Did We Find The BEST RV Tow Vehicle?! - Tour of Our Little SUZUKI SAMURAI!

he should be here any minute yeah hopefully this doesn't turn out to be a huge mistake all right let's go buy a new car i guess i feel like it's a it's a little clown car or something i don't feel like it's real it smells like our rv it does it's like the driver's familiar oh yeah oh yeah check that thing out this thing is so freaking awesome someone already stopped me and was like hey man what is that thing i had to talk to him like 10 minutes he was blown away by it good morning adventurers good morning the time has come we're saying goodbye to the dominican republic it came and went so quickly we've been here for i think three weeks even but it still feels like it was just a week or so but we said goodbye to trevor nana they dropped us off at the airport and then they drove off into the dominican sunset but now it's back to reality rv reality baby because we got plans big plans big plans y'all we are heading back to clementine so we have concocted quite a little scheme here because we actually have to go and pick up a brand new vehicle that we're going to be purchasing to tow behind the rv so the vehicle we are picking up is actually going to be in florida so here is our grand scheme to sort all this out and then get the vehicle over ultimately to texas first we're going to take a plane from here in the dominican republic over to miami florida once we're in miami we're going to rent a car we're going to slowly make our way up to the panhandle to the town of fort walton beach there we are going to pick up our awesome new vehicle we are going to then promptly drive it down to tampa and then drop it off in a mechanic who's gonna do some work on it then we are going to hop a plane from tampa over to st louis missouri we are going to pick up our durango we're going to drive it back down to texas then we're going to drive the durango and the rv separately down to austin we're going to park it for a little bit and get a whole bunch of stuff done before we head out on the road indefinitely but then in a couple-ish months once the work's done on our new vehicle we'll go back to florida grab that drive back to the rv and then really truly hit the road we got schemes y'all it's all gonna work out all right trust me it might be a little confusing right now but it's gonna work baby yeah when we told you guys we wanted to get a tow vehicle did you ever think that we would go through this much trouble to do it why make things easy for ourselves but for now we gotta board a plane [Music] this is it you guys our new car we're going to tow behind the rv it's just like we always planned and dreamed a brand new used kia we tricked you guys this is not this is just our rental car obviously however we are going to get into this car we are going to do a lot of driving we're going to probably stop at a hotel overnight but it's not going to be anything you want to see because we're probably going to get in very late probably watch a little fast and the furious transformers you know the classic hotel cable movies yep and then go to bed and then go fast asleep because back in the dominican republic it is two hours later than now so it's getting very very late for us but stay tuned because we are so excited to show you guys the vehicle we are going to be towing behind clementine because it's going to be much cooler than this only two days and then we get the the carver dreams okay bye we made it to fort walton beach and we've just been communicating with the guy we're buying the car off of and uh we decided to meet in the starbucks parking lot so we've just been there chilling getting stuff done yeah but he should be here any minute yeah we're excited we're nervous hopefully this doesn't turn out to be a huge mistake but you know the rv felt like a mistake at some times but now it doesn't so no matter what it is we're gonna get through it you know what i mean and we're gonna be happy we did it definitely gonna make it the right decision one way or another yeah oh snap our little suzuki just pulled up oh my god it's adorable it's so cute it's too cute all right let's go buy a new car i guess a new very very old car here it is you guys this is it it's the cutest it's in real life little vehicle i've ever seen what do you guys think is it us oh it's us baby we're gonna make it holy cow y'all i feel like it's a it's a little clown car or something i don't feel like it's real check it out y'all oh my god you know it's in much better condition than i was expecting so cool it smells like our rv it does it's like the driver's familiar okay we're getting eric in here because he's actually the one who can drive manual well barely which key is it this one oh we got tunes baby oh a little pearl jam very fitting for this oh yeah oh yeah check that thing out oh man this thing is so freaking goofy it's so tiny but honestly it's more spacious than i thought it was going to be yeah well it's official y'all we own this beast of a vehicle we bought a car we really bought a car this time all right yeah so we got a little excited and i was just test driving it we were talking to the guy we uh checked everything out did all the