Nightcrawler wrote:

I am already a member on samba. I have gotten some good advice there already

Did they tell you to take out the loan to pay for sandrail mods? 

So plans were set today.
I decided to do just enough work on the rail to make it street legal. Once I get it on the road I will rebuild it as I go along and get it to look like the one above. That way I don't have to drop the loot at once on the buggy and I can drive around this summer. It will take roughly $600 and 3 weekends to make it street legal. I am really getting buggy fever now. 

Nightcrawler wrote:

This is what I am hoping my finished project will resemble.

Wow pretty awesome, looks sweet.  Cant help but remind me of my vintage Team Associated RC10 I built when I was 12.


edit: found that pic and I cant believe an unopened one sold for $2k. 

phillipj wrote:

Cant help but remind me of my vintage Team Associated RC10 I built when I was 12.

Man that brings back memories. I had an RC10. Building that car up from a kit as a kid was one of the most interesting, exciting mechanical projects of my life, and the first time I ever wrenched on anything mechanically complex. I used to loooove radio controlled cars until I hit 16 and started driving real cars. 

Do it anyway. That is badass.

Maybe I could make the panels removable so I could go either way depending on weather and or my mood.

Now that I have paid the Saab off it is almost time to get this project rolling. I have 1 more week to finish doing my reviews at work and then I can devote some time to the buggy. This weekend I am going to check out a lead on some possible donor vehicles. A guy I work with knows of 2 VW bus/truck vehicles that have been for sale for a few years. I am going to take a look at them and see if they will cut the mustard and see if the old man is willing to let go of them without raping me.

Today I rolled out to install the parts that came in this week, and thought it was going to be easy.. its never easy. First it took me for ever to get the original rusty bolts out of the front end and there was only 8 of them. I think I snapped half of them. Then I went to mount the new beam and found this.

All 4 of the grease fittings line up exactly where the beam mounts to the frame.




We had several options at this point. Remove the grease fittings cover the original holes and then drill and tap new holes for the grease fittings. We decided to drill holes in the mounting clamps just so we could get it mounted today and then find a permanent solution. Any suggestions?




There is not a lot of material left on the mounts so we will have to come up with another permanent solution.

Then I went to work on the brakes. The whole kit seemed to mount up pretty easily until we tried to install the bearing cups in the rotor. The first one ended like this.








Now I have to call the vendor and see if they will replace the rotor or tell me I fucked it up during the install so I have to buy a new one.
At that point I was done for the day because I didnt have any more parts that I could install. So I decided to take a look at the seats to see how the new ones will be mounted. The current seats were mounted directly to the mesh floor pan with a couple of pieces of metal. It looked like one hard hit and the whole seat would come dislodged.





Well now I am going to order the new seats and figure out how they will be mounted. Definitely a lot differently than they are currently.

This is how she sits now

I think my buddy was using a press. I wasnt right there when it broke. We were going to heat up the 2nd one but he didnt have any gas for his torch. I hope they will replace it, but I doubt it.

The hardware in there was just something I grabbed from a local hardware store, it's just in there to hold it together for now. There are no automotive stores for miles in the country backwoods place I a have it stored now.

You are absolutley correct. Unfortunately there is a lot of fab work required on this that requires skills I do not possess yet.