Built my first one at 15 to teach myself how to weld. cut 3' from VW pan, bent and welded rolls bars, cut inside lips from 2 rims, welded them together for extra wide wheels and started tearing up the canefields. had to tow my 4yr old brother to jump start the engine since I didn't have a starter. welded an extra pully onto main pully with a notch for a pull rope. worked great for a while until my weld broke and I got a pulley to the face cranking it one day. I've built 8-10 or more since and still have 3 or 4 behind my shop. I even have a single seater with reduction gears I never finished. I had a fiberglass one like above pics but it just wasn't built for places I would go. we don't have "dunes", but we had cypress knees and small trees to bulldoze over, swamp and wooded areas so thick you were driving blind I made trails thru and canals and levees to jump. much more fun driving at night with lights off. I got bored thru the years waiting for others to catch up or even follow me most times, so one day I just parked them and quit. hard to stop these things though. lost a v belt one night.. used a piece of rope to make a replacement. center carbon in dist cap broke, replaced with gum wrapper and kept going. lost a plug wire in the dark. found rusty piece of baling wire, stuck in cap and twisted around plug and I keep going, only with a light show in back. put a rod or two thru the case and still drove it out of the mud before my motor quit. flipped my homemade Baja Bug 4 wheels up on my first ride.. rolled it back over, kicked out the windshield and kept going. we got one stuck so bad all you could see was the carb and header sticking out of the mud.. pulled it out, cleaned off as much mud as possible and away we go. put a tooth thru my lip more than once hitting trees and stumps. we've put these things in places no 4 x 4 could ever hope to go. passed a couple 3 wheelers one day that had to stop the because the undergrowth was so thick. no problem! I just knocked down trees and cypress knees, plowed thru briar patches and palmettos and made my own trails. years of thrashing the canefields and only once did someone have to visit the ER. something about not following my directions, hitting a ditch straight on instead of at an angle, smashing his throat against the steering wheel and face against the windshield as he buried the bumper in the dirt. 40 mph-instant dead stop. quite funny watching him wheeze and bleed but had to bring him in as the tunnel vision came on..
