New LJ80 owner

[glenxr650]

I have an original LJ80. I want a 4cyl engine upgrade. I am after 60-80kw and preferably EFI. What is a straight forward swap? I am happy to do minor transmission housing and tailshaft mods to suit a new motor & gearbox. Has anyone put p/s and disc brake front? What are my options? Can most of this stuff bolt on? Will the diffs and transfer case handle extra power? Thanks.

[V.W.Dave]

Have a look in the Bible it is all there every single question you have asked is answered a few times. YES to all of them.

[BlueSuzy]

Dave! An LJ is not an SJ! Totally different.

[atari4x4]

Have a look in the Bible.

I read the Bible & Jesus makes no mention of LJ80's or Suzuki's, it's just some religious propaganda.

[St Jimmy]

Rotary power

[V.W.Dave]

Dave! An LJ is not an SJ! Totally different.

It all will still work. You just have to do a little more cutting and welding to make it all fit. I have seen a LJ with a vitara efi and w/t diffs.

[jimbo jones]

Dave! An LJ is not an SJ! Totally different.

It all will still work. You just have to do a little more cutting and welding to make it all fit. I have seen a LJ with a vitara efi and w/t diffs.

yeah but he said he dosnt mind doing minor mods to fit it

[Highway-Star]

I have an original LJ80. I want a 4cyl engine upgrade. I am after 60-80kw and preferably EFI. What is a straight forward swap? I am happy to do minor transmission housing and tailshaft mods to suit a new motor & gearbox. Has anyone put p/s and disc brake front? What are my options? Can most of this stuff bolt on? Will the diffs and transfer case handle extra power? Thanks.

An LJ is not an SJ, trying to turn it into one will ruin it... (LJ's are nimble and thrive on agility, SJ's are lumbering barges...)

The only straight forward engine swap is an F10a motor. Bolts in, one extra wire for the fuel cut solenoid on the carb. Any other sort of engine swap will be allot of work, and modifying to do properly, and will definitely require a bigger gearbox which is more work again.

I'm not sure on the transfer case strength. Allot of idgits did datsun and Carolla conversion back in the day, and the transfers usually survived. There is no easy transfer case substitute due to both outputs being centred. A mate runs a Sierra Transfer in his LJ50, it required a custom cradle, and he did it purely to run transfer gears (as he still runs a 2 stroke motor).

Disc brake conversion is easy. I did a wite up on Auszookers and LJ10 about it. Don't have time to transfer here right now, but can do later if you want.

Diffs will sort of handle extra power, though the front CV's are a bit weak (I have recently put custom Hytuff shafts with SJ Chromo CV's on them in mine to stop my F10 motor grenading the 30 year old CV's). Rear axles come in 2 different types, a 22spline rear axle, or a 26 spline. Need to know what model yours is to tell which rear end it has. LJ80 type 1 or LJ80 type 2? Type 2 will also have "stockman" stamped on the compliance plate and have the same grill as the car in my avatar. Type 2 runs the 26 spline axles which as far as I am concerned are stronger than any Sierra rear end, as there is no short side (though the centre is only a 6.5" centre like the 1Litre Sierra).

P/S is essentially a non-option unless you are prepared to replace the entire steering system, and start crush tubing the chassis for a front mounted box from another car (Jimny would still be easiest due to size)...


LJ80's are a great car, don't try to turn it into a race car unless you are prepared to strip it down to a bare chassis and change everything that needs changing, because otherwise it will try to kill you!

[glenxr650]

Thanks everyone and especially Highway star for the advice.

[Highway-Star]

Disc brake conversion is easy. I did a wite up on Auszookers and LJ10 about it. Don't have time to transfer here right now, but can do later if you want.

OK here it is copied over and slightly changed. Rear drum upgrade included.




This thread is about changing the front hubs on an LJ series axle to SJ (Sierra) swivel hubs.



