Vehicle & Technical > Suzuki

jimny vs sammy

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blackjim:
If you decide on a Jimny you might drop lucky and get a fully modded one that someone has spent £6,000 on for about £3,000. The suspension geometry will probably still need some work so you need to budget maybe £500 for that.

Take a look at http://www.bigjimny.com/ Big Jimny for inspiration. Martin bought his fully modded Jimny with exo rollcage for £3,000. I know for a fact that it would have cost him £6,000 total if he had bought a standard Jimny and done the mods on it himself.

KAP have a nice yellow van, newly completed for £4,500.

Cheers

BJ

mlines:
Yep, as Blackjim says, I got lucky and got a fully modded one. I have been watching the back of TOR magazine and there are two or three Jimnys there, all over £3000 and they haven't sold. I think the market will not sustain a Jimny over £3000 regardless of the modifications to it. Equally I think that the SJ range has a similar barrier at around £1000 - no matter how modified it is.  So any mods you do will not be recouped in any future selling price.

If you are going to do road driving, green laning and a bit of off-roading then a Jimny is going to give you an extra level of comfort that an SJ cannot achieve - coil sprung, powered steering, fuel injection, air-con (some models) etc. But it is early in its life cycle as an "off-roader" so modifications and parts can be expensive, however it is still  rare enough that people come and look at it at off-road events. They are electronic based so some engine work can be more complex.

With the SJ range you have a lot greater choice of modifications and cheap (scrap) part prices. You will be fighting rust from day one along with the annual rebuild before the MOT if it is road-going. But they are tough little beasts and mechanically simple to work on with the minimum of electronics. Some people spend forever working on the carbs as they seem to wear out on older high mileage ones - and you cannot get young low mileage ones any more!

Both Jimny and SJ eat wheel-bearings, king-pin bearings and brakes when off-roaded. My old SJ also ate propshaft UJs at an alarming rate but the Jimny does not do this (yet!). Both have a bit of a reputation for weak axles/CV joints with the bigger Samurai fairing better and the JImnys perhaps worse.

Buying a ready built one does mean that you are more limited in your choice of modifications and therefore you may have to spend a little to bring it to your preferred specification - I spent time on mine tidying the wiring and I know that Will (the previous owner - who also bought it ready built from someone else) spent time on the rollcage etc. as the KAP exocage flexed a lot.

Building your own means it is exactly the way you want it, but you will not get back the value of the mods in the sale price and you may spend more time building it than driving it.

Martin

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