The "next one over" trip uncovered a few bugs with my rig; nothing that left me stranded, but I now have a new lit of fixes and upgrades before the next trip:

1.  Add an additional exhaust hanger
2.  Add a steering stabilizer
3.  new lower shock mounts
4.  rebuild transmission
5.  new clutch
6.  Add some front diff armor (mostly to cover up existing damage)
7.  Add a leaf in the rear springs (sat too low with all of my camping gear)
8.  door hinge mod (will be nice to be able to remove my doors for the base camp type trips)
9.  add a single rear seat with 5 point harness (for my son)
10.  New HID headlights
11. 1.6L 8v swap

All of the parts are here in my shop and the work is underway...need to be done by the end of this month for a planned trip, and the rest of the bugs need to be worked out for the Colorado trip at the end of this summer.  I'll post pics as the work progresses!

That is a Great Looking Samurai, and you use it!  Of course, your in Oregon!!  Very good job.  It is enjoyable seeing work that is well done and finished like yours.   I have to play with mine before it gets to the finish stages (I know they are never finished).

found a donor vehicle for the 8 valve!  Picked up a decent little 1993 sidekick in eastern OR.  140k on the odometer, but some of those miles were behind a motorhome.  Runs and drivers perfect...good candidate for my project. 

Got the Samurai's engine pulled today:

And, got the sidekick engine pulled from the donor vehicle and cleaned up.  I was going to just replace the timing belt and drop it in my samurai, but I noticed a small leak from the front crankshaft seal.  Much easier to change now...so I will be waiting for parts for a few days.

Got the new engine in!

Before I pulled it from the sidekick, I did a compression check.  It looked plenty healthy, so I pulled it and put it on an engine stand.  Then, I pulled the oil pan and pulled the road and main bearing caps and plastigaged them to check for wear.  Everything looked good there.  I put new front and rear main seals in, and then cleaned up the oilpan and put it back in place.  The I changed the timing belt.  I adjusted valve clearances, and put new spark plugs in.  I bolted my Saginaw TC pump bracket on; the bolts lined up in the block, but the ones for the head did not.  An bit of minor fab work had the bracket modified to work with both the 1.3 and the 1.6.  I replaced both serpentine belts, and finished cleaning up the last of the clinging dirt on all of the castings.  
I put the Samurai distributor with new o-rings on (the sidekick's plug didn't match the wiring harness in the samurai).  I also put the Samurai intake manifold and TBI in, and dropped the engine into the samurai.  
It fired right off, with a bit of a rough idle; I set the timing with a timing light, flushed the coolant system, and headed off down the road.
The engine had noticeably more low end torque than the samurai engine did, but it suffered from a low speed stumble and stalled occasionally.  It also ran out of power at higher RPM; I didn't gain any top speed, and it didn't pull the hills much better than the 1.3 did.  
I pulled it back into the shop and double checked my cam and ignition timing; both were still perfect.  So, I pulled the Samurai intake manifold and TBI off of the new engine, and bolted the sidekick system into place.  A few things had to be changed, but the system mostly plugged into the Samurai harness.  The Sidekick's throttle body is significantly larger than the samurai's, so I had high hopes for more power.  The engine fired right off and settled into a steady idle.  I drove it for about an hour and it worked great!  Plenty of power, no hesitation, misses, etc.  I'll watch my fuel economy closely over the next few weeks, but it seems that the Samurai's ECM has no problem running the sidekick TBI.  
I'll post pics of the new engine when I get some spare time...

Quite a few people have said that the 1.3L FI setup doesn't work well on the 1.6L engine.  Interesting that you can just adapt the stock 1.6l TB and make it work.

Quite a few people have said that the 1.3L FI setup doesn't work well on the 1.6L engine.  Interesting that you can just adapt the stock 1.6l TB and make it work.

Yep...I have done a few carbed 1.6 projects before, but this was the first time I tried to make a TBI one work with an EFI samurai.  I got a lot of conflicting information from people as to whether or not it would work.  My experience:  It runs with the 1.3L intake/TBI setup, but not well enough to make it a viable swap.  The power gains with this setup are minimal (although low end torque is noticeably better).  Swapping the sidekick EFI in only took a couple of hours and was pretty easy, and it seems to run quite well with the samurai ECM. 
I still have the 'kick donor ECM and may try swapping that in in a few weeks just to see if it changes anything. 

Pics!  It looks great right now...until the next wheelin' trip! 
Next up on the list, a fast idle switch!

I've only run 1 tank of fuel through since the engine swap, but the initial data looks good!  I seem to be getting better fuel mileage with the 1.6 than I ever got with the 1.3. 

