I have been looking at cheap 4x4's on craigslist lately since I want to get out and do some wheeling; I've not yet owned a truck in my collection. The two best ones I've come across right now are an 87' Samurai and a pair of late 80's XJ cherokees. I intend to drive the truck to work and wheel it, so I want a good balance of on road manners and off road capability. My commute is only about 30 minutes and under 65mph so the lack of power/speed in the zuk shouldn't be too bad. I like the samurai for its simplicity and the jeep for the power of the six. Is there a good reason to pick one over the other? The jeeps have automatic transmissions, are they reliable? How do they deal with rust?
they're soo old by now. just get the nicer one of the three.
hotg54b
New Reader
12/8/08 6:23 p.m.
I got about 280k miles out of my old 88 XJ betore I got rid of due to rusting floor boards. Truck ran great and was extremely reliable at the time. The only problem I had was replacing the crank angle sensor every 25-30k miles.
pick up the samurai. great milage, incredible capabilities, and will go up in value not down.
Samurai will make a better dedicated off-roader, the Cherokee will make a better everything else. The 4.0L is a fantastic motor once you replace the very-prone-to-cracking stock exhaust manifold, gobs of torque and not too thirsty. If memory serves, the automatics used are the same used in Turbo Supras, so should be plenty strong, though I suggest a stick for wheeling.
derekshannon wrote:
With the torque multiplying effect of the converter, I'd take a good auto off-road any day of the week. Two-footed work is much more precise than clutch/brake/gas dancing as well.
My dad and I got around that with a hand throttle :)
Though I admit, having your torque converted makes for a lot less stalling out in high-pucker situations. I just prefer the control of non-coverted torque for coming back down, and I'd suggest having an electric fan over an external tranny cooler if you go with the automatic so you don't overheat it.
Oh, and I'm sure it was said already, but gears, gears, gears, gears! Shoot for a crawl ratio lower than 80:1 if you can.
EDIT: I reread this... my suggstion is to have an external tranny cooler WITH it's own electric fan. I realize it sounds like I'm suggesting one over the other, and that's not what I meant.
I still luagh at how far off road I have taken both of my neons... only got stuck once, and I i had an LSD, i would have gotten out.
Just stay away from the 2.8 Cherokees & life will be good
The Samurai is the Lotus Seven of off-road vehicles, keep that in mind...that said, it seems like a perfect match for what you need. Just remember that it's a total toy, the soft top roofs will leak and come loose if you put them on wrong, and the hardtop roofs may leak too. Also the older models with 1.0 engines will be unimaginably slow, get a 1.3 if possible. Rust-wise, Samurais are extremely bad, most of the time spent on maintenance will be rust repair (although they're still pretty low maintenance).
Hmmmm.
The Samurai has a frame,
XJ is a uni-body.
XJ may have two choices for direction on the trail,
Sammy has three, it's just smaller.
XJ has to back down,
Sammy K-turns on a trail of Jeep width.
Mine has new 6.5 to one gears in the X-Fer case, it does 60 quite comfortably.
In 4-lo at 4000 rpm, you can walk next to it.
I can climb a Jeep.
Girls think it's cute.
See how easy that was?
Lotus 7???
No, a rock buggy is the Lotus Seven of offroad vehicles.
I've had Scouts and Jeeps, the Sammy is more like the CRX of off-road vehicles.
They're great once you stuff Toyota running gear under them.
The Toyota pickup and it's relatives are the Miata of off-road vehicles.
Shawn
