trying to make the best of a bad situation, rex swap!

So driving to work this morning a deer decided it liked my damn near spotless rust free garaged the last 3 winters, pride and joy bugeye enough to try and give it a hug. As you can imagine at 50mph this didn't work out to well. As pissed as I am about the state of things I still have my leggy at home. I've been working on the motor and its just about ready for re-install but in spite of this and the fact that the rex is most likely totalled I'm thinking I might make a baby of the 2 and Rex swap the leggy. Obviously I know I need to merge harnesses and swap cross members but what other issues have people run into with this swap? Any good write ups on the subject and can anyone give me good advice on the best route here. The leggy is a 98 gt limited so an auto, so I'm guessing I'll also need the manual trans cross member and driveshaft to complete the motor and trans swap? Would the gd chassis trans cross member work on the bd chassis? I know driveshafts won't but do real diffs swap straight out? Any advice would be great guys!

Hi Platteville,

 

I hit a deer with my 98 OBL in the north woods, on Hwy 51 just outside Minocqua. I was driving back from a Thanksgiving day meal, and three deer jumped into the road at once; I swerved from two, and hit the third. Took out my FL quarter, and a few other parts, but I was able to drive away from it. The crazy thing is that the deer was disabled but not dead. When the local sheriff arrived so I could file a report on the accident, the deer was still flopping around on the shoulder. He had the unenviable job of putting a slug into it on the spot to end the suffering. This was ~10 years ago, and I'm still driving my 98.

Ouch, I hit one in my Dodge neon back when I was 17 on Rt 4 on my way out of Vermont with my girlfriend in the passenger seat. Bent the hood, destroyed the grill, ruined the radiator, set off both airbags and pushed in the bumper.

Deer are bad here in VA. Hit one back in 1996 that messed up the fender, hood, grille headlights of my 1990 Sentra. Then bumped one with my 2007 Corolla that did nothing more than crack the headlight mounting bracket and this past June a doe ran right in front of my Nissan Hardbody. The doe was taken out but only cost me $57 for a used Ebay headlight and new corner light (lucky on that one).

get a first gen legacy Xmember

Anyone have any answers? Do the trans cross members swap straight up? How about rear diff or do I need the whole carrier? What about fuel tanks and evap systems? Any help appreciated!

Since you have the whole car to donate you should be good to go, both subframes I believe will work if you use the complete suspension setup. Basically your taking the underbody from the bugeye and fitting it up under the legacy unibody. Motor and tranny will swap easy since you have the bulkhead harwork (better and cheaper than merging) I imagine its going to be alot of work but the end result will be amazing.