Well, a little progress on the 800 tonight. Yesterday I took the tractor into where I work and had our mechanic cut off the old lift handle mounting bracket. I tried and tried to pound the spirol pin out, but it never did come out so I had to cut all of it off to bare shaft. Finally got that off, so I had a nice new lift handle ready to install tonight. It works great and is now ready for the 38 inch deck. Also had to sadly "modify" the side panes for the big starter. I had to roll back part of the lip that sits inside of the frame so it would clear the starter. The frame is already notched by a PO for the starter, and my dreams of finding the smaller starter have disappeared. Since the frame is notched it will never be a 100 pointer, but I'm ok with that
The mechanical work is 95 percent done, just some wiring for the lights and making some muffler brackets and finding an 8hp head shroud in the parts pile. I was also happy to find that a 7hp air cleaner from a 70, 71, etc will fit perfectly inside of the sideshields (since I also dont have the original air cleaner either). The only 800 specific part is the muffler, which is in awesome shape.