My Aunt's Dune Buggy

[V8Nate]

Hi everyone here's the latest project. It is my aunt's dune buggy, I can remember being a little kid when my uncle had it(he painted the car about 25 years ago) he sold the car and the next owners drove it for a couple years then parked it under their carport until my cousin found it and bought it back for my aunt last year.

Since then it's been in my possession and I was asked to get it running but the more I dug the worse it got. The motor had .012 endplay, lifted heads and had been leaking for a long time. The brakes had plenty of shoe material left but everything else was trash. Electrical was also toast and all stripped and sent to the dumps.

So far I have rebuilt the engine(this is the block I line bored with my porta tool after I dialed it in on my test block seen here https://youtu.be/SNGsZpULOds ) I was able to clean up the stock crank, flywheel, rods, block and pushrods, everything else is new. I went with a stock displacement for the 73 block with aa pistons, jugs, and dp heads. Engle w100 cam with cb super stock rockers, single high rev springs with chromo retainers and keepers, new center intake and a "premium" 30 pict from aircooled.net. also upgraded to an alternator and bought a new tin kit thru aa performance. I will be soon testing out my engine run stand I recently built to break in the cam.

So far on the chassis I started in the front and bought a rebuilt beam from Brazil and welded some adjusters in it(the old beam was rusted thru and in very poor shape) cleaned and wire wheeled the pan head and por15'd everything while it was apart. New steering box and rag joint and new Gabriel shocks. New drums, shoes, springs, wheel cylinders, master cylinder and custom flex hoses button up the front. All the hard lines are also getting replaced as well as a new fuel line.

I am in the process of making a ebrake setup with a "custom hot rod" ebrake kit and stock cables, fun stuff:)

As of now the car is turned around and I'm working on the back half, it is mostly stripped then wire wheel time before the back half gets por15'd:)


A get the car running became a full rebuild real quick but I wanted the car to be safe for my family and didn't want it to cause them further issues and it's also been fun this is my first time with a dune buggy. And of course everyone loves pictures and plenty are here. Thanks for joining along for the ride!

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[V8Nate]

Notice how the brake lines were plumbed into the master cylinder

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[Ol'fogasaurus]

There are a couple of us with glass buggies in WA. "Clone" is north towards the Canadian border, and I am a few miles north of Seattle. I think there are a couple of others around the state also.

I see you have a support for the pan between the pan and the body. Good idea.

The hoop, in my opinion, should be changed to a cage as a just-in-case thing for protection. They look good but can collapse at the wrong time.

7-28-2010 007 (2).JPG

There are several ways to do the brake thing, and this is just one of them. This also has pluses and minuses to it.

Is it going to be just for the street use or more things?

The adjusters are a good additional feature and there are ways they can be used besides just raising or lowering the front of the buggy.

You have a very nice start on the rebuild. Keep in-touch as there is a lot of info stuck in people's heads around here.

Lee

[V8Nate]

Thanks Lee! The buggy was probably built before I was born, so the square stock has been in there for quite some time. I agree that "show hoop" should definitely be upgraded and that's something I'll let my cousin tackle seeing that it's his mom's car and he wants to repaint it some day.

I was wanting to use the stock ebrake but the cable guide tubes were welded in interesting positions in the pan to say the least when the pan got shortened. There wasn't even a fwd shift rod bushing I'm sure due to the huge weld that was on it popping it right out of the holder.

I'm sure it will mostly be street use and at most having some fun on the beach in Ocean shores. It'll be a nice ride when it's done it'll have pretty much everything new or rebuilt with the exception of the body and trans

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[V8Nate]

Here's the start to my engine run stand, I still have to wire it and plumb it but the hard work is done. I bought that dual oil filter housing off ebay recently and it cleaned right up, figured that would be good for engine break in. Those fram's are from 1982 as well:)

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[Ol'fogasaurus]

When FRAM went to this design years ago things did improve quite a bit.

The shifter is another thing w/o the bushing mount. That bushing is important.

IMG_1646 copy.jpg

IMG_1647 copy.jpg

If you could make your own and get the info on how far from the shifter hole it should be and how deep the bushing is, you should be able to make a slit in the tunnel at the right distance and drop a proper dimensioned bushing holder down and weld it in place.

For instance: I am running a bus trans which sits about 3" higher than the stock trans so the shift rod sits above the tunnel. There is an adapter mount you can buy but since I wanted the hot rod look and use the bus shifter which has the bottom part of the shifter ball sitting lower...

IMG_1612 copy.jpg

... and wouldn't fit the trans using the other adapter I had to make my own plus using the bus to bug adapter.

IMG_2169 copy.jpg

IMG_1760 copy.jpg

IMG_2169 copy.jpg

IMG_1825 copy.jpg

If I can figure this out so can most anyone else figure out other things that may seem hard to do.

This is a "for what it is worth" thing.

Lee

[V8Nate]

The hanger is still intact it was just missing the bushing so easy fix for me just ground down the weld on the shift rod, now it won't push the bushing out of the hanger. I had the hanger break on my 66 and was stuck in third gear, luckily I made it home with minimal stops. The stock hangers are readily available if people need them, you then just need to drill the spot welds, remove the old and weld in the new:)

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[woodsbuggy1]

Looks like the buggy is in great hands. Thanks for sharing, great to see another buggy brought back to life. Please continue to keep us updated.
Kenric

[V8Nate]

Thanks Kenric will do!

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The hanger is still intact it was just missing the bushing so easy fix for me just ground down the weld on the shift rod, now it won't push the bushing out of the hanger. I had the hanger break on my 66 and was stuck in third gear, luckily I made it home with minimal stops. The stock hangers are readily available if people need them, you then just need to drill the spot welds, remove the old and weld in the new:)

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

Sorry, I miss-understood. From what I was told years ago, breaking that mount when trying to get the bushing in (frustration) isn't that uncommon .

There are ways to get around it (supported universals for example), but they are complicated too.

Lee

[slayer61]

Man! You make it look so easy! I'm kinda jealous.

[V8Nate]

No problem Lee:)

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[V8Nate]

Man! You make it look so easy! I'm kinda jealous.

Thanks slayer I've been working on it pretty steady when I can since August, it took me a good amount of time working on the line bore tool and designing the setup tool and printing it on my 3d printer and teachingmyselfhow to use it. I'm getting tired of cleaning old crusty greasy parts though.lol Now that the back of the car is stripped I need to wire wheel that and por15 the frame horns and torsion housing ect. Then blast the motor mounts and paint them. The last greasy mess is the trans, I spent like an hour with a screwdriver and rubber mallet trying to chisel the crud off it and I didn't get very far. I just bought a needle scaler to try and knock the rest of the grease off before I pressure wash it.

Even if it's an hour every day it's better than nothing, I try and fit it in whenever I can although the best days are the weekends when I get a full day of working on it:)

Once I run the motor in on the test stand and break in the cam I will be taking the stroker out of my 66 to set the rings and really break the motor in, I'm hoping I'll have a couple thousand miles on it before I put it in the dune buggy

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[V8Nate]

Got some good work done thru the week and into the weekend. The needle scaler definitely works much faster than a screwdriver and rubber mallet on the older harder grease. Got the trans as clean as its going to get with some oven cleaner, purple power, wire brush and 4 hours of scrubbing and pressure washing

[woodsbuggy1]

Cleaning parts is so time consuming, I have found that penetrating oil (liquid wrench or similar) does a nice job of softening things up to help make cleaning much easier. Great work on this project Nate! Please continue to keep us updated on your progress.
Kenric