My woods rail/bug out build.

[Aerindel]

Those look nice, I already ordered one though. Not as nice but it should work.
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Homemade woods/street, bug out rail. IRS, Balljoint front end. 1967 1600cc DP, Weber 32/36 progressive, tri-mil quiet pack. Rear only cutting brakes.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=630046

[HikFab]

Great project!

Here is one for your list. Winch

I recently added one to the buggy. I used a 1.25" hitch so it's removable. I plan on installing another receiver in the rear.

Just in case you want to bugout even further

[Aerindel]

I actually have a winch for it but my wired remote control box fell on my exhaust and melted so I have it off for the time being until I make another control box.
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Homemade woods/street, bug out rail. IRS, Balljoint front end. 1967 1600cc DP, Weber 32/36 progressive, tri-mil quiet pack. Rear only cutting brakes.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=630046

[Aerindel]

Okay, figured its time to stop messing around and revive this thread.

First, a picture since the old ones where on photobucket and are long gone:

My Goal* is to actually finally finish this thing off this summer.

That little girl you see was born about a month before the last post I made in this thread, which is the reason it stopped getting updates.

"priorities" as they say. Which for the last six years as been mostly taking care of the kid and working on my self built house.

Well, since lumber prices are up 300% this year, I'm not working that much on the house this summer, so working on the buggy is something I'm trying to make a 'new' priority.

So....what needs to be done?

Dial in the engine. Despite tons of tinkering and upgrades, I'm still not 100% satisfied with how its running.

Biggest current problem is an inconsistent idle. Below 1K RPM it surges and then bogs down intermittently. I've adjusted the timing and idle mix screw endlessly but can't seem to fix this.

The bad thing is that sometimes it dies while driving when I put in the clutch. Maybe one time in ten....but it drives me nuts.

This spring I dropped some money and upgraded the entire ignition system. Flamethrower 3 coil, SVDA distributer with points electronic points, new plugs and new wires.

And after all that I'm not sure I can even tell a difference between my old rusted blue coil and 009.

I've basically being following the "how to make your progressive work" page from aircooled.net The only thing I haven't done is re-route one of the intake heater tubes to the exhaust accumulator, they are still just the usual cylinder 2-3 setup.


Front brakes and parking brakes.

Needs both to be street legal...and is probably just a good idea.

This is just a matter of getting all the parts. I have a bunch of stuff ordered so hopefully this won't be too big of a problem.


Fenders, needed to be legal, also, needed to avoid covering myself in mud since it can go for a month here without raining but somehow I will still find a mud puddle every-time I go out.

I did HAVE some fenders on it in the past, metal, pre-fab trailer fenders....but I broke all of those off eventually. They where just too rigid for off road and eventually I caught them on stumps etc and snapped them off.

My new plan is to fabricate flexible fenders from heavy duty semi-truck mud flaps. I found some on amazon that come in 2x4' chunks that are made from a low density poly material that seems halfway between rubber and ABS. Pretty light, and just about indestructible.

I've got a start on these and I think it will go well:

Windshield and wiper:

Still down the road, haven't even started sourcing these. Years ago I asked a local glass place if they could make custom safety glass and they said yes and that was as far as I got.
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Homemade woods/street, bug out rail. IRS, Balljoint front end. 1967 1600cc DP, Weber 32/36 progressive, tri-mil quiet pack. Rear only cutting brakes.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=630046

[Wulfthang]

That's looking good! The only issue that I can see, is the front bumper. It looks like it extends out past the edge of the front tires. If you smack something with it, it's going to get stuck on the tire.

I had a Baja back in about 1978 or so that had a big old timber mounted on steel brackets as a front bumper. I ran into a tree and bent the brackets on one side back into the tire so hard, that the timber jammed the front wheel solid like the brakes were locked on. The only way to get it unstuck so I could get out of the woods and get home, was to chain it to the same tree that I ran into and then go backwards fast until it bent the brackets out far enough to free up the wheel.

