My daily driver 1992 Jimny JA11 was a casual purchase that led to a lot of revelations for me about the machinations of the Karachi auto sales, parts, and repair businesses. I've owned this car for more than a year now, so I thought I'd start a log here of how the car is doing. I'm just trying to have it survive and stay reliable, fully aware that it's so old it's bound to succumb to rust eventually.
The story is that this car was purchased, registered, and parked. It didn't see much use, according to the previous owner, and it had an original mileage of ~45,000km. When it was driven, it was driven with effectively no mechanical sympathy, with the previous owner telling me, "bhaganay main maza ata hay."
The car was in terrible shape, cosmetically and mechanically. Rust was (and still) practically eating away at everything. Another surprise was that the engine had indeed been taken apart, as evidenced by the locally-manufactured head gasket staring back at me when it failed and needed replacement. The owner lied through his teeth when he told me the engine was never worked on, but hey, all used car sellers do. Fool me once, shame on me.
Stuck with this purchase, I've tried to make the most out of it. I haven't done any cosmetic work, but have tried to make it as mechanically sound as possible.
So far, the car has done 51,000km. Here's what it's had done in that time:
Brakes
- Resurfaced completely rusted over front brake rotors, cleaned out rear drums of rust.
- New NIBK brake pads and shoes.
- Used master cylinder and reservoir.
- Bled out brake lines and refilled with Mobil1 DOT4.
Wheels and Tires
- Replaced the "Jimny exclusive" Yokohama Geolandar A/T 175/80 R16 tires with a set of Dunlop LM704 215/65 R16.
- Used wheel bearings. Old ones had essentially dried up.
Suspension
- New leaf springs. I had broken and missing leaves on all four corners.
- New KYB struts on all four corners.
- Used, locally manufactured, cut-to-size-and-pray leaf spring bushings.
- Lubricated all bushings with lithium grease.
Cooling
- New coolant hoses, a mix of PKDM Alto 660cc and Cultus hoses cut to size. (I knew that every single hose would leak, so this involved lots of surprises as hoses sprung leaks one after the other.)
- New FEW R123 radiator cap (had to search to find one that wasn't a counterfeit)
- New, locally manufactured coolant overflow reservoir
- Had radiator guy solder seams, pressure test, and clean the rad out with citric acid, then paint it black.
- Couple more citric acid flushes, usually in between hose replacements.
- New Tama 88C thermostat. Thermostat was missing, system was running on water.
- New, locally-reworked brass coolant outlet manifold for the block.
- Used oil cooler. Original oil cooler was leaking, new gasket wasn't available, import insanely expensive.
- Removed seized fan clutch and accompanying shroud. Replaced with electric fan and shroud from an Alto VXR.
- Welded a thermal switch inside the bottom of the radiator to trigger the fan, as well as a direct connection to the AC switch. Relays and nitto-ustad galore.
- Lots of BASF Glysantin G48, used constantly to replace and top-up in between leaks, hose replacements, and cooling system fixes. My absolutely-no-mineral-water-daal-ke-filhaal-chala-kar-dekho rule has bewildered and annoyed a lot of people and put a significant dent in my wallet, but I stand by it.
Vacuum
- New silicone vacuum hoses
- Used idle air control vacuum solenoid valve
- Used AC idle up vacuum solenoid valve
- Used MAP sensor
- Counterfeit blow-off valve, does the job. Stock recirc valve was stuck, could hear turbo flutter.
Fuel
- The inline fuel filter was missing! Rusty, watery fuel headed straight to the engine! Added new JS Asakashi fuel filter with banjo fittings.
- Gumout, gumout, gumout... before and after I discovered the missing fuel filter. I had to soothe my poor injectors.
- Soldered broken connections, checked resistance on the fuel sender float to ensure proper fuel level reporting on gauge cluster.
Engine
- New Suzuki OEM front and rear crank seal
- New Suzuki OEM front cam seal
- New, locally-manufactured CT 2.0mm cylinder head gasket. Reused existing cylinder head bolts.
