Spring 2003 Project:
Crazy Off-road's Big Orange Camo Monster

Please click on the picture for the complete 1.6 liter 16 valve installation.

Aaron's Tracker 16 Valve Motor Installation

After tons of questions poured in to me via E-mail I decided to do a  write up about installing the Tracker/Sidekick 16 valve 99 horsepower motor in a Samurai, in hopes of lessening the number of questions I receive every day about the swap. Though I like helping other Samurai enthusiasts, I get about 50 or so E-mails a day and that gets a bit hard to handle. So here is the info everyone has been E-mailing me about. 

Recently I attended the Southeastern Ultimate Zuk trail ride at Uwharrie National Forrest which was called ZUWHARRIE since it was a mainly Suzuki Samurai, Suzuki Sidekick, and Geo Tracker trail ride. 

All of us had an absolute blast with only the minimal breakage except for a certain person rolling their Zuk not once, but THREE times! It was there I met Aaron Kaklamanos who had just recently installed his new Trail Tough (Brent Bradshaw @ www.trailtough.com) hybrid suspension setup. This is a very impressive suspension system that I personally run on my own Samurai....but that's another tech article! Anyway, Aaron has a clean trail rig that is also a good daily driver, but he wasn't impressed with the lack of power his worn out 117,000 mile 1.3 liter motor had. We began discussing the possibility of different types of engine swaps and he decided a V6 swap would be too much work and weight, but the 1.6 swap would be preferred, because very little weight is added keeping the Samurai a very light and nimble trail machine. After weighing the costs verses the amount of work and the power increase he decided to go with the best bolt-in engine conversion on the market, the 1.6 liter 16 valve Electronic Fuel Injection 99hp Tracker/Kick motor. It just so happened that I had access to one with only 40K miles on it with all of the needed parts to install it including the complete air box with mass air-flow meter, the complete engine and passenger compartment wiring harness, the ECM, starter, and the alternator which was still mounted to the motor.

In light of the fact that Aaron was about to get married as well as the fact that he had not the time nor the place to do the installation himself he opted to have me install the motor for him. So a date was set and he drove up to my shop in Chesapeake, Virginia from North Carolina, which is about a six hour drive, and dropped off his Samurai for the transplant. As you can see, Aaron's 1988 1/2 Samurai is overall a clean trail rig which could just about go anywhere.

List of Modifications:
-Trail Tough (TT) hybrid front suspension (Samurai custom rear leaf packs in front) 
-TT hybrid rear suspension  (CJ front springs in the rear) w/CSC relocation brackets
-TT Missing-Link shackles front and rear
-Calmini C2 front winch mount bumper with Warn 8000
-33X12.50 Goodyear Wrangler Mud Terrains mounted on 2" backspaced wheels
-33X12.50 Swamper SSR mounted on matching 2" backspaced wheel
-TT hybrid rear Tracker/Sammy housing with 5.12's and Lock-Rite Locker
-Rebuilt front differential with 5.12's and Lock-Rite Locker
-GRS-1 Transfer case

Yes, he is a rolling TRAILTOUGH.com advertisement! The list above is an impressive amount of modifications that make this Sammy already very trail-worthy and an excellent candidate for the 1.6 16V swap. The first thing we did was to take her for a test drive to get an idea how well it drove with the old 1.3 in it. It was less than impressive with a pathetic 0-60 mph time of 19 seconds. It also sputtered for about a second or two when letting out the clutch and didn't particularly like going up hills. Here is a picture of the worn out 1.3 liter motor.

Beginning the installation,  we will need to remove the old motor and transmission together. The removal goes a bit easier this way and installation of the new Trail Tough 1.6 adapter kit is alot easier with the transmission out. First remove all of the wiring, cables, lines and hoses from the engine, remove the air box, disconnect and/or remove the battery, and label all the wiring and components so you know what's-what later. Drain the radiator and the transmission oil and please dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way, then remove the fan, shroud, and radiator. 

To disconnect the motor and transmission you will only need to remove eight bolts which are the four 14mm motor mount bolts, the two 12mm transmission crossmember bolts, and the two 14mm bolts that hold on the brace below the tranny. Also be sure that you have the ground removed from the starter. Now you are ready to remove the engine and tranny. So get out the hoist!

Use the OEM hooks as hoist points to remove the engine and tranny. When hoisting them up be sure the distributor does not hit the firewall and the harmonic balancer pulley does not hit the front clip and damage the sheet metal near the hood latch. Once they are removed from the vehicle and laying down on the floor, remove the starter and disconnect the motor from the transmission. While the transmission is out this is a great time to replace the clutch, pressure plate, and throw-out bearing before reinstalling the new motor. It is also a good idea to check your OE rubber engine mounts. The drivers side engine mount fell off as we were hoisting out the motor!

Next we installed the Trail Tough adapter kit. The kit consists of the new 1.6 adapter plate, a new passengers side motor mount and all the necessary hardware which includes several custom made double ended studs which are designed to allow you to install the adapter onto the transmission without drilling it out. As far as I know Trail Tough is the only company that offers a kit that does not require drilling out the transmission mounting  holes which would make it much harder to use the transmission with a 1.3 liter motor again. Also, some places will not accept it for a core if it is drilled out.

The installation of the Trail Tough adapter is fairly easily and all of the specially designed bolts line right up and thread right in with the exception of the bolt hole under the starter which needed a little bit of prying to get it lined up correctly. After speaking with Brent at Trail Tough, he indicated that the transmission was most likely a little warped from years of use and that a little bit of prying is not uncommon when the tranny is distorted. 