Why would you do this?
First of all some of the benefits of changing your swivel hubs to SJ:
- Option of disc brakes (drums can be retained, more on this later)
- Option of Free Wheeling Hubs (FWH), (drive flanges can be retained also)
- Better wheel bearings
- Easier to get parts for than the older LJ bits


Parts required:
- You need a front LJ differential/axle. Must have housing, centre, and inner axle shafts. This works for LJ50, LJ80, and LJ80 Stockman; I don't know about LJ10 or LJ20.
- You need a pair of SJ swivel hubs. Any leaf sprung SJ is fine, even drum brake 1L hubs will still offer you FWH's and SJ wheel bearings but without the discs. You cannot use Coily (SJ80) Swivel hubs.
- You need a pair of SJ410 CV joints. You cannot use any other model CV joint to my knowledge.
- Assorted sockets, spanners, hammers, and general tools. LMM grease, wheel bearing grease, and probably all new wheel bearing and swivel hub kits. Don't forget new king pin bearings too.


Step 1; The usefull LJ parts:
Strip down your LJ frontend untill it is just the housing and the diff centre


Remove your LJ CV joints from your inner axle shafts. This can sometimes be done with a hammer and a drift, by hitting against the inner ring of the CV joint (so far so good for me ), sometimes its requires destruction of the CV joint using an angle grinder.
This is the bit you need, don't damage it!


You will have your LJ swivel hubs left over, you don't need them anymore. Keep the king pins and shims for spares though




Step 2; Axle/CV assembly
Now the worst part of the whole job, making up the Hybrid axle shafts. These require those inner LJ axle shafts from step 1, but with SJ410 CV joints fitted to them. Once again, sometimes SJ410 CV's can be removed using a hammer, sometimes you will need to destroy the SJ410 inner shaft (Don't cut up the CV, thats the bit you want!!!).

The resulting hybrid shaft should look like this:


As we are dealing with 30 year old plus cars here, sometimes the axles have deep grooves on the area where the axle seal runs. I have found about a 50/50 strike rate with good ones, bad ones. So if you do have a grooved one, you will need to fit a sleeve:


The two manufacturers I know of are Redi-Sleeve, and Speedi-Sleeve. You wants a sleeve to suit a 26mm diameter shaft. Instructions come with the sleeves on how to fit, but you may need to use chemi-weld to fill up the grooves first.
Once fitted:



Step 3; The SJ Swivel Hub:
This is the bit you are aiming to fit really, the SJ swivel hub.


late model SJ410, SJ50 (narrow track 1.3), and SJ70 (Widetrack 1.3) will all give you disc brakes and free wheeling hubs. This is the option most people would want to go with.

Alternatly, if you want the SJ bearings, and the free wheeling hubs, but want to stick with a standard drum brake system, you can use early SJ410 swivel hubs. This is what 3cyl runs on his LJ50 with LJ80 stockman diffs, suits his needs fine.

Also if you want the SJ hubs, but want drive flanges still (not sure why on earth you would, but anyway), you can use drive flanges from the front of Grand Vitaras.


The rest of the assembly process is just the same as putting any SJ front hub assembly together, and Suzuki tell us how to do that in the factory service manual, so I won't bore you with those details.

Assembled (yes disc calipres are not fitted yet, but thats as I might be fitting Vitara discs yet):




Step 4; Related issue of steering arms:
Interesting note, is that LJ steering ball joint tapres are smaller than SJ. Hence LJ steering arms don't really suit the SJ hubs perfectly. Every vehicle I have seen personally with this hub upgrade done, has just tightened up the nuts, and got away with it fine. However if you are a fuss pot like me, you won't be happy with this .

Simple Solution:
The LJ ball joints can be removed from the steering arms (unlike some SJ ones). You can then buy new SJ ball joints, and fit them, and it should work.