Electrical / Ignition
- Used Toyota (Denso) ignition coil.
- New Daewoo maintenance-free battery.
- Grounding. Sanding grounding terminals on chassis and ensuring proper connections.
- Used 95A alternator to replace dying 40A OEM unit. It's questionable, but it works so far.
- Grounding.
- New 130W sealed beam headlights. Constantly replacing melting headlight connectors.
- Grounding.
- New NGK Platinum G-Power BKR6EGP spark plugs.
- New YEC Distributor gasket, rotor, and o-ring
- New Seiwa CNG (??) spark plug wires.
- Counterfeit digital-sensor based, stepper-motor oil pressure and boost gauges.
- My own DIY thermocouple, reading temperature at the thread of the OEM water temp sensor.
Transmission
- New Aisin clutch and pressure plate
- Used Aisin locking front hubs
- Nachi Quest pilot bearing
- NSK throwout bearing
- New Suzuki OEM (NOK, Koyo) front and rear seals.
- New clutch cable.
- New Chinese polyurethane shifter bushing. Locally-manufactured bushings would split or crack within days.
- Welded additional material to worn shifter bolt to reduce slop.
- New shaft seals for transfer case.
- Questionable refinished driveshaft yokes.
- Liqui-Moly GL-4 in transmission and transfer case.
- Liqui-Moly GL-5, Toyota GL-5 in rear diff and front diff, respectively.
Air Conditioning
- Used A/C expansion valve.
- Questionable compressor bearing replacement.
Exhaust
- New, locally-manufactured muffler and piping to mitigate brain damage from exhaust leak.
Engine Oil
The engine oil has never actually completed a standard oil change interval, either due to leaks, low oil pressure, or the massive head gasket failure I had a few months ago. Shell Helix HX6 10W-40 API SN ran just fine at first. Then, cautiously confident in the car's abilities and wanting to switch closer to an OEM spec, I put in Valvoline SynPower 5W-30 API SP. Ran just fine, but then I poured an entire bottle of Liqui-Moly Ceratec in. This coincided with my idle control vacuum solenoid failing, and I'm still not sure whether it was that or the drastically-lowered viscosity of the oil+Ceratec mixture in the engine that caused the low oil pressure at idle RPM.
Either way, I panicked and switched to Havoline Extra 10W-40 API SL, and the light went away. Head gasket failed shortly after, prompting me to switch to Delo Gold Ultra 15W-40 API SL. After a thousand or so kilometers, and two oil changes each time the Delo Gold went pitch black, I switched to a fully synthetic Caltex Havoline ProDS Eco 5W-40 API SP, and am running that at the moment.
What now?
Well, it starts right up, it runs, it drives. All the buttons and gauges work. The doors open and close, the windows roll down and back up.
It's a bouncy ride, but that's common for this era of Jimny. 4WD is super useful, and has gotten me out of sticky situations in messy construction zones a couple of times.
AC works just fine - unless you're at operating temperature, in the middle of the day, idling in traffic.
The car reaches operating temperature, develops boost to 10psi at WOT. Fuel consumption is terrible, with a lifetime average of 6.7km/L.
It's running clean on a good-quality coolant, a full synthetic oil, and fresh conventional oils in the transmission and transfer case. It's slow, but fun, and feels quite capable, especially when navigating the terrible terrain in Karachi, scaring off bikers with the BOV and high-revving engine.
Gear ratios are very close together, but making the shifts crisper with the shift bolt and the poly bushing has made the experience much more tolerable; dare I say, enjoyable.
There are a couple problems, minor and more serious, that I'm still having, but I'll detail those in a follow-up post.
Most urgently, the frame and body are disintegrating due to rust. In a developed country, this car would be a hazard destined for the junkyard. In this magnificent land, it just has to survive until it gets me to where I need to be.
Hey, Gordon Murray seems to like the Jimny. I'd say it's not that bad.