As a Panel owner, I often wondered what trick would be neat to pull off with it. But being mechanically challenged, fantasy was it. My thoughts were how about the possibility of putting an engine/transaxle set up out a front wheel drive Toronado or weren't they in El Dorado? Put it in the rear. All the engine/tranny weight would be hung on the axle and not the body. Not sure how much hp one could coax out of one of those engines or if it could be updated to injection. Just one of the random thoughts that popped into my head on the way to work one morning after updating the progress of this thread. BTW: very cool project.

 

Well, I'm hooked now...gotta subscribe to this thread to see the finish! Wish I had the imagination/talent/balls to do such a conversion :)

 

No pics to show right now. Just got some steel plate water jetted for some suspension parts. Will be welding them together soon. I'm not really that far off from having the rear axle ready to finalize and put the rear wheels on the mule to flip it right side up and begin on engine/trans install. Firewall and trans cuts should be substantial.

 

Well its one mock up after another. these tires are 27 1/2" tall (28" is about all you are going to get inside the wheel well) by 11" wide. I'm still looking as to how much tubbing needs to be done to get this much meat in. I hope I can do it without weakening the structure too much. I'll keep working on it. Anyway, that's what it looks like right now. I'll keep ya posted.

 

 

Interesting post, indeed.

 

Here are some close up detail shots of how I built the rear suspension. the first pic is of the spacers that were cut to make up for the thickness of the rear suspension bracket. I chose to mount to the "hard mount" for the stock rear axle. It is the strongest place back in that area.

The second shot is of the rear trailing arms and how they mount to the body in the stock position.

The third is an overall view of the rear suspension as it looks now. I still need to weld on the rear coil over mounting tabs and the trailing arm mounts to the rear axle.

 

That is really looking fantastic,great job. Thanks for the pics.

 

I hate to clutter up your thread with compliments, but that is so cool! When this is all done, you could make RWD conversion kits.
On the box it could say, "Just add drive-train!" :)

 

Wow. I can't believe I missed this for so long. Nice work.

That tire size for the mock up looks really BA.