My Solution (Suitable for LJ80 width diffs only):
The LJ steering geometry is flawed as it is. The two arms allow for a "bump-toe" effect, where by going over a bump changes your wheel alignment's toe setting. To eliminate this, and give you steering arms that suit your new SJ hubs, I will use an SJ tie rod (narrow track SJ only).

See in this photo, how the overall width between LJ80 (top), and SJ40/SJ50 (bottom) is the same, but the drag link is notably longer on the SJ arms due to the wider chassis:


The solution I see to this, is use the original LJ tie rod as your new drag link (flash, its adjustable!). This however will require that a new bigger SJ size taper be made to the hole on the end of the new drag link. See below how the length is better:


Note: I didn't end up doing as I said here for my LJ81. Instead for the drag link I had a SJ410 drag link cut down and threaded to recieve the LJ ball joint and adjuster. I still run standard steering on my LJ80....yes it has the expected pitfalls!



Hope thats of use to some people out there. And people feel free to comment ond add to what I have said
Appologies about some of the pictures, they were taken with my phone

Cheers

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

OK, thought I would add here how to upgrade your rear brakes at the same time


Why would you do this?
If you have done the front swivel hub upgrade (as at the start of this thread), and gone to Sierra discs, then this might be usefull to you:
- Upgrade the rear to bigger SJ413 Drums
- SJ413 drums are self adjusting, so you along with front discs, you now get a low maintenance braking system


Parts required:
- You need a Rear LJ differential/axle. I am showing how to do it for a "stockman", but pre-stockman diffs could likely be worked with, with extra mods to your brake backing plate.
- You need a set of SJ413 rear brake drums (complete). SJ50 give you self adjusters, SJ70 and SJ80 give you self adjusters, but with rear diff handbrake provisions. Either will work. I am using SJ50.
- Assorted sockets, spanners, hammers, and general tools. Probably all new wheel bearing, axle seals and brake shoes. Maybe new brake cylinders.


Step 1; The usefull LJ parts:
Strip down your LJ rear diff of all its braking components (hard brake lines can stay). Keep your LJ axles, and keep your LJ bearing retainers (downgrading to the SJ413 bearing retaining method would be going backward).



Step 2; SJ413 Backing plates:
All SJ413 backing plates are also the bearing retainer, which means the centre hole in them is 50mm. The wheel bearings are 72mm O.D. (for stockman and all SJ's, smaller on pre-stockman) So you need to make the centre hole in the SJ413 backing plates 72mm.

See the difference in centre hole size, and overall drum size (SJ413 on left, LJ80 stockman on right):



To make the holes larger, a lathe that could fit the backing plates would be ideal....but I don't know anyone with such a lathe. I used a rather crude method, of drawing a circle (slightly under 72mm), then using a centre punch, to put a ring of spots around that circle at very close intervals. Then I drilled out all these holes. Then using a chisel and hammer I cut all the small bridges left between the outer part and the bit I was trying to remove in the centre. The end result was a cerated centre hole, which then required some hand filing to get to the right shape and size. This wasn't fun, and took a while, but it worked a treat

SJ413 backing plate with larger centre hole for wheel bearing:



Step 3; Assembly:
Its fairly simple from here on, assemble your rear brakes/axles.

First slide your modified backing plate over your wheel bearing, and onto the 4 bolts on your LJ bearing retaining plate (Stockman axles have the same bolt spacing as SJ, pre-stockman are different). Now slide into axle housing:


Put your self adjusting brake components together (SJ50 brakes in photo):


and finish assembly:


I ran into some small issues doing this, however all these issues were to do with the parts I used having small defects that were easily rectified. This really is simple, and makes the front swivel hub upgrade look super hard in comparison (which its not).


Ta-da! a good match for if you have the front discs . I think the final brake upgrade would then be a Sierra master cylinder and maybe booster to essentially give you an entire SJ braking system in an LJ; which I think is good, as the best improvement Suzuki made going to the SJ from LJ, was the brakes IMO. Might look into the master cylinder "how to" much further down the track when I am up to that part of my LJ81 project