12-31-2019, 10:31 AM
I would surmise that yours is an early frame, and somewhere in its nearly 60 year life, someone switched to a 5/8" steering shaft. It can be done carefully so that there is no indication of grind marks. angle grinders are wonderful. Bug was strange. On the Wasp, the main rails bent upward to form the seatback, and the sissy rails pinched in, welded to the seatback tube and continued on around the back for the bumper. We got a Wasp in from the factory that had the lower main rails continue back and bend upward like a LRB, and weld to the bearing hanger. The seatback was a separate hoop. The sissy rails welded to the seatback, and continued back to form the rear bumper like any other Wasp. This gave two main rails from seatback to bearing hanger. Other later Bugs had this setup, but not a '61 Wasp! The Bug Cool Cart had this, but the bottom rail continued on to form a second bumper below the sissy rail bumper. This Wasp had the lower rails cut off after the weld to the bearing hanger. It was obvious that Bug was experimenting with this design, and shipped us the kart as a "production" unit. Pop called Bug to ask Tom Pierson what was going on. Tom laughed and said: "Clare (Pop's name) somebody is getting a strong kart"! You gotta remember, Bug was selling hundreds of karts then, but the company was owned by a "regular guy". Tom ran Bug like a small business, unlike Dart and Fox, which were more "big time". There were very often variations between shipments. I was the 17 year old kid who opened all the boxes from Bug, and I often saw small changes from one kart to another. I don't know if I said this before: When I opened the box around my new '61 Wasp, I found a bent channel 1960 engine mount. The 60 Wasp had a longitudinal tube from the seatback crossmember to the rear bumper. Two tubes on a dual engine kart. The inner flange of the channel mount welded to this tube. The '61 had eliminated the longitudinal tube, and replaced the channel mount with a flat plate that had a bent down inner edge for strength. Mine had the tube and the raised channel '60 engine mount. Pop and I laughed and I continued on with the setup. No biggie-just "Bug Engineering". I will try to attach a pic of my '61. MAYBE you can zoom up enough to see the channel mount. TJ