Mega Jimny built for long-distance touring

Nope, you’re not losing your bickies, you’ve definitely seen this Jimny before. Only the last time we caught up with Darren Young to shoot his wild JB74 Suzuki it looked a hell of a lot different.

When we last met it still had all its panels, was running around on 30-inch rubber and was, for all intents and purposes, a completely different rig to what’s on the page in front of you now.

Darren built this Jimny for two reasons: to have fun on the harder tracks around his home in South East Queensland, and for touring with his family.

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What’s that? Touring in a Suzuki?!

Yep, you read it right, but we’ll get to that in a minute. What initially caught our eye was the extent Darren had taken his then-new vehicle to, and how unafraid he was to push it to its limit. He did all the right things when modifying a Zook. Lift, tyres, lockers and gearing. It’s a tried-and-true recipe and for good reason. It works.

However, sometimes having your cake just isn’t enough. Sometimes you just get hungry and feel like eating it too. Which is the position Darren found himself in after one fateful trip to the Glasshouse Mountains. Not one to be hindered by a little speed bump on the modification road, Darren took his already highly modified Jimny and went absolutely bonkers.

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Half-cut

What happened at Glasshouse, you ask? Well, the details are a little thin on the ground but let’s just say that it involved getting a little fast and loose with the vehicle’s centre of gravity, a rock wall, and all of the Jimny’s left-hand rear panels.

The result was some wadded up sheet metal and a crossroads. Down one path lay an uncomfy call to Darren’s insurance agent. Down the other, a date with the plasma torch and mig-welder.

Obviously, Darren went with option B and had DMW Industries slice his Zook’s cab neatly in half, turning it into a one-off ute. It’s easy to say, but a lot harder to do. The conversion also involved a mountain of custom work that we could likely fill this whole mag with.

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Hurdles like having to delete the rear curtain airbags without making the ECU think they’d gone off (solved using a special module from NZ) and incorporating a bunch of rollover protection into the rear bulkhead all had to be tackled in due course.

Then there was the alloy tray, including the trundle drawer, water tank and pump, having to be fabbed up from scratch. Nonetheless, Darren and the team persevered and eventually had a fully engineered and mod-plated ute chop done.

Now he could turn his attention to the rest of the vehicle.

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The mechanical story

The stock (for now at least) engine is fed by a long-range 80L tank, which given the frugal nature of the 1.5L’s drinking tendencies, should be enough range for a quick trip to the moon and back.

Protrack reduction gears have been stuffed into the transfer case, dropping low range gearing by 87 per cent – which provides more than enough torque to comfortably turn the big 33-inch tyres nice and slowly over the rougher sections of track.

The diff ratios were swapped out for those from an auto Jimny, which give a 4.3:1 ratio versus the manual’s 4.1:1. It may not sound like much, but when you’re running big rubber, every little bit counts. Darren reckons the Jimny used to scream on the highway but now runs nicely in the fat part of the torque band.

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Both diffs are twin-locked thanks to Uncle ARB, and with the bigger rubber, provide enough traction and clearance for this thing to glide over ruts that’d have much larger rigs testing their bash plates’ structural rigidity.

For the naysayers that’ll get online and tell everyone you can’t run 33s on a Jimny without breaking stuff, Darren is way ahead of you. Both CVs and axles have had the full chromoly treatment, which, while not completely indestructible, go a hell of a long way towards letting him hit the steeper terrain with more throttle and less stress.

A Hardrace 4-link kit (really a 5-link) has been bolted up to the rear-end to get away from the, frankly, heinous radius arm set-up from the factory.

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Darren reckons that combined with the fatter tyres, the whole vehicle now feels a lot more planted on the off-camber sections of track and is generally just a more stable and nicer vehicle to drive.

When we last saw this rig it was sporting an AFN front bar, which has now been replaced by an Offroad Animal item that was fitted simply because it was a lot lighter than the previous unit. When you’re dealing with a limited amount of available GVM, every kilo counts.

The beaut-looking scrub-bars-into-steel-flares were knocked up by Darren and his mate Josh from JJ Custom Fabrication to keep the panels from any more errant rock walls.

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Combined with the sliders from Legendex, and the bash plates underneath make this one well-wrapped Zook.

All of the lighting is by Hardkorr, and there are twin Carbon winches, front and back which are fed by the hefty 800CCA (more than double the stock cranking amps) battery that required a new cradle to be fabricated to suit.

Interestingly, the rear winch is a chunky 12,000lb unit. It might seem like overkill for the lightweight Jimny, but Darren mentioned that he often heads out with much larger vehicles, so being able to anchor himself with the front winch then pull his mates out with the rear has made his group’s recoveries heaps easier.

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Touring in a Zook

Taking a look at this thing, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was just a play 4x4, built for hitting the hard stuff on the weekends and parked up when Darren, his wife and son want to head out on remote trips. But you’d be dead wrong.

In fact, the Jimny gets used for camping and touring just as much as it does for recreational wheeling. While it gets punted over the hard stuff in trayback form, there’s a fully decked-out canopy with a rooftop tent that gets bolted on for touring duties.

But wait, it’s a two-seater, how do three of them go camping? We’re glad you asked. It turns out Darren’s wife also likes to drive her own Jimny to places like K’gari (the island formerly known as Fraser) and the Sunny Coast hinterland, so she and her son travel in the family’s second Jimny while this one gets to be the pack horse. Why tow a camper when you can drive it eh, mate?

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What's next?

Given that this already has to be one of the most (if not the most) modified JB74 in the country, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that Darren still has plenty to tick off on the old to-do list.

In fact, by the time you read this the AVO Turboworld kit that’ll see a comfy 50 per cent increase in power at the wheels, will have been installed. If you’re driving up Double Island one weekend and a Jimny that sounds suspiciously like it has some wastegate flutter coming from under the bonnet blows by you, try not to feel too bad, hey?

Also, it’s highly likely by now that Darren will be running 35s and 4.871:1 diffs on this rig, in case you were wondering.

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Oh, and as we were speaking, he had also lined up a comprehensive slimline lithium 12V set-up from HardKorr that was moments from going in too. Just the ticket for those longer trips into the bush with the family.

Jeez, give us a call when it’s all done, mate. Sounds like we’ll need a third revisit soon enough.