Topic: Has anyone ever built a miata crawler?

[Rallequip]

Kinda curious about this, as I have seen an RX-7 body on a Bronco II frame many years ago. I DD a miata and have managed to find several shells pretty cheap but haven't ever seen it done. Kinda curious what frame to use for such a project. Any ideas?

[GNasty 82]

This would definitely be neat from the point of skill required to do it.

A few challenges that come to mind are:

1)  Miata is a unibody design, with no real frame to speak of.
2)  Assuming you can place a Miata body/frame onto another frame, I'm not sure what you would use, being that the Miata is such a short wheelbase, possibly a Sammy frame.
3)  The location of the existing wheel wells vs the driver position will produce an awfully short rear driveshaft.  Note that the transmission shifter on the miata is literally placed so far back on the transmission that is is dead even with the end of the transmission output shaft.

Anyway, that's just a couple of thoughts.

[bigarms23]

funny my cousin and i were talking about cutting a 4runner body to fit a miata you could probably cut down a chevy 4x4 or toyota frame and put the miata drivetrain and body on it

[bleakhorizon]

anything is possible with a welder and a torch.... However, most car on frame "conversions" you see are ugly and show lots of frame.....

[yjay]

 

[H8PVMNT]

That is the stupidest thing I have ever seen...  I want to slap that guy right in the mouth.