What have I got?

[rich_f 233]

Hello all. I got the car in the photo as part of a job lot. It came with a frog body but looking at the frog manual, the servo saver should be on the servo on the frog. Here it is on the cross-piece, and I had a look at the brat manual and it has it like this, but the body mount is the frog body mount, not the brat one. 

Is this some early frog with the brat servo saver, or is it some mix of parts?

(it looks like it uploaded upside-down. I do apologise!)

[KEV THE REV 2319]

It could be a mix of parts - possibly a Brat that someone converted to Frog . Does it have a diff ? . The Frog had a diff , the Brat had a fixed gear - no diff , so that could be the best way to tell which it is / was .

[junkmunki 846]

The lancia rally had the same chassis and that steering arangement, and as Kev said, it also had no diff.

J

[Frog Jumper 3661]

Like Kev said, open up the tranny case. Diff = frog, no diff = brat/lancia.

I suspect that it’s a Brat that got Froged...

Terry

 

[rich_f 233]

For those interested - it has a diff. I guess it is a strange hybrid.

Thanks all for your insights!

[Mokei Kagaku 2706]

Photos of even the pre-production Frog shows it with direct mount servo saver, so I consider it very unlikely that it was ever offered with the Brat/037 steering arrangement. Also, your car has white ball connectors and the "late" wider and reinforced bumper, which neither early Frogs nor early Brats had. May have been fitted later, but are indications of late production. Also, the skid plate can be seen in the photos and this was only included with the Frog. And of course the confirmed diff and visible gear box outputs with ball bearings, and not onepiece plastic like on the Brat and 037, are indications of a Frog. 

Other indications it didn't start life as an early Brat/037, are the "sunburst" washers behind the front uprights. Early Brat/037's came without. Also, early Brat/037's didn't have the Frog type bumper mount with the molded in tube for the Frog front body mount. They also had frames without mounting holes for the skid plate.  The Frog always had as did later Brat/037's. These holes could of course be drilled on early Brat/037 frames, but they would still lack the  molded in stud on the inside, and the right stud can be clearly seen in the photo.

So, evidently neither an early Frog, nor an early Brat/037, but clearly a mix of parts by a previous owner. Either a late Brat or 037 with the skid plate and gearbox internals of the Frog added (and in case of the 037; the bumper), or a Frog with the steering mechanism from the Brat/037. The equal length steering rods weren't included in the Frog kit, so out of the box, it couldn't be built like this without sourcing the steering rods separately.