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Wed Nov 12, 2008 11:42 am

Shameless,
All good info. Between the funky little clearance bumps in the interior rear for the torsion arm housing, the rather unique dashboard, and the little bumps on the body up front for shock tower clearance, If mine by some remote chance ISN'T a Sears Rascal it is a more or less exact copy.
Mine's on a 3" lift. If you look at the dashboard, underneath past the steering column to the left, you'll see I have filled in the thru-hole for the steering column(now 3" lower relative to the body), which is now supported off of the front cage hoop. Putting it on a lift cleared the shock towers up front and the torsion housing in the rear....near as I could tell, the manufacturers expected you to remove the body to change the front shocks(bolt clearance issues) if you did not have the body on a lift.
I made a 2x4 jig with some rope straps for moving the body by myself. Worked pretty good...the difficulty of moving it wasn't about weight so much as balance and getting a grip on it.

Wed Nov 12, 2008 11:46 am

Never actually found out. I left that job to someone else. I'd be working on it myself, but that would give me only one day a week to do anything useful, and there wasn't that much that I could do myself anyway. Hopefully it will be ready to change shops either this weekend or early next week, and then I'll get pictures of the body and pan mounted (finally). The way things look now, hopefully it will be a slightly early christmas present for me :D And no matter the temperature, it will get driven as soon as it can.

EDIT: I thought it looked a little bit taller than mine does. But seeing as mine's staying on the road, I'm not too worried about the shock clearance. Though it would be something to think about if you are planning on off-roading it, as you seem to be with those tires on it.

Sun Dec 07, 2008 4:45 pm

Small update on the buggy

Going to get some blank drums drilled and tapped for a 5 3/4 Chevy pattern so I can mount the wheels without adapters, which I far prefer. Turns out that the reason the drums were grinding is because the splines in the drums were worn out. Apparently. I know nothing about that, really. Putting a dual carb kit on the engine, and fixing a few of the head bolts to the exhaust. Rebuilding the pedal cluster, it was in bad repair. Not really too much to say right now.

Tue Jan 06, 2009 11:12 pm

Well, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is, my guy over at the first shop has gotten to work on the buggy.

The bad news is...a list. There are a number of small things that need to be fixed that he can and is doing for relatively cheap. Things that will just flat make it act better as a driving car, remounting the clutch cable tube, new fuel line, etc etc.
The other bad news is that the engine we got from a junkyard was sitting with water in a couple cylinders. This means that we can either do a piston and cylinder swap on that engine or pick up an engine he has that someone traded in for a stronger one. It's just a standard 1600 with some mild head work done. That one runs at around 90 hp or so, a considerable upgrade, but nothing too crazy. Once we get a price on that engine, we'll decide.