Another photo of the rear end? Really? C'mon!

Yes, it is a little repetitive, but if you're a careful observer you'll notice that the rear end is positioned on the springs (it is even bolted down) and the drive shaft is fitted.

You might also note the poor quality paint job I did on the brake drum/hub.

So a little more progress--what you don't see is that I needed to re-size the inner sleeve of the rear bushing. Most of my time this evening was carefully removing about 1/8-inch off of each side of the sleeve with a small cut-off wheel on my dremel.

Now the question remains: will the drive shaft work? Sure, it fit at the bottom of the travel of the rear end, but it was very tight. If it works, there is a small hope that I would be able to drive the car on International Drive Your Studebaker Day using the rest of the existing drive train. But to accomplish that, I still need to finish the brakes: complete installation of the hard lines and install the updated master cylinder and associated components. And, given that the rear shocks were completely non-functional, I'd need to replace the front shocks as well. And, of course, I need to finish up this install (the shocks and parking brake lines remain.)

Time permitting, I'll install the rear shocks tomorrow and slowly lower the car to the ground to see if the drive shaft binds. I still need to lower it to put the suspension in the proper position to torque the fasteners on the springs anyway, so that will be a good test.

(Now that I think about it, I'm very suspicious that it won't work, so I'll disconnect the shaft, lower it and then reconnect it just to be safe.)