[Aerindel]

[Wulfthang]

Oh yeah I know about getting it street legal! I'm in Arizona and we have emission testing here. My Rail is powered by an old school Ford V6. I got the check list and went to work. Wind shield wiper? Check! Hi beam low beams? Check! Brakes, turn signals, etc. etc. etc. I sweated over some of that cr@p! Computer plug in for OBDS? It's points! Odometer? Why would it have a odometer? It doesn't have a speedometer! Catalytic Converter? Say what? Nope none of that stuff!

It's called a Level Four (or Three?) Inspection. I trailered it there but had to run it thru under it's own power. Two guys with clipboards, radios and Safari hats. All they did was walk around it and say "Dayum"! Then they asked me where I wanted the DMV ID Number plate. That was it. At the emissions testing station, I had to run it up on the dyno thingy and that was it. Passed with flying colors! The ride home was great!

What about a wedge type bumper frame or a wrap around?

[Aerindel]

Luckily the inspection here is pretty basic, and its only for homemade vehicles, we don't have any inspections for normal cars.

[Wulfthang]

Here's the front end of mine. It's kind of hard to see but the "bumper" is wrapped with rope. It's angles up and in at the front. There's another kind where the bumper is curved and wraps around to the sides. Neither one extends as far as the tires.

[dustymojave]

Aerindel's buggy has the factory wrap around bumper that would meet the requirement. Basically similar to yours, Wulfthang. The large crosstube is additional to, and attached to that.

I was amazed yesterday morning when I was walking out of the local hardware store and saw a rail buggy driving past on the road. It had a license plate on the back. A California plate! Not that it's impossible here, but purt near.

This buggy is one of about 12 of the original brand of VW-based buggies. It's called a Chimp, built in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1960s by a guy named Scott McKenzie, founder of McKenzie's Offroad, still an important supplier of offroad parts to desert offroad racers and players; and the guy who was responsible for building and prepping the race car of the famous Malcolm Smith in the 1970s, when Malcolm and his partner DOMINATED desert offroad racing.

The former owner (he passed away a couple of years ago) referred to it as his "Street Legal" buggy. He was for many years the Captain of the local Volunteer Sheriff's force. Used for thousands of miles of official LA County Sheriff's business. So it had to meet the law and be approved for use on California roads. It was registered for the street in the early 1960s when it was much easier to do than it is now. His son and family still use it on the street, although most of its use is offroad.

So having a street registered tube frame buggy is possible in California, but rare. Although this car has a VW tunnel and the forward part of the floor pans. It's subject to neither roadworthiness nor smog inspections under California law. That was all approved decades ago.
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Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
SoCalBajas Member
Kicked Cancer's A$$...1st and 2nd round...Fight ain't over yet.

[dustymojave]

Hey Aerindel...Is there any way you could go back and figure out what pictures you had posted in this thread and instead of using PhotoToilet, use the Samba Gallery to put them back into the thread?

Lots of useful information was lost when management at PhotoToilet got greedy and shot themselves in the pecker! I used them for many years and thought their services were so cool. I still feel they violated a contract when they offered free permanent storage and sharing, then demanded like $400/year for what they had provided free. They could have gone to more ads and gradually ramped that up.
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Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
SoCalBajas Member
Kicked Cancer's A$$...1st and 2nd round...Fight ain't over yet.

[Aerindel]

[Aerindel]

These is an old pict of when I had the metal trailer fenders on it. They worked good at stopping mud but didn't hold up very well to off road and got broken off one by one.

This is the warm air intake for my weberprogressive:

Not sure how well it works but it can't hurt to get some heat into the intake from what I've read.

_________________
Homemade woods/street, bug out rail. IRS, Balljoint front end. 1967 1600cc DP, Weber 32/36 progressive, tri-mil quiet pack. Rear only cutting brakes.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=630046

[dustymojave]

That's a cool start that will help others understand what your buggy is and what's there. I read all of your thread back when it was being developed.

I remember the warm air device. I'm not real keen on warm intake. But I understand that in some geographical places, it can be needed. And I thought then and still do that you did a fine job of creating a system to perform that function.
_________________
Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
SoCalBajas Member
Kicked Cancer's A$$...1st and 2nd round...Fight ain't over yet.

[Aerindel]

Still struggling to find time to work on it, and everything requires something else...

