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Suzuki SJ/Samurai Review

The Samurai, or the SJ413 as it was previously known is the original hairdresser 4x4. It's 1.3 litre engine is woefully tiny for even a light 4x4, giving 0-60 times of somewhere in the region of five minutes. Top speed is around 80mph, although in a soft-top, it's a very noisy experience, and keeping your speed below about 65mph is much better for your hearing, fuel economy and keeping a generally pleasant state of mind. The SJ is also largely responsible for creating the image of all 4x4s tipping over the moment you go round a corner at more than 5mph.

Let me tell you a little bit about my car. It's an SJ413, as I've already said, the Samurai under another name. It was also available as the SJ410/Santana, with an even more pathetic 1.0 litre engine. My vehicle is the soft top version, although hard top and van versions were also available. The soft top is great in the summer, but is a pain to put back on, especially when you're in a hurry because it's just started tipping down.


Driving around town, the SJ is in it's element. It's ideal for stop-start driving, and you don't get up to the sort of speeds where you're likely to go deaf, although the whine from the transfer box when you're sitting in neutral at traffic lights can get annoying.

As the SJ has a mere 80-inch wheelbase, parking is hardly a great challenge. With the softtop off you can almost see the rear bumper from the driving seat. The lack of rear seats means that you've actually got a fair amount of load space, equal to at least two mountain bikes, as I've found out.

The open road is somewhat different, the SJ is really not at home here. As I've already said, speeds of above 60mph are deafening, and cornering can be twitchy in the dry, verging on extremely dangerous in the wet.

Where the SJ realy comes into it's own is off-road. It may not look it, but the SJ is a thoroughbred off-roader. Look down by the bottom of the gearstick and you'll see another smaller lever sticking up. This is the transfer lever, and serves to engage four wheel drive. Remember the whine I complained about from the transfer box earlier? Well, the transfer box is what sorts out the four wheel drive for you, giving you the choice between rear wheel drive only, and high and low ratio four wheel drive, with the high ratio giving you similar speeds to two wheel drive and low ratio for slower speeds but more grunt, and more engine braking - great for descents where you really don't want to be touching the brakes.

On the subject of four wheel drive, it should be noted that the SJ doesn't have something that more expensive four wheel drives possess. It lacks a centre differential. This means that you can get something called transmission wind-up. Basically, what happens here is that as you drive along on a normal, fairly grippy road, the road wheels all move different distances. This means that when you're driving in four wheel drive, the transmission twists a bit and it can be rather difficult to get it back into normal two wheel drive again after even short distances in four wheel drive. This isn't such a problem off road as patches of mud, gravel, and even brief periods with one or more wheels off the ground help to alleviate this problem.



The SJ is a harsh mistress off-road, but it's a very capable little beast. You certainly learn the benefit of one of the first things you'll get told about off-road driving; Keep your thumbs out of the steering wheel. The steering will happily break your thumbs if you're stupid enough to stick them through the wheel and you catch a rock. The underside of the vehicle is high enough to avoid most off-road nasties, and the engine bay has been well thought out, putting the electrical systems and air intake high up so that all but the deepest water won't pose a problem. The leaf sprung suspension will certainly give you a wake up call though, harsh being the operative word here.
 

Working on an SJ is fairly easy, and as a newcomer to working on cars myself, I'd say it's a great vehicle to learn on. The engine bay is massive. You've virtually got space to shove a spare engine down by the side of the existing one, that's how much space there is to work in. Working underneath the vehicle is easy too. Being a 4x4, there's space aplenty, and most people won't need to worry about messing around with jacks and axle stands. Be warned though, being a Japanese vehicle, parts can be expensive.

The body sits atop a ladder chassis, the net result being that the body is completely non-structural. This means that you can let the rust-monster eat away quite badly at the body, and the MOT station won't come down on it too heavily. And believe me, the rust monster quite likes the taste of my SJ.



If you want a vehicle for relaxing drives in the countryside, stay well away from the SJ. Driving it on the open road is as relaxing as drinking boiling hot vinegar. If you're looking for a city runabout, it's great. If you're looking for a serious off-road plaything, get your chequebook at the ready. SJs are available from the £300 mark for a fairly tatty specimen upwards.

In my own experience with my suzuki I must admit that it is my pride and joy. I love it to bits!! However nothing is perfect so i'll be objective. First the good point:

It's a fun jeep to drive. It's not luxurious but more demanding and can definitly handle the off roading side to life..

I've found it to be very reliable aswell... I haven't had one break down in it since and the only problems i have had with it are minor ones. It was a cheap buy and the insurance cost is good aswell..

However the bad points are still there...

The major one is the 4x4 system. Simply put, mine sticks in 4wheel drive most of the time. This isnt really a major problem since i only really drive it in 2 wheel drive but put it in 4 wheel drive and it has a tendancy not to want to get out, which ive been told is a common problem and can be a half hour job fixing it.

The other minor problems are the seals around the roof can get worn and are expensive to replace and when i got mine the thermostat was out of synch.

The fuel economy could also be better, my model is the LWB 1.3l engine and it does about 30mpg. The LWB also means it has a hard top roof which is really a 2 man job to get off which can be a bit taxing.

