Robs Stupid Buggy Progress August

Aug 01, 2010 I got on a roll with the front end, so I decided it was time for a hood. I made a frame out of 1/2 inch pipe and tacked the skin of the cars hood to it. It looks kinda cool to me.

Aug 02,2010 I finally got my driveshaft back and its all happy now. Its identical in design to the one I made, but with a larger shaft, and a better u-joint yoke. The main difference is that they re heat treated it after welding. It should be plenty strong now that the buggy has twice the power.

Buggy ROCKS with twice as much power, and the driveshaft even survived a few pretty scary test rides! Apparently I cracked the transmission dipstick tube where it goes into the tranny, making it leak tranny fluid and shift funny because of the low fluid level. Ill have to see if I can solder it back together. I did manage to get some fairly impressive video though.

Aug 11,2010 Working with sheet metal is a pain in the butt, but I got the sides of the grill intake and hood sides done. I even made a glove box and foot pocket

Aug 15,2010 My locker finally got delivered yesterday. Time to install it. 4 hours of joy later, it is done. Arrggghh!!

Aug 17,2010 I finally got around to replacing the 7.5inch differential with the 8.8 one. When I installed the locker in the 7.5 diff, I had to disconnect the upper and lower control arms to be able to pull the axle shafts out of the diff. This time, I found that wiggling the diff a bit allowed pulling the shafts out without that much effort.

The new diff bolted right up and the axle shafts fit right into the new diff, buuuuut, the driveshaft doesnt fit anymore!

I really dont wanna go back to the driveshaft place and get a driveshaft an inch shorter, so I gotta either move the diff back, move the motor forward, or stretch the frame. New driveshaft would be the easiest, but expensive and wasteful. Moving the motor forward isnt an option, because it is nearly touching the frame under the seat already. Moving the diff back would be fairly easy, but may make the axle shafts interfere with the suspension. Looks like stretching the frame an inch is the only option.

Stretching the frame wont cost anything, but is gonna be a pain in the butt to cut the frame in several places and install 1 inch spacers all over.

Aug 18,2010 Stretching the buggy went very fast. After supporting the front half of the buggy on blocks, I cut the bottom frame members and welded a slice of 1.5inch pipe to the front half of the frame as a guide, then jacked up the rear end until it spread apart enough to slip in some spacers and clamp it together. Then I cut the top part of the frame the rest of the way and lowered the jack until it spread apart enough to install some spacers. Instead of welding the existing top frame pieces, I made new frame pieces right below the old ones.

The 1 inch pipe I used as spacers are probably closer to 1.5inches OD, but provided a consistent method of measuring, and went really quick.

Aug 19,2010 The frame is not quite complete, but I finished up installing the differential and the driveshaft fits very well now. I decided to go for a test drive. Sucks to be me. One of the axle shafts wasnt seated correctly and pushed the differential to the left and broke the mount on the diff cover completely off!

Aug 22,2010 The frustration of busting the differential cover made me wanna use a big hammer for something. I decided to work on the roof. The hammering helped a little to work out my frustration.

After removing the axle shaft from the differential, it is obvious that the axle shaft is destroyed. The tripod rings are mostly intact, but the tripod itself is mangled, all the retainers and orings are shattered, most of the needle bearings are destroyed, and the socket is all gouged up. Gonna have to get a new axle shaft too.

Aug 24,2010 Stock axle shaft for a 91 tbird with V8 arrived today. Pretty simple install

Sometime in the last week, I got a 40x60 inch piece of 1/8inch steel for a skidplate under the motor and floor. You can kinda see it in the last pic

Aug 31,2010 Finally got the differential cover done and installed! Stupid booboo cost a bit more than $200 to fix, but it is all back together and works again!! I ran out of wire for the little welder, so its ugly as crap, but should be plenty strong

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