Project Pickle - How to install BMW 3-series (e36) seats in a Suzuki SJ (part 10)

I'll put it out straight away: the stock seats were never an option. Not because the stock seats in a Suzuki SJ are particularly bad or the like, but just because the ones in this specific Suzuki were disgusting. As such I started to look around what other people fitted into Suzukis and while customer bucket seats would definitely scored high in the style department, I wanted foldable seats, so the rear bench would still be (theoretically) usable. Aside from the usual Honda CRX and Suzuki Swift GTI seats, which due to popularity had become rather pricy, the only real option was to get a pair BMW 3-series (e36) seats. They are rather narrow (only 50cm at the front mounting points) and pretty low, which resulted in the seating position actually being  two or three centimeters lower than stock. On top of all that the BMW seats have height adjustment as well. With an asking price of 50 Euros for a quite well used pair of the most basic seats out of an e36 compact, it did NOT take very long to decide that these were the seats to go. So, with no further adue, please  follow me into what I can call at best an experience with a very steep learning curve. As you will be no doubt able to tell by the way the car (and the seasons) change, this took quite a while and ultimately it would be three iterations, to mount the seats in a way I found acceptable.

First attempt: Mockup and first attempt by using up some old square profile. Turns out in order for this to work properly, one should have welded in the transmission tunnel perfectly square, so there's quite a bit more room on the passenger side than on the driver side.

In order to clear the transmission tunnel, I assumed it would be best, if I simply went up a bit and so I made some approx. 30mm spacers.

While this worked, it resulted in sitting way too high up and having only very limited room between steering wheel and legs. Also in hindsight, it's quite obvious that the driver's seat wasn't in the lowest position.

Attempt number two did away with the spacers and I bought some fresh 35mm box-section with a beefy 4mm wall thickness, which was exactly twice of what the scrap bits sported. 

As the floor aside from the reinforcement ribs is "a tad" bent, it quickly turned out that a bit of a rethink was due (again) and whilst I could keep the outer sections, I had to modify the inner ones. For legal reasons, I wanted to use the mounting points of the OEM seat mounting bolts. Actually if you have a stock SJ/Samurai outside of India and think to yourself: Mine's looking substantially different in this area, you're absolutely right and yes again, I could have reverted mine to the conventional setup, but with no stock seats, why not start with a blank slate. (The obvious answer, because then I could have ignored to bowed floor pan...)

So on the transmission tunnel side, the seat would be mounted on a pair of additional tabs.

And here's the final result for the passenger side.

It sucked. Big time. If I wanted to build a BMW rocking chair inside a Suzuki, I would have perfectly succeeded. But obviously this wasn't the plan. Also it was an absolute p.i.t.a. to install and it looked so terrible that I wondered how to sneak it past the inspection guys in the garage.

As such a third and final attempt was needed. The brute-force approach was substituted with a thinner walled C-channel and the (not too dumb, if I may say so) idea that the seats should sit on a separate frame, which is then bolted to the floor pan. On top of that installation should be possible without any additional spanners, i.e. all the nuts for the seats have to be welded to the frame. 

So the basic frame idea was pretty good, but there was still some room for improvement.

Drilled holes in the top to allow easier positioning and better access to the allen head bolts, which fasten the seat base to the floor. All you had to do after that was to put the seat on top, again line up the holes and you're done.

Stealthy flat black for the win.

That's it, once you know how it's done and have the right material it's a matter of two or three hours plus the time it takes for the paint to dry and you can install BMW seats in your Suzuki. Otherwise it takes more than a month and multiple attempts.

Project Pickle - bonnet and doors - the last bits (part 9.6)

The last missing bits (as the title implies) were the bonnet and the doors. Among the few visible reasons why this car was taken off the road and subsequently didn't sell at the dealer, was the fact that a tree branch or the like must have fallen onto the bonnet, bent it badly and most likely on the way down managed to crack the windscreen. 

As I am not entirely sure what the future might bring, I deliberately bought a later 413/Samurai hood, because it as a little bump in the middle, which is necessary, if one wanted to install a 1.3 or 1.6L engine at some point. 

Of course, it was reasonably priced because it needed some work. Aside from two small bolt holes each side, where some external hood latches were bolted on, it was rusted through in the middle where the Suzuki emblem would have been. 

Plus a layer (or three) of paint and it's good to go again.

Installation is just four bolts.

And because we were already near a concrete fence post, it was time to straighten the left frame horn where the bumper mounts to... redneck style. ( F=m*a ) and you can achieve quite some acceleration, when you have two or three meters of rope...

Last step: the doors. Disassembly is very straight forward.

Two m6 bolts at the bottom of the sliding mechanism.

Remove both weather strips.

Window comes out.

... and paint(ed).

Lastly: Install the front and rear windows. Which, quite frankly is brilliantly easy, if you a) install new rubber on the window a few days before, b) lube it plenty and c) have a car with flat glass. For the rear window, we didn't even have to use string to get it in. On the front, we had to revert to the original seal as the aftermarket one was just a smidge too big for the window frame. 

There you go, one freshly painted Suzuki SJ410 and to be honest posting about all of this felt like it took longer than the actual work.

Coming up next time: BMW e36 seats in a little Suzuki.

Project Pickle - grill time (part 9.5)

With the rest of the car being tackled paint-wise, it was time to address to the situation at the front. Because it fit quite well on the old front wings, I had decided to stick with the original grill. As I had already suspected the little truck must have had a most likely not so little crash as the front left frame end was a bit bent. With two new front wings it became rather apparent that the grill wasn't even remotely as straight as I had originally thought. 

But first: drilling out snapped bolts. 

After "some" bending, hammering and redrilling of the mounting holes, the grill was back to the point where it could at least be somewhat attached to the front. 

Should be rather obvious what I meant, when I wrote "kind of attached"...

Not sure why, but the bottom end had to be narrowed down quite a bit in order to fit. 

As usual: the previous owners' strategy for rust treatment was to slather it in bondo, so this meant even more work by fixing dozens of pin holes and grinding them flat again.

On the upside, if the paint works as intended, the results are pretty spectacular.

... and lastly because the stock plastic door handles absolutely s*ck, I ordered the metal ones as fitted to the Indian Army Maruti Gipsy. 

Project Pickle - backdoor action (part 9.4)

In the strictest sense this was an unnecessary purchase. I mean the Pickle came with a completely bent and rusty backdoor and whilst it is bad, it is definitely still salvageable . Yet still a much better one came up (almost) locally.

Here's one for those who are afraid of taking out glass on your own: Don't be. The rubber was too hard, to just be able to push it out, but with a bit soapy water and a spatula, I pryed the rubber off the glass where it was stuck on really good. After that it was literally just as the picture suggests: fold the rubber over and slowly work your way round. Much easier with two or three of those, so the old rubber doesn't snap back into place all the time.

Remember (or better mark) the orientation of both the rubber seal and the window and reinstall will hardly be a ten minute job. Also: store the gasket installed on the plane of glass this makes it much less likely to chip a corner or the like.

As it came without a door handle or locking mechanism, I took all of that from the original rear door. There's really just two important clips you have to be aware of: the red one for the actual door handle and the metal clip holding the actual locking barrel in place.

Once you know how to do it, the whole paint and primer thing is pretty straightforward.

As you can see in the background, I wrapped the car up and sprayed the roof again. (Ultimately doing it two or three times just to make sure.)

To be fair, if the individual components react the way they are supposed to, the results are pretty good. 

In defense of the seller of the backdoor, it was never advertised as accident free, but removing the bondo definitely shaved off a pound or more (seriously) and pushing it back made it look a lot less worse than it was.