Hey everyone,
Well where to start. First I'm old. *
Not going to say how old.
A friend and I have been building vehicles for the past 20 years give or take. Over the course of the last couple of decades we have designed and built several stock cars, an open class mud runner, several Jr. dragsters, a dual engine kage kart, and a couple of 60's era street cars. We went down the snowmobile path for a number of years and raced gokarts for a number of years. My friend has a couple of four wheelers. I never went that route. I think my friend will be chiming in here shortly to fill in all the things I forgot about. We really enjoy designing and building vehicles. While neither of us are certified welders both of us can Tig weld and we have a fairly decent shop to work out of. Our favorite material to work with is CrMo.
To make a long story short while we are old we still enjoy tearing it up we just want to be a little safer about tearing it up. I think the saying "With age come a cage" applies here.
We acquired the urge to build a mini buggy about 5-6 years ago. We are just now trying to decide if we should act on that urge. We don't have a winter project lined up and were considering a couple of mini buggies. We also live in Iowa. (Ultraman what part of Iowa are you from?) so strike 1 for us. Buggy like vehicles are classified as ORV's (Off road utility vehicles) as of July 1, 2007 and as such are illegal to run at the various ATV parks across our state. I spoke with the head of the DNR snowmobile and ATV program late last week and he indicated that they were anticipating openning some of the ATV parks to ORV's in the future although he had no time frame or guarantee it would happen. I'm contemplating taking the issue up with some of the state senators and and house members that my company contributes $$$ to their campaign funds. Not sure I want to go down that road yet or if it would do any good to take it down that road.
My wife is behind the project and has said she might want one as well so thats a good thing. She was always a little concerned for my safety when I was racing gokarts and riding snowmobiles as they didn't have a cage. She views the buggys as reasonably safe.
So anyway I'm here to learn as much as I can from everyone here and I hope I can contribute in some way.
Fire away with any questions and thanks in advance!
Kevin