Money invested

[EBT531]

I am curious how much money you guys have ended up investing in some of these buggies.

Ex: a Busa rail might cost $27K to buy from a dealer, but what would you invest if you had the skills to build it yourself?

[masterfabr]

Dependson what bling you want, but in the area of 10-15K. Give or take a little.

[yoshi]

Originally Posted by EBT531\";p=\&quot

I am curious how much money you guys have ended up investing in some of these buggies.

Ex: a Busa rail might cost $27K to buy from a dealer, but what would you invest if you had the skills to build it yourself?

Depends on how many times you change the frame as you make mistakes, how many parts you buy that won't work, and how much stuff you have machined. *

I know I spent a hell of a lot more prototyping my rails than I currently sell them for, over 10k for machine work on my first build. *I have thousands of *dollars, in metal alone, sitting in my storage room from tabs, bracing, gussets, etc. that I found wouldn't work. *If you could build it right the first time, not make any mistake and buy only what you need, I say masterfabrs numbers are correct for a base turnkey. *At my current dealer buy pricing for all my components, and not wasting money on mistakes and parts I can't use, *I spend a lot more than that though to build my current rails..

[amergin]

All the litttle things start to add up fast, things people don't consider. Tabs, Bungs (shutup Pacman), bearings, seals, bolts, chain, lights, switches, fuel line, radiator hose, fittings, aluminum floor and side panels, the list goes on and on and on....

[flyerrider]

I currently have around 9K in mine and I have at least another 2.5K to go before it is done. *I still need brakes, wheels, tires, plumbing, a shop needs to get the engine running, etc. *Of course I went a little over board with the plate work and laser cutting. *I think I spent around 1K just in metal and laser cutting and that was with a deal. *That's a lot of money to shell out in less than a year and not a single dime is on a credit card.

[Gene]

I think Fabr is in the ballpark at 15 and for the reasons mentioned by Amergin it could go higher. There are several ways to go with this idea. Buy a set of plans, gather the components and build a car sticking to the plan. That should save the waste mentioned by Yoshi.

Next option is to check with Doubledown for what could be the lowest priced MC powered car. Yes, it will only be a 600 and might not have lots of bells and whistles but they look like a good deal. Another option is to buy a Redline for about 15 if you can get one.

The last option should be to buy something that will utlimately fail and require either fix after fix or a complete rebuild. That can be somewhat spendy.

[Jay1823]

I tell ya what, you can do it on the cheap if your patient and look look look for deals. I bought my buggy off of Craigslist for $500 from a guy just looking to off it. I bought an 81 Exciter snowmobile for $300 a few weeks later. So i swapped the engien and all the othe goodies from the sled over to the buggy. So far that's $800. After making some calls i found a tubing place very close to me that has great prices on tubing. So i bought 40 ft of 1x1 1/8 thick square tubing. I added some support braces, widened the front end and some other stuff. Oh yeah the tubing was less than $50 bucks.
I just decided to jump in a little deeper. My buggy had a quad read end, well i just cut that off yesterday and i'm going independent rear. One thing i've learned if you want to build a buggy cheaper is use square tubing, it's more than half the price of round DOM. I firmly believe you can build a compotent buggy for about 3k, you just gotta look for the deals.
As for shocks try to find a set of used resi shocks from a quad, many of the new quads have them. Honda 450r's and Yamaha yfz 450's come to mind.
As for engines i like some of the mid 80's Yamahas, my 440 for example is pretty much bulletproof, it's an extremely durable engine and puts out about 50 hp. I know it doesn't sound like much but my buggy is light and it screams. Watch ebay or craiglsit for older sleds, you can easily pick up a complete running sled for 300-800 bucks. This is the sled i got for a whole 300 bucks

[masterfabr]

The topic was about a busa buggy.

[greasemnky]

It was actually just, is it cheaper to build or buy. He used a busa as an example. But this is the chicken or egg question. Used is usually the best way to go. Most of these projects are money loosing endevors. Hell, 3K for mine, and I've put maybe 300 into it making improvements. 750cc. Not as nice as the 15-20 buggies, but I keep up just the same. I don't think you can build a MC buggy for less than 8-10K for *a 600cc. And probably 15+ once you get into the 1000cc and bigger buggies. Its not a cheap sport. Thats for sure. Hell, at the end of our carniage fest, for a moment, I thought, I could sell this thing, buy a new quad, and just ride. But.......I've had time to day dream about what could be. So I'll throw more time and money at it *

[yoshi]

Originally Posted by Gene\";p=\&quot

Buy a set of plans, gather the components and build a car sticking to the plan.

I'm sorry, did your wife write this comment, this statement does not apply to men.....