Special thanks to Wendy Dunn for her help in getting these pictures to us!

This Suzuki is my fifth project with body lifts and modifications of my own. I have always built full-size Chevys in the past and helped friends with their full-size trucks. My last project was a full-size 1980 GMC Jimmy with a 15" lift, 44" Super Swampers and a 454 c.i. under the hood.

Itseemed like everyone had the same ideas in mind for a big truck. I decided to go with something a little different and so I purchased this 1986 Suzuki Samurai in 1993. It already had a leaf over lift, 4" body lift and 33" Dunlop Mud Rover tires. There was a lot of hard and long thinking of how and what I was going to do to this truck. And so my task began?

The next step was to remove the body from the frame. The stock mounts for the engine, transmission and transfer case were also removed. The stock mounts were cut off and the new mounts were welded into place. I had to fabricate my own mounts for there wasn't a conversion kit available at that time. The 3.8L engine and transmission were lowered into place, lined up and the mounting plates were clamped to the frame rails and tack welded. The engine was then removed to do the final weld, the transfer case was done in the same manner.

I also removed the 4" body lift and replaced it with 6 1/2" x 2 1/4" x 1/4" wall pipe with a plate welded top and bottom and added a high grade bolt through the center so the body could be safely bolted to the frame. The frame was then sandblasted and prepared for painting.

This new lift provided more clearance for larger tires. I switched the tire size to 38" Super Swampers that I purchased from Steelcase Tires 'n' Mags in Markham, Ontario, Canada. I mounted these on my 14" American Racing Rims.