Anyway, i still think this is an excellent car and would recommend it..

Our Suzuki SJ410 Jeep* was the probably best car we’ve ever had and the worst at the same time. (*I use the word "Jeep" advisedly, in the same way that we all know Dysons aren’t Hoovers, but they still get called that!)

Now comes the difficult part - justifying my first statement.

We were looking around for our very first "second" car, if you see what I mean. Chronologically, this puts it just in front of the Micra that I have also written about. We didn’t want to spend much on it, but were looking for something a little out of the ordinary.

There it stood on the forecourt of a relatively trustworthy 2nd hand dealers near us (well, I’d had another car from them in the past, and that was OK) - a 1988 bright yellow SJ410 hardtop with relatively low miles recorded. I had my reservations, but my wife was in love with it straightaway. Since she was destined to be the principal driver, who was I to argue - and she was right, she could get a lot of shopping in it!

THE GOOD NEWS
So what makes it the best (YELLOW) car we’ve ever had?
It was bright YELLOW.
It was cheap to buy and insure.
It was my wife’s first (YELLOW) car.
It was very easy to find in Tesco’s carpark, being taller and YELLOWer than most cars.
It had "tall" profile tyres, saving me a fortune in mangled hub caps - Mrs BN is not the world’s best parker, and tends to use kerbs as a physical guide to parking accuracy! Should have been a tram driver - come to think of it, they’re making a comeback, and she’s been looking for an "out" from teaching! This woman should never own alloy wheels with a car attached.
I digress - After opening the YELLOW tailgate, which was actually a side-hinged door, it had plenty of headroom for taking dustbins to the dump, and the back seat was removable for those extra large square items that would otherwise cos you £15 to have delivered.
Oh, yes. Did I mention it was YELLOW?
Access to the engine was great, unless you were short, in which case, something to stand on would be useful. Opening the bonnet lid, which would lay right back against the windscreen revealed a huge chasm with something looking like a model aircraft engine at the bottom. Hellooooo down there Mr. Dipstick, need any oil? Reliability was fine, although once on checking the dipstick, it seemed curiously low on oil, and seemed to take forever to get the dipstick to register any recognition of said hydrocarbon.

What I didn't realise was, that I wasn't removing the dipstick far enough to see the bottom end of it, and I had very nearly fill the poor thing up to the gills. I was soon appraised of this situation on first starting, which went something like "Whirr, whirr, slurp, bubble, fut! Fortunately, no long term damage was done after draining it, but we were forced to be rather anti-social for a few miles whilst the heat from the engine got everything dried-out again - still at least anyone following couldn't have got our number!

The gear change was surprisingly positive for something so long and waggly.

We both loved the high up seating position, which gave an air of authority in traffic jams, and helped with the planning-ahead that I will cover in the next section.

And now!.
THE BAD NEWS
This list may be a bit longer.
It was tall and very narrow, and therefore, cornering needed to be planned ahead, if you weren’t going to start seeing the world at 90 degrees to the horizontal.
It had crude leaf-spring suspension at both ends making for an excrutiatingly-uncomfortable stiff ride. The front passenger side had a dashboard grab-handle - after couple of West London’s many speed-ramps you could see what this was for. At least the driver has a (bus-sized) steering wheel to hang on to!
The combination of a "live" front axle and worm-drive steering gave it a very vague feel on the road - even driving straight needed planning ahead too, as any pothole was fair game in making it wander off course.
Of course, you wouldn’t notice this off-road since you would put this down to the terrain, but on a smooth road - whoops! Come to think of it, the only off-roading we did was to put two wheels up the kerb to use an ATM in Ealing!
For a 1000cc engine, fuel consumption was terrible, around 25 mpg I think, but you have to think more in terms of how heavy it was, not the engine size.

4 wheel-drive system could only be used off-road, unless the surface was very slippery, otherwise you risked transmission damage. (There was no third differential in the centre of the car to allow the front and back wheels free rein to go at different speeds). Probably all for the better though - the fuel consumption was bad enough as it was, without giving the poor thing more bits to turn.

It was oh-so noisy inside, due to a singular lack of any real soundproofing to speak of. This, coupled with the tendency to wander, put you off doing more than 50 mph on ANY road.

VERDICT

Would I have another one - no!

Did I like it - yes!

Summing up, it was fun to own, but a genuine pain in the arse to drive. No doubt, if we’d been inclined (bad word to use under the circumstances) to go off road, we’d have had a bit more fun, as I’m told they were surprisingly able, despite their ability to fall over in the hands of the uninitiated.

With hindsight, it’s easy to see why it was low-mileage when we got it - who in their right mind would travel any distance in it?!

I miss it, in a funny kind of way!

p.s. Despite being two years since we sold it, I keep seeing it around - well something that colour (did I say it was yellow?) is bound to be easy to spot.

Credits

Unfortuantely we have lost the name of the Author of this fantastic article, as well as the source of the article, although we seem to recall a pseudonym of "Pitch". This truly sums up the spirit of the Suzuki SJ Series 4x4