themselves so as to follow the suspension faithfully throughout its full arc of movement. Finally, panhard rods are used front and rear to keep the axles in line.

The result? Brilliant, says Paul. ‘It’s very smooth, the way the suspension flexes. It keeps the car more balanced and stable.’ There’s no axle steer at all, and the angles of the diff noses don’t change however twisted the axles get. The springs are clamped top and bottom, as stability was more important to Paul than achieving the nth degree of wheel travel, but it still does a fine job of keeping its 34” Jungle Trekkers on the deck – and when it can’t, the ARBs he plundered from that donor Samurai mean it’s odds-on to keep moving anyway.

These are unusual in that they’re both rear units. They share the axles with a full set of heavy-duty Rock Assault halfshafts (plus CVs up front), whose size means they need to be used with a rear diff irrespective of which end they’re fitted in.

Up until the SJ got its 3-link conversion, Paul had it road-registered and used it for getting about when his everyday car didn’t seem interesting enough. Now, however, he’s decided to bestow it with full trailer queen status, which of course opens up a new set of options for winding up the MOT man.

You might be thinking of hydro-steer here, but a 34” Jungle Trekker isn’t too much of a struggle for the Vitara and Jimny PAS system to turn, and a Rob Storr high-steer set-up takes care of the extra height in what Paul thinks is about 5” of suspension lift. No, the main mod he’s made since taking the vehicle off the road has been a line-lock in the brakes.

These are most commonly used by drift and burnout fans to stop a car’s front wheels while the rears spin free, but you can also use them as a form of handbrake. Set up this way, it allows you to use the standard system as a hydraulic parking brake – very effective at stopping the vehicle from rolling away, though also for stopping even the most generous of testers from giving you a ticket.

Which is a shame in a way, because while many people trailer their vehicles to events simply because they’re too gross to ever see tarmac again, Paul’s SJ is once of the best-presented off-roaders you’ll ever see. Being a bodywork specialist helps him with this, obviously, but a childhood interest in a very different kind of modified car is responsible for one of the most unique touches to be found on this or any other 4x4.

Just take a look at those tail lights. ‘Back in my youth,’ says Paul, ‘I used to read custom car magazines. There’s a technique called “frenching” that’s popular in that scene.

‘I cut a 3” hole into the quarter panel and welded in a short length of tube, then I sunk the lights into that. It looks a bit out of the ordinary, and of course there’s no chance that
you’re ever going to break them. I used the same technique on the rear number plate, with the lights for it in the top of the recess.’

So it’s a looker, but with a practical streak running all the way through it. The first thing you see, of course, is just that it’s a looker, but make assumptions at your peril. ‘I quite enjoy turning up at events and seeing people saying “here’s another puddle-dodger,” but then ploughing into stuff!’ Cynics, eat your words…

And appearance does matter to Paul, to the extent that he’s made a positive decision not to pursue a level of off-road ability that would mean disfiguring his truck any further. ‘There are a lot of Suzukis that are more capable,’ he says, ‘but they don’t look original.’ He’s toyed with the idea of traybacking it, but most unusually for an SJ its floors, sills and so on are all still original. That’s a rarity and a half, and when so much of it is what came out of the factory all those years ago, it’s no wonder that he doesn’t want to mess with it.

Does that mean he’s done with the tinkering? Oh, no. Not even close. ‘I’ve owned it for more than ten years now, and it’s been evolving all that time. It’s never actually been finished!’

So what’s next on the list? A cheeky little increase in tyre size might be on the cards, with 35” Boggers his tyre of choice. He’s also planning another raid on Richard Wattam’s endless supply of ingenuity in the shape of a twin transfer case, which he’d use in conjunction with a 3-speed Vitara auto. Aside from that, he says, he just wants to use it a bit more.

A common problem for anyone with a modded 4x4, that. But few have put so much into getting their vehicle working right and looking right, and fewer still can claim to match the thoroughness of Paul’s approach on what is now just a toy. ‘Bodywork doesn’t matter to me as it’s such an easy fix,’ he says. ‘But I like to do everything so it’s a job you do once then forget about it. I have a think about it first and make sure I’m doing it so that it’s going to work for years to come.’

Changed days indeed from when a Saturday’s laning with a mate turned Paul from a man who’d never heard of off-roading into one who killed first a Lightweight and then an SJ410 in deep water. He’s learned what not to do, but more than anything else he already knew the way to create a Suzuki that makes people sit up and take notice. That doesn’t just mean getting Richard Wattam on the case, but as it illustrates he knew when to call in the experts, too. And what an SJ he’s got as a result.

SJ, WARN 8274, ROUGH COUNTRY SHOCKS, RALLY DESIGN SPRINGS, ROCKWATT SUSPENSION