Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

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Fred
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Finally a bit of maintenance/work on the old girl! Here's the front end shake issue:

Old vs new: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 3673219072
The hazards of lawn work: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 2516908032
The benefits of lawn work: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 2130347008

Tomorrow I'll pick up the other three, and sometime soon, hopefully before Saturday morning, I'll yank the old out, wire brush the bits in between, and put it all back together.

If I can achieve that, I can send it through for another WOF and resume use :-)

Cough, decoder, cough.
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Gave this a bit of love tonight! :-D

Left the office at 1pm, and by 3pm I had it WOF ready:
Drives SO much better! :-D

Shake gone!
Torque steer gone!
Wandering steering gone!

Drives how it should :-D

And then I pulled finger and prepared the house for guests!

Fred.
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Scale of the thing compared to another van: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 4979629057

On a hoist with stock wheels fitted: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 0539539458

Mangled side skirt mount needing love: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 9733132289

WOF obtained! Daily driving, complete with full sacks of rice that go woosh pssss, can now resume :-D
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Noticed front number plate nearly ready to fall off with one screw gone and the other half out and loose. Woops. Removed large m6 philips screw and replaced with two m6 10mm yellow zinc bolts from my JDM/Euro fastener collection. Ditched the plastic advertising surround, too. Looks cleaner, is lighter, torqued up solidly so I won't lose the plate, harder to undo for muppets, win win win win. Sorry for this post. Just like to keep a record of what I get done...
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

3 months since last update, and not a good update, either, today:

In a display of impatience, poor judgment, and stupidity, and in a classic case of familiarity breeds contempt, I gave this thing the "punched in the nose" look today after a bus pulled out in front of me, and I opted not to brake, but rather to go around it to the left... straight into a parked Camry with a guy inside it.

Mrs was the worst casualty, quite upset. Otherwise no human impact, aside from my wallet, of course.

Camry has some paint scratches on the bumper and the right side was pushed slightly forward, but it looked mostly OK.

Suzuki, though... both headlights smashed on the inside edge, radiator support upper and lower both pushed back into engine, bonnet folded about half way across, a bit of a mess.

It has 2.5 months of WOF left on it, and 1 week of rego, so I guess I'll straighten it out as much as I can today, and use it for 2 months more (there's your deadline, Jeff), and then make a decision on the thing. Minimum repair for another WOF would be headlights and some straightening. Airbag didn't pop. Repair to make it look OK again would also include new bonnet. bumper deformed and reformed and is OK enough, minus some peeled paint.

Headlights are about 250nz each.
Bonnet, no idea. IF available... who knows.

A week of failures and near failures, so far. Plenty of days left to make it a double hat trick.

Pic(s) to come.
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Biff and/or repair pics:

https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 6708853761
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 3083963392
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 5335542784
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 6949983233
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 7130265600
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 2925904896
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 5025995776
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 9791137792
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 0908390405
https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 2557778944

Image




Might inline the rest later.

What have I done today? Cleaned 740 and caravan, and:

Removed:

bumper
headlights
radiator support
flimsy cross member thingy
air con pump, belt, radiator, drier, lines - for good. One fitting broke bending it back, may as well keep it clean.
Lower radiator hose crunchy, removed to acid clean

Fixed:

Headlight mounting tabs
Turbo water feed hoses/barbs/lines
Missing radiator mount substituted
Straightened wastegate bracket
Cleaned rust stains from various things
Straightened the kink in the middle of the bonnet - OK around the edge, but two decent dents in front as above photo shows.
Partially straightened the flimsy cross member thingy

Need to:

Straighten single kink in radiator support
Straighten vertical part of radiator support, pretty badly squashed
Finish straightening the flimsy cross member thingy
Glue headlights back together as best I can aiming for seal and roughly geometrically correct outer shape
Drill a couple of snapped bolts out and chase threads
Reinstall everything hoping it lines up well enough

So much for viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1967&p=42620#p42620 one day out of 4 already gone, and tomorrow not looking good!
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Did more yesterday, did more today. Still mostly in pieces.

Put some of it back together today, filled the radiator/engine with water, put the cap on, warmed it up, boosted up/down the driveway a couple of times, parked it back up. Then I noticed wetness. Radiator was damaged by the sharp edge of the metal fan shroud when it all got pushed back and into each other.... Hopefully I can alloy braze it... but... bleh...

Image
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Ordered a pair of headlights for the poor old girl, 50 bucks each! Not bad. So now I just need to upgrade or fix or replace the radiator, and I'm good to go. Go and get a new WOF, that is. May also get some less f***ed tin from the same wrecker, too. We'll see.

Will be good to daily drive an 8400 RPM engine again :-D wooooosh, pfft, woooosh, pfft. etc.
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Re: Fred's 1998 Suzuki Wagon R Wide!

Post by Fred »

Picked them up a few weeks ago, but only on Saturday did I get a chance to give them a clean/polish, and here's the before/after:

https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/ ... 2663037952

Image






Night and day! So satisfying. So easy. Win.
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