Any sand sports in your area?

The reason I am bringing this up, is that many of my long-time drag race, street rod, and performance car customers are getting involved.

Here in the Soutwest, the dunes on the California border are causing a phenomenon in sand vehicles. The old dune buggy has been replaced by sand rails, 4X4s, utility vehicles, quads, trikes, and bikes. Every form of perfomance enhancement is used, along with custom paint and upholstering.

The sand rails are most impressive of all, many with blown or turboed V8s, and usually seat 4 to 5 people. I hear chatter of touring the dunes at 100MPH. Drags are a common passtime on any weekend, along with hill climbing, and playing "follow the leader" through the dunes.

Some of the sand rails eclipse $100K, but the average new 4 seater with good power starts about $45K. Of course that doesn't include the toy hauler, tow vehicle, or gas money.

Weekend festivities include a lot of barbequing, and beer, and obviously the whole family can be a part of it. I am told that some dune areas have a population of a quarter million people on holiday weekends.

Is anyone else seeing similar trends? I know their are dunes in the Northwest, North-central, Southeast, and some southern states.

Here are some sand rail paint pictures. This car has a 598 aluminum BB Chevy! This customers busines logo includes a skull with a firey beard. If you are curious, there are more sand toys in my gallery.

There is not a lot of sand here in the middle of the "Bible belt". What's really big at the present is mud racing. From what I've been told it's starting to draw some pretty good sized crowds and participants.

We've had some in the past. One of the neighbors set up his 4X4 Chevy pickup for mud pit racing.

As luck would have it my son and I have just finished a sand buggy.

It's a mini I guess, single seat, 954 Honda. Full cage, long travel, independent suspension all around, a-arms, 930 CV.
We did the whole thing on Solidworks and I ran a lot of parts on Cosmos FEA. We made our own intermediate transmission and final driveshaft. We have very larger stub axels after twisting off the standard over the counter ones that analysis said were not going to make it. They didn't and now reside inthe landfill. haha I weighs 825 rolling with 250# drivers.

We have run quite a few miles in shake down and spent a lot of time on our own "Watkins Glen" road course in a vacant field down the road from us. The buggy is absolutely insane. It will go to 100 in just over a 150 yards on dirt, rooster tailing all the way. We have a corrected speedo. We ran it down an off road trail which is one lane gravel path at over 105 mph. It's the standard dirt bike trail. It's a blast but you do have to hang on.

We are just in the middle of painting and final re-assembly so I'll post some pictures later. We just got the a-arms back last week and the chassis will go out in about 2 weeks as I still have some welding to complete and afew changes to make.

We are looking at a toy hauler so we can make some trips out west and to Okla and Mich.

Of course being in California it is huge over in the Pismo beach area. My brother is going to take my uncle's old 76' Jeep Cherokee Chief and get it running, put bigger wheels on it, and use it for the dunes. In my personal opinion if you are going to do it don't waste money on rails and the high end stuff, get a damn 2 wheel bike and hit it. but, it ain't my thing so who am I to talk.

Red

I'm finding that each person has a preferrence for what they buy/build. Sometimes it depends on budget, and sometimes on the kind of thrill they seek. Some just want to own a beautiful machine, or cruise around the dunes with the family aboard. Some want to "feel the power" at the drags, climb a frighteningly steep hill, or fly through the air!

Here's a couple more recent jobs. As you can see styles vary wildly. I've seen Spongebob paintjobs, graveyard scenes, roller coaster murals, and almost anything you can imagine!