My Isuzu Amigo

This little truck was given to me for my 17th birthday, it was an abandoned vehicle and ran, barely, it had skipped time and needed a valve adjustment, but anyway, here it is as I got it.
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Being an impound, I had to wait for about a year before I could insure and register it, oddly enough, around this time the clutch went out of it, sadly enough, this was right before the homecoming of my senior year, so, I spent the night prior to homecoming installing a new clutch, I had never done it before so it took me a good while, but I got it.
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I got that done, drove it for a bit, and pop pop goes the cv shafts, no money to fix it, so I drove it around until last summer like that, also along the way I burned up 2 exhaust valves :( despite these flaws, I continued to truck my bike around with it
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got all that fixed, drove it around for the summer, decided I wanted to make it a little more off road capable. Upon investigation of the option plate, I discovered that the little fella had been one of the ones equipped with an off road package, which means stock it came with 31x10.5R15 tires, 4.56 gearing, and a 3:1 transfer case, perfect, what that means is that it has stupid low gears.
A wheeling trip with my dad and his friend revealed what I would need to do first to improve it, the truck is ifs, which means the front axle doesn't articulate very well. But none the less, it was very impressive for a stock vehicle
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Since the ifs would keep one wheel in the air in certain situations, I decided I would install a locker in the rear end, it was ultra easy, the isuzu 12 bolt features a removable third member, and its bigger than what was put under a majority of jeeps.
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with the locker, the little fella is damn impressive off road
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the next step, was tires. Originally it had 31" tires on it, so I decided that would be ideal, seeing as how it would already be geared for it and the speedo would read correctly with them. Shopped around for a while, then I found these guys, http://www.treadwright.com I researched like crazy, and not once could I find anything negative about them, so, for 450 dollars shipped, I got 4 31x10.5R15 mud terrains (they actually are more like a very aggressive at, they don't clean out in mud very well)
on BF Goodrich A/T sidewalls, 3 ply with a rim guard :thumb:
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It was also around this time that I got the shocks for my lift, Skyjacker Hydro 7000's, I had searched for lift kits, but all of them came with cheap shocks, which wasn't acceptable. So, with those items installed, this is what it looked like.
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A little bit passes, I drive around like that, and I finally get around to ordering my lift shackles from calmini.
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Installed with poly urethane leaf spring bushing, and with a little bit of torsion bar cranking
this is what I got
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a trip to the alignment shop and bam!
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After having worked with domestics for so long and doing what most people would consider the correct path to a good 4x4, I can honestly say that I'm a import guy now, this little thing is built stout, at 180k on the odometer it starts before half a turn no matter the temp, it was -6 a couple nights ago and it fired right up, gets 25mpg with the 31" tires on it, and its loads of fun, everything so far has been relatively cheap, and pretty much all I have left is building my rock sliders, making a winch mount for my bull bar, and tube bumper/hitch for the rear, I'm also going to build an 2.25" exhaust system, this one will use a cat thats a bit more modern (a honeycomb type) so that I can get rid of the smog pump under the hood, I just have to find a muffler that doesn't sound like a ricer.
 
Excellent...If there had been one available for "trade" that's the direction I wanted to go but there were no takers. I've seen a few all "crawled out" and looked and performed great, short wheel base, v6 power, lifted enough to clear the massive tires they put on. :thumb:
 
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