ZUKIWORLD Online | Suzuki 4x4 Editorial and Forum
ZUKIWORLD Discussion Forum => Technical Discussion - Performance / Modify => Topic started by: NewIdeas on July 31, 2015, 11:14:45 PM
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I have a 88 JA samurai and trial ride often. I run 33" tires with a lot of backspacing. Trial riding plus mud plus a lot of stress on my wheel bearings make my maintenance never ending. I am tired of packing hubs and buying bearings plus breaking a axle once a year. I looked at some side by side ORVs and found many of them have IFS. The problem most people have with IFS is breaking things on a truck that's heavy and in a bad bind. The other problem is flex or articulation but that is because of sway bars or hard suspension made for towing a loaded vehicle over rough ground. So if you were to put half ton IFS on a little samurai with soft coil springs you could flex and you wouldn't have enough power or mass to break the IFS. Has anyone done IFS on a samurai? If so pleas post pictures or videos
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It would likely require more than a few weekends to adapt an IFS system to a Samurai. It would be much easier, and likely less costly in the long run to purchase a Tracker/Sidekick...or a RZR. 8)
FYI, I run 32" MT tires with 2-1/2" backspacing, locked front and rear, and it is a very reliable setup. It really doesn't require much maintenance either. I rarely break axles or have wheel bearing problems.
It sounds like your bearings are either having the grease washed out or some other problem. Are you installing quality Japanese bearings & seals, and putting RTV on metal to metal surfaces? Are you covering many deep water crossings?
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This is funny, i had a similar idea but for a sidekick. I havent seen any sami ifs rigs myself, but there isn't any reason you couldn't make it work. So the idea is good, after all guys with 5000 pound, 350+hp rigs can run around on 35+ inch tires, a little zuk could get away with more simply being lighter. Plus, i have a long travel fetish and most LT kits for any rig out there is costly, so i wanted to drop ifs from a newer fullsize tundra on a kick. I figured tundra would be better than 2500 gm ifs for a few reason: coilovers instead of torsion bars (i think any t-bar will be indexted too stiff), 6 lug pattern (aren't they?) Instead of 8, making matching wheels with an fj80 or yota real axle convenient. Also, totalchaos makes nice UCAs that boost the travel a couple of inches. A fullsize ifs will have more travel, be tougher and have stronger brakes and a wider track width.
Only problems i see are: the additional weight and the track width being too wide. Its not like proper ground up deigned LT stuff where the U&LCAs are mounted close to the center of the frame as possible. With a different diff you could probably narrow it down along with some modified CVs but that's beyond me.
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Yes Toyota would be a better source but I just have to come across some one who has sold out a solid axle on there truck and wants to sale the IFS hopefully I can. I need to check some junk yards around here and see what I can find. ???
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It would likely require more than a few weekends to adapt an IFS system to a Samurai. It would be much easier, and likely less costly in the long run to purchase a Tracker/Sidekick...or a RZR. 8)
FYI, I run 32" MT tires with 2-1/2" backspacing, locked front and rear, and it is a very reliable setup. It really doesn't require much maintenance either. I rarely break axles or have wheel bearing problems.
It sounds like your bearings are either having the grease washed out or some other problem. Are you installing quality Japanese bearings & seals, and putting RTV on metal to metal surfaces? Are you covering many deep water crossings?
Yes sorry I didn't answer sooner I'm very new to this form. I have even had a actual shop try to do it to see if I may be missing something but it all last about 6 months before I have to change everything out again and I only have 12k miles on the whole thing so i just can't find what is causing my problems.
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Something is definitely not right. I have gone 5+/50K miles years without servicing wheel bearings.