I completed a few more projects recently; I purchased some diamond tread rubber mat and cut out some pieces for the rear cargo area and the floorboards.  It really cut down on the noise in the cab; I plan to order a little bit more and make some pieces for under the front seats. 

I put a seat in the back for my Son; its a Jeg's poly seat with a 5 point harness.  It is designed to be quickly removable with no tools.  I designed it as part of a modular rack system; additional racks will secure rubbermaid action packer totes and my ARB freezer/fridge.  The rack system is complete...but so far the only thing I have built is the seat frame.  I'm trying to find time to build a bracket for my ARB freezer/fridge before the Colorado trip. 

Also installed a fast idle system using existing engine parts.  I just bought an additional Carling Contura switch (to match my existing ones) and wired it up to a relay.  The relay switches ground to a vacuum solenoid that controls a small linear actuator on the throttle linkage.  When I flip the switch, it bumps the idle up to about 1800 RPM for those extended winching and welding sessions.  Video to be uploaded to youtube soon...

Video of the fast idle circuit:

Fast idle circuit on a sidekick engine in my Suzuki Samurai

That's pretty cool.  I was going to wire up an adjustable idle system from an outboard motor that my brother gave me, but I managed to break the electronic portion with a crossed wire before I had a chance to hook it up.

Sweet thread, thank you for sharing.

Made it through the trip to Colorado and 6 days of relatively mild wheeling.  I did have one small issue; one of the shims broke and fell out of one of the rear leaf spring packs.  The resulting free space allowed the axle housing to rotate; it damaged the hard brake lines and the spring perch on that side, and broke the spring center pin.  Relatively minor issues...I'll have that fixed in the next week or two. 
However, there are a few more design issues that came up during the trip:

1.  Now that I have the 1.6L engine in there, I feel that the 6.5:1 tcase gears are too low.  Even at 10,000ft. I was never short of power in high range, except on the steeper passes.  And low range was just too low.  I was routinely starting in 2nd gear, jumping right to 5th, and then double clutching a tranny/tcase shift from 5th low into 2nd high.  I never used 1st low, even on the really rocky trails.  So, I'm going to swap out my 6.5:1 tcase for a 4.9:1

2.  The rear springs I used are still too soft, even after adding the extra leaf.  It sits at a decent ride height with no cargo, but with almost anything in the back it rides just an inch or so off of the bump stop.  I have some more 2.5" wide leaves...I'll be adding another leaf to each spring pack (making a 7 leaf pack). 

3.  I had the spidertrax upper shock mount to increase the travel of my rear shocks and reduce their stiffness.  But, this mount forces the upper shock mounts inboard and contributes to body roll.  With the extra weight of my exo-cage, I think that the shocks would be better off in their factory locations.  I will be moving the exhaust and shock mounts around to accommodate this. 

4.  I have had several different Samurais with rear lockers in them; and (contrary to most people's opinions) I have always preferred a spool in the rear axle to an automatic locker (like the spartan or lock rite).  I liked the predictability of the spool over the clicking, banging, and sudden lock/unlock of the locker on the street.  However...the spool only works well when the inside tire is allowed to slip a little.  My Samurai now has the added weight of the exo-cage, really sticky tires, and really flexy suspension.  What happens is that the inside tire doesn't slip anymore...it drives forward under the vehicle and forces the body to lean to the outside of the corner (if I turned sharp left into a parking spot, the Samurai would sit with a lean to the right, sometimes a crazy lean with 3 or 4" more under one side of the axle).  This was contributing to difficult handling on the street, and led to the "Aileen" moniker (or just I-lean) that my rig was dubbed with.  I've never had an ARB air locker in a Samurai...so I guess that now is the time.  I have one on the way, and I'll be dropping it into the rear axle.  Lots of $$, but sometimes a selectable locker is just the way to go...

5.  I will be adding a power steering cooler.  High RPM slow speed inclines are tending to heat up my PS fluid, causing a loud whine from the PS pump.  There were lots of these climbs in CO.  I got tired of hearing the pump complain.  Ordered a B&M plate cooler that I will be finding a place for under the hood...

Thank you so much for the great write up.  I missed going on the Colorado trip.  Besides spending a week of camping in the mountains I missed out on talking to Sami owners. 

OK, so the gearing is too low right now.  I didn't go all the way back through the thread again, but what size tire are you running and what diff gears do you have? 

I keep thinking that with 33s and 4.57 diff gears, I might need the 6.5 or 6.4 t-case gears to keep things moving with the stock motor at first.  I do think I want an oil burner at some point down the road.

I have a Sami picked out locally and am going to look at it this weekend.  Right now it has 4.57 gears, a SPOA lift on 30" tires.  No t-case mods as of yet on a stock motor running the stock carb; I'm worried that after tires it won't have enough oomph to move itself. 

Rob