1.6 16 Valve Motor Swap - Page 2

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This section should be titles "Fun with wiring".  This is the most challenging aspect of this swap.  Plan on spending a good week or two stripping the unneeded stuff from the wiring harness and then splicing stuff into it.  I can't go into step by step but here's some of the major points.  First get a wiring diagram, the one in the Chilton style manuals is very poor and doesn't cover the entire car like the Samurai wiring diagram in the factory service manual (FSM) does.  The Tracker FSM's were pretty expensive so I decided to wing it.  If you are no good at wiring or don't have the time, Trail Tough will take your harness and clean it up for you.  I have heard the one you get back is very compact and only requires you to hook up a few wires, cost is about $450 last I heard.

Using the wiring diagram as a guide I started by pulling every wire that didn't go to the ECU, this included all the lighting, radio, heater, A/C, airbag and cruise control wiring to name a few.  On a 96 you'll have a garbage bag of wires after this step, don't toss any till you have the motor running just in case you got a little carried away.  

The only relays that I needed to retain were the two on the right. The one with pink wires coming out of it is for the fuel pump,  the one in the middle is the main relay.  Not sure what the one of the left does but I kept it in there for a spare.

The automatic transmission needs to be in park or neutral in order to start the engine.  Since I didn't use the automatic transmission I had to fake this switch to allow the main relay to activate.  There is a plug under the intake manifold with a red/black and black yellow wire.  I connected the black/yellow wire to the black/red wire on the ignition switch which gets 12v only when cranking. 

The back of the motor, intake side.  The hose with the hose clamp is connected to the brake master cylinder.  

I mounted the Tracker charcoal canister where the samurai canister mounted and extended the vacuum line that connects it to the intake (if you have room you can mount it up front like the Tracker. 

I have seen people shoehorn the air intake box in if they have stock sheet metal.   With my AGR power steering pump and line locks there wasn't room so I attached an air filter to the end of the MAF.  I then made a plug that took the place of the small plastic chamber that attaches to the intake hose and threaded it (1/4 npt).  The air temperature sensor which is normally mounted on the intake box was threaded into this plug.

Next up is the instrument cluster.  The fuel injected motors use a reed switch in the speedometer to send pulses to the ECU.  I know people who didn't bother to put this in the Samurai speedometer and the only downside seems to be worse fuel economy.  You can send off your Samurai speedometer to get the switch installed for $50 + shipping form various Suzuki vendors, or you can try the install yourself.  I am not sure if this works yet but here's what I did.  The first picture is the Tracker speedometer removed from the housing, the reed switch (or VSS) is shown in the picture to the right (I forgot to get a picture of it before I took it apart).  The important thing to look at is the two holes I have indicated.

Carefully disassemble your Samurai speedometer and lo and behold it has the same two holes in it!  Take a small drill bit (smaller that the two bolts that held the VSS in the Tracker speedo) and drill the holes thru.  Next run the screws in to make some threads.  The second picture shows the VSS installed in the Samurai speedo.  You'll need to connect two wires to the switch, the yellow wire goes to the tracker ECU, black to ground.  I routed these out of the speedo via the holes for the check engine reset switch wires.

I was going to write some more but that about covered it.  After tucking all the wires into the dash I fired the motor up and it's been running great ever since.  The extra power is awesome.  I know a lot of people brag about being able to rev their 1.3's to 7-8 grand on the tachometer and that the 16v's shouldn't be run that high.  the only  thing I'll say is with the 1.6 16v you don't need to rev it.  It has enough power down low that I just scoot thru the gears, usually shifting about 4.5k.  My 0-60 times dropped to an unscientifically measured 12 seconds.  Keep in mind this is with 37's @ 4psi.  My previous time with my built 1.3l on 32's was 22 seconds.  

The fuel injection is the best part.  The motor lugs down low much better than my old 1.3 and even thought the carbureted 1.3 ran good at angles, power seemed to drop off.  The 1.6 doesn't suffer from this which is a nice confidence booster when you are looking up at the sky trying to climb a waterfall.