Back to the Future Buggy

The lack of recent posts is because all my effort lately has been going into my dune buggy project. Here's a pic from the old days.

 I've had this car some 20 years, and it's why I got started autocrossing. I just wanted a place to drive it, and it was not yet street legal. However, once I started racing it, my priorities changed, and all I did was make it faster on course. At one point, I was the fastest car of the day, but then it was time to build the A-Mod. That's another story. About 5 years ago, some dumbass backed into the buggy and that put it into the back of the shop. I started to rebuild it a year or so later, but then got busy with other things. It has taken me quite a while to even remember where I left off.

By the way, that spoiler looking thing on the front was only partially for aerodynamic purposes, mostly it hid a 40 pound chunk of steel cantilevered as far forward as possible. The buggy had enough power that turning and accelerating could not be done at the same time!

I aquired a Subaru EJ22 from a friend, and decided that's what would power the buggy. But then, after I ran Bonneville, I had this little turbo left over, so I figured I would just buy another one, and make it twin turbo.

Isn't it cute?

This little turbo can only make 90 to 100 HP, but there's 2. The engine stock is 140. Obviously, I am not trying for max power, I just think it's cool. That philosophy is being applied to the whole project, and I am fabricating things just because I can, or just for the hell of it. Here's a little mount I made to support the front fenders, it uses a Rabbit radiator mount for flexibility.

The engine has so few miles that this paper label never came off the cylinder head.











Everything is solid mounted, so I made engine mounts that attach to the rear bumper. A double bolted connection is not the best way to do it, but was neccesary to allow the bumper to go on and off. The oil filter just touches the cage, so I will have to find something smaller.

Here's the bracket to mount the Geo Metro alternator.

I wanted a ball joint front end and the chassis is a 58, so I welded the entire fram head from a later car on. I was missing one of the brake hose brackets after that, so Here's one from square tube. That stuff is easy to make things from. The aluminum thing you see behind it is a square box with a cover plate where I ran SS fuel lines, and the main battery cable through the tunnel.

Here's the last picture for this post. You are wondering how there can be any way that huge radiator can go into that little car? You will have to wait and see!