Not long ago we had our Suzuki Samurai out for its post-rebirth maiden trail ride, joining an open run from the Calgary Jeep Association. Everything did not go well. The Samurai developed some pretty severe overheating issues. That wasn’t the worst of it, however.
Waiting for the engine to cool at the side of the trail, I decided to start up the engine for a moment to get the water circulating. Somehow, perhaps because I was being watched by the whole group from the Calgary Jeep Association, I selected the wrong key from my Keyring o’ Many Keys and proceeded to break the key off in the ignition. An annoying overheating problem became a show-stopping, truck-immobilizing, BIG problem.
The key-stub was recessed into the ignition lock, and a few attempts at fishing it out only ended up sinking it in further. No bother - I’d just have to make like a nogoodnik and hotwire it. I stripped the dash, found the back of the ignition cylinder, and thankfully found only 4 wires. One was the +12v power, one activated the accessory power, one the ignition power, and one was the starter.
I stripped some unused wire from the engine bay and made three small wire pigtails. I connected the +12v wire to the ignition wire, then touched the starter wire to the +12v - the engine roared to life! Great! Having held up the Jeep club guys for long enough, we rolled out… for about 10 feet. As it turns out, while it’s relatively easy to hotwire a Samurai, you have a bit more work to do if you’d like to also steer the truck. The steering lock was engaged.
A bit of fumbling with some channel locks on these silly round-headed security bolts and the ignition switch was finally free. I secured it as best I could, but spend the reset of the ride overheating and starting and stopping my truck by touching sketchy wires together that were hanging from my dashboard.
Getting the key stub out turned out to be tricky. What finally worked was what you see below - two chunks of fine welding wire bent into small hooks. These were inserted into the ‘channels’ in the key stub, turned 90deg, then yanked out together. After a few tries, it popped out and nearly hit my wonderful girlfriend in the eye!
And there you have it. I eventually solved the overheating problem and got the lock reinstalled, but that’s definitely not the end of the problems with the Samurai.
Stay tuned.
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