Copycat Suzuki Samurai Custom Camper

[deepmud]

Well that looks like a great idea Deepmud.

Is the sami a long wheel base, or did you do the stretch yourself? We can not get the longer ones over here in the USA, but it sure looks nice!

It's a home-stretch I was going to buggy/tube the back end and ended up doing some sheet metal. I cut down the bed of a rusted out Toyota for the floor (hard to beat lightness/stength of the factory design) and made up the outline of the bed using 1.5" light-duty tube salvaged from ATV shipping pallets. The tailgate from the old body was grafted on, and I made the bedsides and fenders/fenderwells were made from a 4x8 sheet of .32 steel - super sturdy, maybe a little heavier than needed but I like that the fenders are sturdy enough to stand on. Basically I stretched the wheelbase to 108 with the custom front/rear one-link (think Unimog suspension) and made the body fit. It's kind of sad looking back, since I cut up a non-rusted/good running, streetable Samurai but ended up using almost non of it. I like the rig, but I should have sourced a carcass and worked on it "in parallel".

There are some very nice custom-stretch jobs being done - mine is more of a monster-buggy than a nice street rig - it doesn't bear close inspection

 

[deepmud]

redid the top - more streamlined, less wack-on-trees.


Always harder to rebuild than to do it right the first time.

 

[deepmud]

one big issue with the new design was the lack of structure across the roof - it's easy to make it square and carry the load down the walls - I had to come up with a "rib" to support across the top....

the red varnish is just what I had around, btw - several left-over cans of various stains mixed together, with some solvent added to help penetration into the wood. You can see from the inside I've had non-stop wet weather all summer, no chance to paint it dry - I finally just covered with a shelter, waited until not dripping wet and rolled on the sealer.

Next I figure I'll paint it a dark green, with white winter winter camo painted over