Ive not gotten stuck but haven't been anywhere really challenging yet. The one in the video has been in that family since the 1970's and I hear has never been stuck and is usually used to rescue all of the other trucks, 4x4s and others that get stuck. Last year 4 of us road in his to duck hunt and I didn't notice any problem at all, that's when I knew I had to find one! Got mine in TX rice fields and I saw a couple more in Houston, but he was really proud of them!

I saw your pix, did your's have a rear deck? There is a space needed under the deck for the engine heat to blow out, let me know if you need measurements off of mine. The engine blows all of the heat out the top fins near the intak/exhaust manifold. The deck actually has ductwork to funnel that hot blast out of the sides of the deck.

About closing yours in with doors etc, A good bit of heat will get into the cab through the transmission radiator between the seats, but I like your metal top. The guy I got mine from said he had the soft top but it got so hot inside they took it off and then it went bad where they stored it. We took off the top frame and are thinking a quick frame to use the kid as a mobile duck blind.

You really don't want to connect anything to those transmission cables, any changes in their movement changes how they activate the pumps for forward, reverse and the speed of each side. Lord help you of they get jammed. Besides they are not equal setups so that might affect the tiller. I had a noticable change in steering/running to the better when I changed a bolt & nut connecting the cable to one pump(that had the very slightest slack) with the correct pin and clip like it should have.

Instead of that steering wheel setup like he had in the video I was thinking a stick steer unit that does the same thing as a steering wheel but is a lever mounted to the sidewall that u would just push forward for right turn and pull back for left turn. And don't forget to mount bilge pumps, because of the way the bottom is made with high and low areas I'm putting 2 in at the very rear. And make sure every bolt, etc in the hull is sealed. I'll post pix when done. All switches are going on a new dash I've installed, I'm also going to mount a tach and maybe oil pressure gauge.

Good luck with yours