After that, the adapter plate and the Tracker starter were bolted to the transmission without any problem at all; everything lined up perfectly. 

Next the new Trail Tough passengers side motor mount was bolted right on and the drivers side motor mount shim  was installed. After that the freshly machined flywheel and a Dakin clutch were installed, since that was the customers preference. Loctite was used to ensure that all of the bolts would stay tight even after the extreme trail use this Samurai would soon see.  The motor and tranny installation is almost as easy as the removal and the 1.6 was dropped in carefully and without any problems. The motor and tranny bolts right in to the stock locations when using the new mounts and the transmission bolts still line right up. I have heard of people having problems with cheap adapter kits not allowing the motor to sit level in the engine bay, but this one was perfectly level.  

The next step was to install the OEM Samurai radiator in it's stock location. Everything bolts right back into place exactly as it was removed and the Tracker fan and Samurai fan shroud fit together perfectly with no modifications. 

After the radiator installation we had to fabricate custom mounts for the Tracker air box with mass air sensor. This was easily made from a couple 1/8 inch by 1 inch wide pieces of steel flat bar. They were cut to length and bent to brace up one side. The other side of the air box bolts right onto the side of the fender well using the original air box mount. The only other modification was to remove about 1/2 inch from the intake tube to allow the air box to sit closer to the aluminum intake so it would now fit into the corner of the engine compartment properly. 

Next on the list of thing to do was to install the new electric fuel pump. There are several different ways this can be done. One way is to get a complete fuel tank from a 1990 or newer Samurai which has the pump already built in the tank.  Another is to cut the complete fuel pump mounting plate and pump out of a Tracker gas tank and weld it into the Samurai gas tank. I have done several of these lately and it looks just like the later model tank does when finished. The other option is to purchase a new fuel pump from NAPA which could be mounted outside the tank under the body or on the frame rail. This is the option Aaron chose.  It was installed on the underside of the body up as high as we could get it so if a drive shaft U-joint let go it hopefully wouldn't thrash around hard enough to bend back the sheet metal and hit the pump.  So the hose was extended from the output of the fuel filter to the input of the pump and then routed back to the steel line on the frame rail. ALL lines are double hose clamped, because of the higher pressure that the new fuel pump puts out. The power wiring was installed and run along with the factory harness and protected in split-loom tubing to prevent any possible chaffing on the body. The wiring was routed into the engine compartment and through the grommet above the battery and into the passengers side upper kick panel then connected to the fuel pump relay near the ECM.

Installation of the ignition coil and harness came next. The coil mounted very easily to the firewall on the passengers side at the mounting location for the steel vacuum line that goes from the manifold to the brake booster. Remove the 10mm bolt and reinstall it through the coil bracket and the hard line mount with the coil wire facing the distributor. The distributor wire to the coil was about 6 inches too short so the coil wire from the 1.3 liter motor was removed and installed instead. Next the Trail Tough wiring harness was laid out across the firewall and all of the components were plugged in. The wiring harness was routed through the large grommet hole above the battery and into the passengers side kick panel where the ECM would be mounted. The ECM was mounted securely using rubber grommets for isolators to insure it would not vibrate against the firewall. Now it was time to begin the painstaking work of connecting the Trail Tough harness into the existing Samurai wiring. Well actually it was ALOT easier than I had expected. Most of the wiring connections were made right up there in the passengers side kick panel and total  time for complete installation of the wiring harness was about half an hour. Thanks for making it so easy Brent! 

One item that we have not yet covered is the speed sensor modification. This modification is necessary for your ECM to control the motor properly and it also keeps that annoying "sensor" light from coming on. What is involved in the speed sensor modification is removing a portion of the Tracker instrument cluster and installing it into the Samurai instrument cluster. This is not as easy as it sounds and  has to be done meticulously so we left this modification up to the pro's at TrailTough.com. Thanks again Brent!

Now that the wiring and speed sensor have all been installed the ECM is the next item to be installed . Since the majority of the wiring is connected  under the dash on the passengers side, we mounted the ECM up high on the firewall behind the glove box and used wire loom and zip ties to clean up and to protect the wiring. It was not done in this installation, but I have heard of people installing the ECM in an upside down Tupperware container  to protect it from dirt and moisture. This sounded like a good idea, but we didn't have one large enough so for now there will be no 3 1/2 foot deep water crossings!

Now that the electronics are all installed it's time to double-check all connections and make sure we have all the fluids topped off then fire it up! OH NO! The engine turns over and occasionally backfires, but will not start! Hmm, sounds like a timing problem.  So we got out the manual and looked at the firing order. Luckily this was an easy mistake to catch.  Somehow the plug wires had been plugged into the incorrect terminals on the distributor cap. This should have been checked  when the motor was first picked up from the bone-yard, but at least we caught it now. Once the #1 and #4 plug wires were switched to the correct terminals on the distributor we tried to start it again. She fired right up on the 4th or 5th crank and ran great. Next the timing was set and then it was time for a test drive!! 

Before removing the old 1.3 liter motor we tested the 0-60 time, 1/4 mile time, max speed, and overall drive-ability. And now that the 1.6 liter 16 valve motor was installed we tested it as well. Here are the spec's:

                                1.3 liter                  1.6 liter

0-60                    19 seconds            9 seconds
top speed           65 mph                   100 plus mph and climbing!
¼ mile                forever                   quicker than you'd believe!
drive-ability      lethargic                  powerful and responsive

The 1.6 liter 16 valve motor is definitely the way to go!

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