Aircooled VW South Africa

dsmbuggy wrote:I am building a fiberglass buggy but it will be a little different.
First off all it will not be VW based. (sorry)
Here is my donor:


For those who did not recognize.
It is a 1991 Eagle Talon TSI
AWD and around 400 horses.

This is my body:


The body is a long wheelbase so should fit pretty good...

dsmbuggy wrote:I went to home depot and bought 25 Sawsall blades.

Then I started the cutting:


Ooops the roof is gone.


and the back...


and the windshield.


Here we go it looks better.



Ok who thinks " this dude is crazy and this thing never gonna work"

dsmbuggy wrote:I have been doing some body try fitting.






It is far from being perfect but it looks like it could work...

Next: make this baby stiff as a ...

The Eagle Talon was one of three model names given to a sports coupe that was manufactured between 1989 and 1998 and sold by the then Chrysler Corporation and Mitsubishi Motors of Japan in a joint 50/50 corporate venture known as Diamond-Star Motors (DSM). The Talon was sold under the Eagle marque, a brand developed by Chrysler to compete with Japanese imports in the late 1980s after purchasing American Motors (AMC) in 1987. Chrysler dropped the legacy line of AMC cars and renamed the distribution of Jeeps, the Medallion captive import, as well as the new Premier, under newly established Jeep-Eagle Division as a way to increase Jeep production and focus more money on marketing.[1] The new "Eagle marketing umbrella" also developed versions of vehicles produced by Diamond Star, including the Talon sports coupe.[2] The other two sister models were the Eclipse (sold by Mitsubishi) and the Laser (sold by Plymouth, another Chrysler brand). Both the "Eagle" and "Plymouth" brand names have been discontinued.

dsmbuggy wrote:Here you go cage building.
First I mocked up the two main hoops with electrical conduit.



Welded 1" square for the bottom sides

Don't look at the wires.

I had the hoops bent and then started to add tubes.
I use blue tape to mock the future tube position.




And more tubes.
I hate my tube notcher.



I think I am pretty close to what I wanted.

I rolled the car out to check proportions


What do you guys think?

dsmbuggy wrote:I took this picture to give an idea of the size off this thing:


The widow maker is going away for TIG welding:

I should get it back in a couple of days...

dsmbuggy wrote:Thanks for the support. I need it

I got the car back from welding.
So I took some pictures for you guys (and girls)









The chassis came back way stiffer than what I was expecting.
I may add 1 or 2 tubes but I am pretty happy with it.

Now I want to test fit the body so I can plan for the positioning of the rad, fuel cell Battery ...

To be continued