Basic rail/tube buggy advice.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I have been cleaning up by computer room looking at divesting myself a bunch of stuff (not these) and ran into a book I forgot I have called: HOW TO BUILD A DUNE BUGGY, by Earl Duty (2002). It is a highly illustrated book with a lot of good basic advice. I just looked it up and the pages must be made of gold as the price is now astronomical ( which is a shame. So for what it is worth (A lot I guess):

What they are building is a street driven rail but give a lot of lot of good, detailed advice if you are planning on more than a general purpose light duty dual purpose "tube framed buggy". It covers choosing a tube frame and how to suspend it, engine, wiring and most other things you might want to know but is missing some of the additional nice-nices' that you might want; that is where STF comes in to play.

It also has some good advice if you were choosing to build a glass buggy. The additional information needed should be available with some help from people here. Even Baja guys might pick up some ideas from it.

Also there is another book that might help titled: How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen Air-cooled Engine by Tom Wilson (HP books) (https://www.bing.com/search?q=book+how+ ... lang=en-US). A little old but still a lot of good starter information involved.

Hot VWs came out with at least three of them (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bo ... &FORM=IGRE). Again, they seem to be made out of gold.

[dustymojave]

I came into possession of a "How to Build A Dune Buggy" some years ago. Some family members have no clue at gift time. Way better than a tie or something else I have absolutely no use for or interest in I suppose. I could write a far better book myself (and in fact was a proof reader for the last revision of Baja Bugs & Buggies, so maybe I should...???). It SHOULD definitely be titled "how to build a street buggy" with nothing but stock VW components. But for a total noob, it still provides a fair bit of info and suggestions that might help. It shows him building a Berrien rail. But provides no info beyond what he does on that particular build or options or other ways of doing things. Doesn't compare brands of rails and pluses vs minuses for various types other brands of frame or using other pedal sets, or other engines or suspension alternatives or anything else.

The Tom Wilson book on rebuilding VW engines is fairly good regarding stock rebuilds and the basics to build a high performance engine. But it has some errors. Like in setting the distributor shaft into the case. Doing it his way results in the distributor case being out of register by about 30° IIRC. That's the glaring instance I recall. But I've pulled and re-set distributor shafts in a few engines because the owner followed his directions. That is risky business because the shims under the shaft tend to fall into the bottom of the case when you pull the shaft. So it's best to drain the oil and put the engine on a stand tilted far to the left so the shims fall out with the shaft.

[Leatherneck]

I have been cleaning up by computer room looking at divesting myself a bunch of stuff (not these) and ran into a book I forgot I have called: HOW TO BUILD A DUNE BUGGY, by Earl Duty (2002). It is a highly illustrated book with a lot of good basic advice. I just looked it up and the pages must be made of gold as the price is now astronomical ( which is a shame. So for what it is worth (A lot I guess):

What they are building is a street driven rail but give a lot of lot of good, detailed advice if you are planning on more than a general purpose light duty dual purpose "tube framed buggy". It covers choosing a tube frame and how to suspend it, engine, wiring and most other things you might want to know but is missing some of the additional nice-nices' that you might want; that is where STF comes in to play.

It also has some good advice if you were choosing to build a glass buggy. The additional information needed should be available with some help from people here. Even Baja guys might pick up some ideas from it.

Also there is another book that might help titled: How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen Air-cooled Engine by Tom Wilson (HP books) (https://www.bing.com/search?q=book+how+ ... lang=en-US). A little old but still a lot of good starter information involved.

Hot VWs came out with at least three of them (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bo ... &FORM=IGRE). Again, they seem to be made out of gold.

The How to Build a Dune Buggy book was my go to book till the forums kicked off. Lee, I have all those, couldn't get enough info and those really helped out. Not everybody had or has a knowledgeable VW guy living next door to ask questions to.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Just got back from week long cruise to Alaska. The weather was good especially after the north wind brought down all the smoke from the Seattle area is now overcast vs. a red smoky haze.

Its a shame that Photobucket is holding pictures posted there for ransom. There has been a lot of good photos posted through them now missing that could have been a lot of help to a lot of people along with these and other "basic" How Too books. Its almost like the forums are having to start over from scratch... in many ways.