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LJ80 STORY Ben enjoying some local B.C. wheeling My LJ80 : It all started long ago in 1992 when I got the idea that it would be cool to have a four wheel drive vehicle. After a little searching around and with the idea that a smaller "jeeplike" vehicle was what I was after I answered an ad in the buy and sell for a 1980 Suzuki lj80 (for parts) . Chris and I showed up at the guy's place and noticed that he had a zebra striped lj parked out front (kinda dented and with bad bondo job front fenders) we rang the doorbell and were led out to the backyard to discover that sitting in the weeds in what used to be somebody's garden was a little white lj with axe chops all over the inside and no windshield ( seems it was a vandalism write off from ICBC ) .A deal was struck for the pile of parts ,$225.00 for the truck and $75.00 for the factory suzuki manual (little did I realize what a good deal that 75 bones was at the time). All we had to do was reassemble the front axle to drag it into the alleyway so that the tow truck could drag it back to the underground parking of the apartment we lived in at the time (oh yeah I forgot to mention that the engine was removed and sitting in parts in the back) needless to say the manager of the building was not very impressed , so we soon rented a tandem trailer and borrowed some time in my folk's garage for the rebuild. With only a good manual and a craftsman mini grinder, some tools and my uncles mig welder (thanks Ted!) Chris and I set out to fix this thing up enough to have some fun with. Soon we had the rust holes replaced with new metal got the engine fixed up and repaired the rather drastic axe chops (seriously) on the dash and tranny tunnel ( somebody really didn't like the previous owner obviously ),some 225/75/15 goodyear AT tires and a coat of white tremclad and I had a fairly decent little toy to play with. I drove the heck out of that little 800 cc it took me on hundreds of mild fourwheeling trips .I drove it to Yellowstone park in Wyoming with two people and all our camping stuff no problem ( except for only doing about 50 km/h over the continental divide), and down to San Francisco . Eventually the desire for more power (and the unbelievable parts prices, you could probably rebuild a Rolls Royce motor cheaper than an 800cc suzuki ) led me to the world of engine swapping. A 1979 toyota celica gt became available at a very reasonable cost so the motor,seats, and various other parts found there way into the suzi, I wound up getting a '79 toyota mini truck 4 sp and transfer case reasonably cheap and ran the stock rearend and a 82 sj410 frontend SOA with samurai birfs and DISK BRAKES (big improvement!) All this led to bigger tires, worn out bearings, and eventual rear axle death (something that still dogs me to this day!) So after many incarnations and suspension alterations running the gamut from SOA with front shackles ( and maybe the first Z-bar spooky steering drag link) to shackle reversal, BroncoII coils with a front four link with panhard rod , Radius arm front suspension with Jeep cherokee coils ( first stock length then 4.5" lift coils), rear SOA stock ,then with longer shackles, Quarter elliptic in back with heim joint shackles to allow articulation(holy cow did they ever squeak!) ,eventually I narrowed a Ford 9" to stock width (49" flange to flange) and mounted coils in the rearend with an upper wishbone type link, that got changed over to a four link running firestone air springs . Up front I finally found the limits of suzuki birfield joints or rather the shafts which the toyota motor happily tent pegged. Realizing my worsening throttle habit it was decided that a Dana 44 would probably suffice up front so I narrowed it to a slightly wider 50.5 " FTF for the frontend , also suspending it on air springs and a three link with panhard. During this state of buildup I also caught the bug for DIESEL ( or is that the thirst for diesel, I'm not sure) and as luck would have it I found a toyota L diesel could probably be made to squeak into the engine compartment, this was backed by a custom OTT Industries bellhousing to mate to a 1963 muncie SM420 which in turn is followed by an OTT adapter to mate to a Toyota low range box followed by a Jeep Dana 300 T-case ( also with an OTT adapter ) all of this fits in a truck with a 79" wheelbase. As the desire for more performance at speed caught up with me ( driving my truck down to the rubicon trail with a naturally aspirated diesel gets very old quickly) I decided that what this thing needs is a turbo so a manifold was fabricated after much study and great circumspection , and now my truck bombs down the highway with no smoke , passes emissions tests no problem, and gets in excess of 40 mpg, and still crawls at 192-1 reduction ratio in low- low. The best of both worlds? I'm still deciding that one , the best truck I've ever had ? Definitely without a doubt , now if I could......

OTT Industries Vancouver British Columbia , Canada rick@ottindustries.com chris@ottindustries.com ben@ottindustries.com Updated Sun Jan 14, 2001 3:13am EST