Hi, and thank you for any opinion your willing to put out there. I'm well aware of search functions and sticky's and while I've made a sincere effort I'm just looking for raw opinions at this point and a little short on time as I leave town tomorrow for a short while.
I'm mid 60's retiring 6ft 2 203lbs have a long dormant private pilot, owned a Luscombe 800 plus hours and a Varieze 200plus hours really enjoyed the small rebuild projects, flying and owning both.
The airplane is a Model 4 serial number 1440's placard says 1000 gross..two plastic wing tanks, look to be around 5-6 gallons and look in ok condition...plane sat for around 20 years, part of the time outside, looks to be light surface rust on the tubes and might need some tubing replacement around the tail wheel, nothing showing that's obvious because of the fabric. time on airframe and engine are unknown, it shows no damage beyond time and weather, seems solid and straight and has the original log and some paperwork. The 582 greyhead was gone through by a Rotax shop a few years ago and has been unused in dry storage since.
The wings are stripped and ready for recover, all of the parts and pieces, a-n hardware are present, the cowl's, seat pan etc. are in excellent condition and it appears to be well built plane that fell on hard times.

I want to buy it and restore and fly it locally, I'm ok with the 582 my flying is all solo and on my certified plane I flew as if the mill might shut down at any time...the questions are...if down the road I want to put a four stroke on it and extend my area a bit can that be reasonably accomplished or is the airframe too limited in weight carrying capacity to make it work.

I understand that if that's what I want to do I would probably be ahead to buy a ready to go airplane with the 100 horse...facing retirement, longish wet winters here in the PNW..I'm as much looking for the project as I am the aircraft. I'd like to recover it and fly it as is, and then if I'm enjoying the flying enough maybe the following winter do an engine conversion...Thanks again and I promise to make a hearty effort to use the search function in the future.