paperwork and stuff and uh that's where we are now we did it all baby we own this thing it's done it's real it's hours yeah it's ours baby now can i drive the danger can you drive it it's a little hard to drive but it's not that bad mainly because i haven't driven a stick in a very very long time or very much at all really oh yeah baby we're off now this thing is so freaking awesome you guys someone already stopped me and was like hey man what is that thing i had to talk to him for like 10 minutes he was blown away by it we're gonna hit the road and drive for a bit and then we will stop and tell you a little bit more about this beauty [Music] we have spent the last few months searching far and wide for the perfect tow vehicle to pull behind the rv and y'all i think we found it this japanese beauty is a suzuki samurai did i do it good that was awesome you came up real fast [Music] so when we finally made the decision to get a tow vehicle one thing that was very important to us is that we were able to flat toe the vehicle and that means you don't have to have any sort of trailer or contraptions to tow it you just pull it flat on all four wheels pretty much the most popular flat toe vehicle is the jeep wrangler especially the older ones because they're a little bit lighter however they were still a little too heavy for what we wanted to pull because clementine already doesn't get good gas mileage and the more you pull the more it's going to wreck your gas mileage so we wanted something a little bit lighter sadly the options are limited because most automatic transmission cars cannot be flat towed so we started to look at manual cars yay manuals i still don't quite know how to drive one yeah but she'll learn details details so originally we were looking at the fiat 500 which is super tiny super light comes in a manual but we didn't think it had the right vibe to be pulled behind clementine it wasn't a car that we personally were excited about then we looked at the mini cooper which is a little bit heavier than the fiat but it can be flat toed they have a manual version of it but i just didn't know if it was our style you know no so we did a little bit of googling and then we came across the samurai we took one look at this thing online and we were like okay this is the vehicle this is the one so then we spent the next month and a half looking at every single suzuki samurai for sale in the usa and even in canada a single one of them i think even mexico too yeah we even made offers on several of them we found a tin top red one that was in texas but the guy wanted a little too high of a price for it so that didn't work out then we found a white one on ebay and we actually were talking with the guy and trying to come up with a price and then all of a sudden he sells it immediately for 20 000 we're like crazy but then facebook marketplace came through we found this one in florida this one actually ticked most of the boxes for us we wanted a red one we wanted one that was still in pretty good condition couldn't have any rust underneath and we knew we definitely wanted one from the 90s because the suspension is a bit better and it has electronic fuel injection both of which were very important to us prepare for the most extraordinary event of your lifetime the next major turning point in the history of all civilization introducing the new suzuki samurai 4x4 the beginning of the universe was dull by comparison the history of the suzuki samurai is a very very interesting one so they started selling these in north america in 1986 which is actually the year i was born so that's a good sign right but this is a 93 so i don't know if that matters and they were actually quite popular in fact one of those years in the 80s they sold over a hundred thousand of these things i think it even outsold the jeep for a very small window of time then tragedy struck consumer reports ended up doing this whole expose about the suzuki samurai and determined that it's a rollover risk this completely destroyed the sales of the suzuki samurai and it ended up selling less and less and less every single year up until its last production year run which was 1995. however the results of this consumer reports article were highly highly contested and there was even a lawsuit over it suzuki sued the consumers union because they felt like the results weren't actually accurate and the testing conditions didn't really reflect real-world driving conditions even if the test was inaccurate it really didn't make a difference the damage was done and the reputation of the suzuki samurai went down the drain [Music] so even though they haven't made these in quite some time luckily they were so popular for so long that you can still find tons of them around the country and some are in pretty rough conditions especially because it's an off-roading vehicle so people really beat them up but this one happened to be one of the best looking that we came across maybe the best funnily enough over the last few years these guys have actually become quite the collector's item which means that the prices have pretty much skyrocketed i think when they first came out you could buy them for about 6 500 usd like fully ready to go 6500 