Post by dustymojave on Mar 6, 2012 1:48:51 GMT -5
This is my offroad race buggy.
It's a Hi Jumper Ascot brand frame with a VW 1835 engine with a Weber carb. I built it in the 1970s.
The photo above shows it on the way to a race win which clinched the season Championship.
Here's the start of the same race:
The competition ahead of me:
Co-driver hit a ditch wrong...Note the angle of the right front wheel.
We got it fixed by replacing the entire right front corner; spindle, trailing arms, shock, tierod and steering box.
This was a 12-hour race on a 62 mile lap. The only place the BLM would allow a pit stop was the main pit. So ya better not misjudge your fuel mileage.
The following year, we came into the same 12 hour race on Labor day weekend ahead on points again. All we had to do was finish the race to clinch the repeat championship. Here's the pass for the lead:
But 20 miles later, the co-driver flipped the car when flat out in high gear in "mogul" bumps. Like the bumps on a ski run, these are random irregular bumps in the course. The bumps were about 2' high each and a little more than a car length apart. Often they are high on one side while low on the other immediately followed by the opposite. If you do it right, you skim over the tops of the bumps. Sometimes with only 1 tire touching the ground at a time. If you slow down, you start falling into the holes between the bumps and slamming into the faces of the bumps. One tiny bit off and it will pitch you head over heels at freeway speed. Oh well, that's what Tim did. It started doing "Tank slappers", where the rear end starts slamming left then right in a progressively worsening situation. Sometimes you can power out of it, but when you are already flat out, that's not an option. 4x end over end, corner to corner. The rear axles looked like I bought them off the pretzel cart at the mall. The chassis had a 1" twist from the dash to the front axle. Not one corner of the suspension was straight. End of the season for us right there and eventual 2nd in the Championship for the year.
So the car sat for years as I didn't have enough $$ to buy a whole new car and start over. Costs to build a race car were skyrocketing.
A buddy suggested I give up on thinking of it as a race car and put it back on the road as a play buggy. So we repaired the suspension damage with less than race-quality parts and figured I could live with the twist.
The twist disappeared after the 1st 15 minute offroad drive. Steel sometimes has a memory. It just had to flex a little to settle back into its original shape.
Both old seats had a mount bar across under the driver's tailbone which had always irritated and I decided was dangerous. So we replaced the seats. But the new ones put us several inches higher in the car, which meant the roll cage was too low. So I rebuilt the top of the cage.
Here it is as a convertible
Now there's lots of headroom
Need to fabricate a new roof panel and install new nets. Upgrades are planned for the trans and rear suspension also. The frame was last painted in 1980, so it's overdue for a touch up in that department too.
It's a Hi Jumper Ascot brand frame with a VW 1835 engine with a Weber carb. I built it in the 1970s.
The photo above shows it on the way to a race win which clinched the season Championship.
Here's the start of the same race:
The competition ahead of me:
Co-driver hit a ditch wrong...Note the angle of the right front wheel.
We got it fixed by replacing the entire right front corner; spindle, trailing arms, shock, tierod and steering box.
This was a 12-hour race on a 62 mile lap. The only place the BLM would allow a pit stop was the main pit. So ya better not misjudge your fuel mileage.
The following year, we came into the same 12 hour race on Labor day weekend ahead on points again. All we had to do was finish the race to clinch the repeat championship. Here's the pass for the lead:
But 20 miles later, the co-driver flipped the car when flat out in high gear in "mogul" bumps. Like the bumps on a ski run, these are random irregular bumps in the course. The bumps were about 2' high each and a little more than a car length apart. Often they are high on one side while low on the other immediately followed by the opposite. If you do it right, you skim over the tops of the bumps. Sometimes with only 1 tire touching the ground at a time. If you slow down, you start falling into the holes between the bumps and slamming into the faces of the bumps. One tiny bit off and it will pitch you head over heels at freeway speed. Oh well, that's what Tim did. It started doing "Tank slappers", where the rear end starts slamming left then right in a progressively worsening situation. Sometimes you can power out of it, but when you are already flat out, that's not an option. 4x end over end, corner to corner. The rear axles looked like I bought them off the pretzel cart at the mall. The chassis had a 1" twist from the dash to the front axle. Not one corner of the suspension was straight. End of the season for us right there and eventual 2nd in the Championship for the year.
So the car sat for years as I didn't have enough $$ to buy a whole new car and start over. Costs to build a race car were skyrocketing.
A buddy suggested I give up on thinking of it as a race car and put it back on the road as a play buggy. So we repaired the suspension damage with less than race-quality parts and figured I could live with the twist.
The twist disappeared after the 1st 15 minute offroad drive. Steel sometimes has a memory. It just had to flex a little to settle back into its original shape.
Both old seats had a mount bar across under the driver's tailbone which had always irritated and I decided was dangerous. So we replaced the seats. But the new ones put us several inches higher in the car, which meant the roll cage was too low. So I rebuilt the top of the cage.
Here it is as a convertible
Now there's lots of headroom
Need to fabricate a new roof panel and install new nets. Upgrades are planned for the trans and rear suspension also. The frame was last painted in 1980, so it's overdue for a touch up in that department too.