Columbia Par Car/Harley aka MishMashMobile

[GC newbie]

If you don't like threads with lots of pictures you might want to leave now! :)

So I may as well begin my Build thread with the where, when and why:
My Daughter underwent treatment for leukemia 7 years ago at age 10. Because of the long uphill battle with the side effects of treatment she missed out on a lot of stuff other kids got to do. Learning to ride a bike, gokarts etc all leading up to driving a car. She's now 17 and although healthy and an "A" student is having great difficulty learning to drive a car. Even with an instructor vehicle she's ended up on a couple front lawns and had a minor meet-n-greet with a post or two. Chemotherapy does strange and horrible things to a brain and we think maybe caused her to have slower "processing speed" and difficulty in multi-tasking. So our "new" golf car is a half step backwards and hopefully will work her confidence up to get into the driver's seat in a car again. To this end I'm working to make our MishMashMobile as safe and easy to drive as possible. Maybe after she's done with it I'll worry about making it go faster, lift kit and a stereo system, etc. But for now the focus is on her learning.

As we are entering Fall it's getting dark early so today's task was to make it easy for motorists in our neighborhood to see. Hopefully I can get her out for a cruise after work everyday. But I still have a couple safety concerns I think maybe need addressed. Maybe lap belts or half doors? Two reasons for this is for her to feel safe in this car and for my 5 year old son who LOVES this car already but sometimes has a hard time following directions like "We're turning around, hold on!"
It already has headlights the PO installed but nothing in the back, he just used it for delivering hay to his many horses so no traffic to contend with on his farm. I picked up a set of LED trailer lights I thought would look good and can be wired for brake/turn lights later on if I choose to and some reflective tape I have yet to apply. $16 each at the local hardware store:





We had a rare day with no wind so I decided to check the exhaust and do the "Muffler BBQ" if needed while I worked on the tail lights. Sounded like it had a big chunk of something rattling around in there and could possibly block the outlet if left alone. Just for reference I weighed it before hand to see if there is any change after:


More soon....

Ernie