usd nowadays uh they're worth a lot more than that especially if they're in decent condition so uh the asking price for this bad boy was 15 000 usd we were only able to talk him down to 12 750 but we feel like that is a super deal because there is no rust in here i mean it looks almost like new on the outside they've done a lot of engine work we've already had multiple guys walk up and just ask about the car and one guy was like well what the heck it looks new so that's what we wanted to hear exactly after looking at literally hundreds of samurais we are very happy with the price we paid though i'm very happy with our samurai we are in love we're completely in love you guys it's so silly and amazing we're used to making purchases like this and then being like what have we done afterwards but we really haven't felt that with this we are just in love with it completely cool it's so cool i mean look at it come on you guys don't i look like i was born to be in this oh yeah you look you look great kid now one day i'll be able to drive it yeah so let's give you a little uh tour of the suzuki samurai as you can see it's not the most spacious vehicle in the entire world but there are four seats in here so we fit comfortably up here and we can even have two buddies come along with us and believe it or not this vehicle weighs maybe just over 2 000 pounds so it's pretty much the lightest vehicle on the road so this is the cockpit it's very hard to find a dash and control center that's in good condition at all usually there's cracks scrapes scuffs all kinds of stuff this is pretty much perfect there isn't a single scratch or scuff on this thing how did they keep it in such good condition for so long they also put an aftermarket stereo which is pretty common so we do have bluetooth the previous owner installed a couple speakers all around the thing so we actually have pretty good tunes we're jamming as we're going down the highway down here you'll notice the four wheel drive transfer case so this bad boy is four wheel drive pretty much all of them on the road are gonna be four wheel drive we probably won't be doing too much four-wheel drive off-roading but it is good to know that we have that capability should we decide to do that oh heck no dude we're gonna go off-road all the time yeah awesome yeah but i can't scratch the thing that's the problem you know now i don't want to take it on some trail and stretch we'll put some like bubble wrap around the outside to keep it nice good idea one really cool feature that this suzuki had that we didn't see on any of the others was they have this custom fit little carpeting that goes over the dash this is awesome because it keeps the sun from like wearing down the plastic up here this one does have ac but that really doesn't mean much because even the samurais that have ac don't really blow that cold most of them don't even have ac or the ac just doesn't work so that is definitely one negative especially if you live in a warmer cloud yeah but we got the hard top we can pop that thing off we can roll down the window so it's just that kind of vehicle you know you just enjoy the fresh air horn works isn't that from the old suzuki commercials hi it actually sounds just like the horn from the commercials it sounds kind of like a clown horn everything about this is a clown car as you guys have seen there is a back seat to this thing there's also some semblance of trunk space yeah so they have sure this little hatch right here that opens up from the hard top then this awesome little door opens up they have this epic subwoofer that they've mounted here and then you have about one foot of space look you could fit a bag right there right there can you still close it yeah all right look storage nailed it that's all you need right one bag in your entire life but if you do need more space it's really easy to just fold this down and up and boom you got tons of space in here until you want to carry any passengers then you have to put it right back down there is one downside to the suzuki samurai that we haven't really mentioned yet so we're gonna hop on the road and tell you more about it [Music] so we gotta talk about the biggest downside to the suzuki samurai well this thing has a 1.3 liter engine that puts out a whopping 60 68 or so horsepower which is not a lot um it's enough to move this thing but you really don't want to take it on a busy highway because you'll have a hard time getting this thing up to 70 miles per hour and plus it's just got such a weird center of gravity that you really don't want to go past 65 in general in this thing but have no fear there is a fix for this you can swap out the original engine for another suzuki model that's bigger and beefier and that is exactly what we're about to do yep so they're going to take an engine from either a suzuki sidekick or a geo tracker which is basically an upgraded version of a samurai and they're going to put it in there and it's going to be a 1.6 liter engine that's going to give us a bit over 100 horsepower now this doesn't mean this thing's going to be like a ferrari or anything obviously nothing close to that but it's going to give it a little bit more to get up to speed and it's