Playing around with it a little last week and the clutch went dead. Turned out the cheap Latest Rage clutch master cylinder failed. The internal piston assembly broke and bound up and I couldn't find a rebuild kit that had the internal spring retaining rod etc so I just bought a replacement wilwood MC that happened to fit the same mounting holes in the pedal set.

Last night I stole a little time and finally drained and filled the transmission fluid now that I have the right tool. Nasty orange colored (rust) lube but at least there was plenty of it.

I also checked and set valve clearances as its been a few years since I last did that, although only a few hundred miles.

All my intakes where tight, and all my exhausts a little loose....

I installed the parts needed to have a mechanical parking brake, which went okay, but is only part of the struggle. I now need to figure out where to mount the parking brake lever and so far I'm stumped since I have cutting brakes mounted between the seats where a parking brake would normally go. Right now I'm thinking I may need to put it on the ceiling!...which could actually be kinda neat if I could make it work.

Started trying to work on my rear fender fabrication but figured out my welder won't reach far enough so now I have to make an extension cord for my welder. Drove to town...(an hour away) to buy supplies, and realized I left my wallet at home....

And so it goes.
_________________
Homemade woods/street, bug out rail. IRS, Balljoint front end. 1967 1600cc DP, Weber 32/36 progressive, tri-mil quiet pack. Rear only cutting brakes.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=630046

[Aerindel]

Parts came in today

So....shiny.....

_________________
Homemade woods/street, bug out rail. IRS, Balljoint front end. 1967 1600cc DP, Weber 32/36 progressive, tri-mil quiet pack. Rear only cutting brakes.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=630046

[Wulfthang]

Hey Aerindel: The tires on my rail are BFG's. I run them at 15psi front and 17 psi rear for combined street and trail. They work pretty well for me with my driving style. I run a combination of hard rocky trail, soft sandy washes and Arroyos, loose shale stuff and street.

I had to put fenders on the rear of my rail to keep from getting beat to death by the rocks flinging up at me and the mud flying all over my interior. Here's a photo of them.

I welded struts out from the frame with one of them having an actual secondary brace strut welded on. (The top one). The front bottom edged is bolted to the rear end of the side cargo/nerf rails. I built them heavy duty because they also serve as cargo mount points.

I installed eyelets in them to clip a pack to. I use the old East German combat packs. They're the perfect size and mine are waterproof with an inner bag. I can mount three on each fender. I bought mine when they were 10 for ten bucks!
https://kommandostore.com/products/unissued-east-german-combat-pack

I use them when spending a day or more off road and have a passenger so I can't use the passenger seat for cargo.

[Aerindel]

[PhillipM]

I use supersingle wheel tubs from truck trailers:

Not the prettiest things in the world but they're cheap, easy to get hold of, easy to trim and strong as hell.

I won't say they keep all the mud off
But they keep the screens a lot cleaner and stop a lot of the big rocks from hitting the car:

[oprn]

I just found this thread and read it. Too bad about the pictures.

I am very interested in your warm air intake idea. 4 1/2 hours of driving takes me to the northern border of your state so yes I appreciate what it takes to run an air cooled VW in the winter! VW had it all completely solved by the way but the vast majority of the cold weather things they did have been removed or disabled by people who "know better" on nearly all old VWs today. At one time VWs were known to be one of the most dependable cold weather cars on the road!

I too have a sand rail that sees occasional cold weather use, in fact to the majority of fellows on this forum even our summers here would be considered cold weather! I started my serious cold weather (below 80*F) efforts (not quite true, the thermostat went on first) by making the heat riser work as well as the factory intended and I think I have achieved that although any real temperature data on a stock system is elusive at this point in time. Such has been the success of the de-weatherizing efforts of the experts! I started a thread hoping to recover some ideas and data for those of us that want our engines to run as well as VW intended in all weather. Some good ideas have been shared already and any more that fellows could contribute is a bonus!
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=755518

The next step in my pursuit of all weather happiness is a warm air air cleaner box like you have so thank you for sharing your efforts on this! I think mine should be pretty easy to do but I too am puzzling over how to make it self regulating like VW did. As you can see the exhaust is already handy right beside the air cleaner... just need to enclose it all and make some sort of temp activated trap door.

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We had the stone age, the bronze age, the industrial age and now we are in the age of mass deception and mind control for corporate profit. (The mass media age)