Well, I bought a 88 Samurai the other day, mostly on a whim. I got it for a great deal.
It's a dedicated trail rig right now. I'll be keeping it that way....except way more extreme.
It's got a SOA with 31's now.
I'm new to these little rigs (I have a Jeep), but I've always like them.
Just wondering if you know of any rigs with Full width axles.
Either that, or if you know if there's a great way to use portal axles in these.
I really want to take this and over the next year, maybe two build a mad trail rig.
Anybody think it's possible to fit a V8 in it?
I'm away from home now for a couple of weeks and it's killing me not being able to pick and probe it. I wanna get the plans laid out for it.
I want to run 37-40" tires on it when it's done.

I've seen small v-8's in sami's before, but it's much more common to see large v-6's.  A newer 4.6-4.8 v-8 will be light enough and compact enough to work if you don't mind some shoe horning.  Portal's will work to, but do your homework on suspension, make sure it accomadates what you need.  portals are much more prone to axel wrap.

What kind of trail rig are we talking about? 
Mud, Rocks, Sand, ect.  What are you looking to do with it?

About, having full widths on a zuk, there was a forum a while back, and it was an 87 or 88 with fucll widths.  A little to wide for me, i would just stick with the toyota axles,  but if you want to run that big of a tired full widths will deffinatly do the trick.

But there were pics of the zuk with the axles im sure if you did some searches you could find it.


Amilla

If you put portals on it, the axles will weigh more than the vehicle!  :eek:

If you put portals on it, the axles will weigh more than the vehicle!  :eek:

That sounds about right.

Another about going with portals is going to be the cost and availability of spare parts. When something breaks (yes, it will happen  ) you aren't going to be able to gets parts at your local auto parts store. And your parts aren't going to be cheap. One of the best sources I know of are these guys.

http://www.coldwarremarketing.com

If you put portals on it, the axles will weigh more than the vehicle!  :eek:

Good! Low CoG.
As long as I can find a power plant to run them.
We'll see, this is very early stages of planning yet.

     there a guy here in ontario whith sammi with a 454 in it its got 38s and the headers fit out the wheel well, cool looking rig very unbalanced and in the mud the short wheel base makes it spin around alot. he keeps it parked and watches everyone else wheel.

full size on a zuk excellent idea
if you do i would make your zuk a little longer closer to 94"
i wish i would have made mine longer .
and power steering would help alot