going to be able to hold about 65 hopefully whereas right now i can get it up to 65 but this this engine has some high rpms it's worn baby yeah but you know we're kind of used to it with the rv we can't go really over 55 so we're used to cruising it's gonna be fine so that's the plan we found a guy who was just an expert in doing these engine swaps specifically in suzuki samurais that's why we're doing all this in florida because we found the shop here we're going to drop it off we're going to leave it with him for a couple months and then he's going to swap the engine he's going to do a bunch of other different upgrades which we're going to show you all that later on once it's done we'll let the cat out of the back but it's gonna be freaking awesome the downside is we're gonna be without our little samurai for a couple months yeah we just got it our relationship was pretty short-lived but we'll be back we got a few more hours to make it to the shop then we're going to drop it off and have a teary goodbye come on but for now rocking the tunes and hitting the road commercial oh yeah that's more like it baby all right [Music] another fun little quirk about the suzuki is that it only has a gas tank of about nine gallons so it's very small but uh it does get about 20 to 25 miles per gallon possibly more it seems like they there's kind of a range yeah but we just ran it down pretty dang low so we're doing our first real big fill up yeah we're already halfway there that's crazy the previous owner told us that it's not good at stopping itself and sometimes it spews out well we'll see i'm gonna just stand back just in case okay so it's turning itself off right it did but it spewed out a little bit okay so that's interesting because it was just barely on empty but it only put 6.7 gallons in so that tells us we can go pretty far into the empty zone yeah that's fine but 23 bucks for a philip yeah not so bad our rv and our suv back home cost a lot more than that yo we've made it to the mechanic and we found like a suzuki samurai paradise look at this place suzuki heaven this is where the hundred thousand suzuki sold came to so this is the engine basically that they're gonna put in ours it's the 16 valve 1.6 baby so it's going to be a lot beefier it's going to do the trick we're going to go from 55 to 62 65. we're gonna get there a lot quicker a lot faster you're right yeah check it out y'all they do complete ground up restorations and rebuilds i mean look at this one can you believe that trip down baby yeah that's nuts i'm so excited although it's giving me a little bit of ptsd from when we got the rv redone and thank you did not go so smoothly but i'm putting good vibes out about this go around it's gonna be great it's gonna be so great a semi is not gonna hit it no dear for the love of god don't let a semi hit our little suzuki check it out you guys this is the one we almost bought we were going to get this one but a little different from our red one but it wasn't obviously the color that we wanted we wanted the red one and look at it i mean it looks like a monster truck okay we're off goodbye little suzuki we'll meet again later bye bye well the suzuki is all dropped off and ready to be worked on we're so excited you guys i know i'm so excited but our time with with it came and went so quickly speaking of it speaking of it we don't have a name for the old girl or boy we haven't really decided yet what it's gonna be so we thought we'd ask y'all what do you think we should name it we have some ideas but we're not gonna share them yet we still haven't decided on a name so let us know what we should name our little red suzuki samurai leave a comment down below but not sammy or zuke or something yeah we want something that's just not too typical but we just checked into armada inn we are going to be flying up to missouri tomorrow we're going to be seeing some family because obviously we haven't seen them in a long time yeah we're gonna grab our durango and then head down back the rv so that's the next time you guys are gonna see us we're gonna be venturing back down back at the rv oh my gosh we're so excited once the samurai is all done we are gonna show you guys the whole process of doing the actual towing of the vehicle we have to set up some stuff on the rv we're going to set up a special braking system we're going to show you guys all that hopefully it all works the way we're planning but that'll we'll bring you guys along for the ride one way or another yeah but if you're looking for a tow vehicle even if you don't end up with a samurai which you totally should hopefully we at least gave you some things to think about some things to research so that you can find the perfect one for yourself or you can just go get a fiat if that's what you want you can get a fiat but get the convertible ones because those are the coolest all right goodbye adventurers we'll see on the road

Channel: The Endless Adventure

Views: 150,831

Keywords: The Endless Adventure, vlog, travel, Eric Bieller, Allison Bieller, best rv tow vehicle, rv flat tow, rv, rv life, rv renovation, the endless adventure rv, rv vlog

Id: VoSOutMIekc

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 17 2022