So, since I’m planning on doing a bunch of work on the freeway, I decided to pull the top half of the body off. This is very easy to do, since it’s effectively held on with 8 bolts and a few sheet metal screws (they hold the edges of the fiberglass together so they don’t rattle).
I have a old 1-ton chain fall and I rigged up a mounting eyelet in my carport to make this easier to do with one person. The top of the body is probably ~60-80 lbs, but it’s a large and awkward shape, and you have to jiggle it around to fit the rear section over the trailing frame bars.
Anyways, a bunch of ratchet straps and some mildly careful balancing and it comes off without too much work.
I also got the chance to discover how terrible the existing wiring was. Completely re-wiring the entire car is now another thing I need to plan on doing.
Amusingly enough, whoever redid this car last used MDF pegboard for the interior! I’m not planning on replacing any of the interior paneling, I’m OK with the frame being visible inside the car.
I also took the opportunity to pull the engine to give it a once-over (it’s leaking a bit somewhere), and remove the governor.
First, we can see this thing has had a pretty bad exhaust leak for a while. It turns out the upper bolt-hole for the exhaust is largely stripped. I got it together once during reassembly, but it really needs to be helicoiled.
Since this uses a literal Tecumseh utility engine, it comes with a governor to stop the engine from going more then a few thousand RPM. While this is a overhead-valve engine (with pushrods! and only splash lubrication!), I’m not sure how high I can rev it without something failing.
I’m going to find out.
Long term, I’d like to graft a proper motorcycle powertrain (I’m actually thinking the entire back half of a motorcycle) onto the rear of the thing. I need to re-engineer the front suspension before that, though.
