That buggy is a thing of beauty,great job on it

Thank you, it’s almost done. Time to drive coming soon.

My next purchase I think will be a digitron. Anybody know a good place to get one or a better setup to use, on a 350?

I have bought a few off of eBay. The one that came with this buggy didn’t work. Sent it to digitron and they repaired it and sent new probes with it. Price was reasonable. Look for the tiny tachs , they are used a lot on go karts and are smaller with easy to read screens. They can do most things.a digitron can. My pilot as well as one of the Briggs cars has a tiny tach.

I have a Digitron for sale in my thread if you are interested.


Like I said it has not been tested so if you'd like I'd give it a shot I'd give it up for much less than new.

The hood is painted and a few other details knocked out. Should be back in Vegas this weekend. Here are a couple pics from Rusty who has been doing the metal and paint work for me. I still may add a fan and a cool head that I have laying around.

Awesome work.

Gorgeous.


Excuse my ignorance but, why are the front tires larger? Is this common practice for this style of buggy?

When these cars originally raced bfg was a tire sponsor. So if your ran there tires and won/placed you were paid. Bfg didn’t make and off road tie es in 13” so car tires were used and grooved. These rear rims are 9” wide and the sizes used back then aren’t made anymore. This was me trying to keep the original look. I have another set of rims and tires for the rear of this car that look like the front. These are 13” wheels and available sizes are very hard to come by. Fronts are 185/70/13 and rears are 205/50/13. The rear is as close as I could come to the originals. They are shorter than needed but close enough to work. Primarily for a groomed track.
The yellow car I have uses 205/70/13’s, I need new ones of those but again the size is discontinued. Next down is 195/70/13. I could always get adapters and run razor wheels, they are a dime a dozen and tire sizes are available.

That's a beautiful machine.
I hope to see it in person one day.
Very nice work.

Here is a picture of the buggy with full size tires. I have some adapters coming so I “should” be able
To run Razor wheels and I have more options for tire sizes. This size also gives me quite a bit of ground clearance In the rear.

Why limit straps on the rear suspension ??

Beautiful job. Yep, we had all the major tire sponsors involved. It is what moved the superlites forward. We had to use what they had available but we needed smaller tires. So we took their 13 inch tires and grooved them to whatever we wanted. They mounted and grooved them for us right at the track. I made us feel like real racers. Cool. I was sponsored by Goodyear. Even got a free set of gaterbacks for my mustang gt!

What does it mean to "groove" a tire?

It's a hand cutting machine that you use to cut or grind the rubber off and make any pattern you want.
It's done for traction purposes. When I used to race cars back in the late 70's we had to run a certain tire because of the rules in the class I was racing in. We had our tires shaved.

Incredible. Real history here.

The nerf bars are back and look great. Here is a picture off the buggy. Will post one later with them on it. Picked up and old HRD sticker as well as the centers came in for the Champion wheels. Now I can bolt them up to the Pilot.

Window nets arrived. I made a cardboard cut out of the window. I wanted blue they said only black. Went with mesh as they say visibility is better. This thing is pretty damn small inside and so far it doesn’t have any mirrors. Also mesh I could get in non SFI rating so they were cheaper. They came SFI rated and pretty sure they got the cost back as shipping shouldn’t of been 44$. Anyways, I like them and just think what they will do for resale value. Sorry about all the junk in the background of the pics, the drive way is full of cars and it was getting dark.
Bob

looking good, saw your walk around on FB of the nerfs, time to take it onto the track!

Thank you Kuma, sooner or later. I have to get with PPP as I don’t have a trailer anymore. Should probably stop buying buggies and work on getting one of those.

So PPP and I went to Amargosa dunes on Friday. About an 1 1/2 north of Vegas. He just got his LT Pilot back with the 4-stroke EFI phazer Engine. We put the EEE on the trailer and headed out. Most of the late morning I was dealing with fueling problems. When I would lift off the throttle and get back on the gas it wasn’t getting fuel. I put a 230 main jet after the t going to the tank return and it dived that problem. On another pass doing plug chips it just died. Come to find out the the spark plug cap had come off. The metal ring inside was opened up pretty good. Squeezed it smaller and tried again. Got the jetting sorted out but the top of the plug (threaded area) had now broken. New plug zip tied the plug wire in a couple spots and we were good again. Ended up loosing the breather tube to the trans. So the rear brake and caliper ended up with a 80 weight gear oil bath. I also have to adjust the shifter cable as by the end of the day it couldn’t find reverse to save its life.
On the plus side it ran very well. It’s definitely a rev Engine. The PB clutch is set up for 4200 rpm’s and the rear driven is set at 26 lbs. it gets up and goes. We finally made it off the desert floor onto the dunes and with just grooves rear tires it was doing really well short of the long steep dunes. I do need to get a temp gauge and a fan as it smoked all the high temp paint off of the first 8 inches of the pipe.
Nothing fell off and everything seems to be tight. Going to pull all the panels today, clean it up and recheck everything.
PPP phazer pilot ran great. No issues other than leaving the key at home and having to get creative with a work around. He was running some 26”, 16 paddle sand tires unlimited and it had no problem at all with them. We did get some video, will post to YouTube and then put the links here. We also met up with a guy from the FB forum. He was down from northern NV. In all there were 3 pilots at the dunes. Here are a few pictures

Some pics of the Phazer pilot

https://youtu.be/v1YK-AdcV8Y
Nothing crazy in the videos. Lots of short runs and then checking things out.

Chad should have had his drone out chasing you :)

you would have wished you had a helmet on the first time you whack your head on that frame, just say'n

He brought the drone but never had a chance to get it going. The helmet was on for all the later runs. We are planning another trip out soon so he can play with the drone and get some aerial video.