Dune Buggy Project Update

All kinds of things have been happening this week so I thought it best to get this post out before I loose track of what has been going on.  Progress has been made with acquiring the new dune buggy as I spoke with the owner yesterday and have exchanged addresses, phone numbers, etc. to seal the deal.  I will send off payment to the owner first thing tomorrow morning so that the process will proceed as planned. Then I will contact the shipping company and get the trucker lined up to pick up the new vehicle.  Hopefully it will be delivered in the next couple of weeks and I can get started dialing in the plans for the trunk enclosure.  

In my last post I had shown all of you what I had in mind for this enclosure or trunk and already this has been changed to eliminate some issues that have shown up.  This is how the first version looked that I posted last week. 

(Click on any image for a larger view)

The enclosure it self looks great in the images above but turned out to be unworkable once I laid it out in my CAD software.  The blisters behind the seats looks very cool but took up a lot of area on the rear deck that is needed for the trunk lid.  Simply put the trunk lid would end up being much smaller than I would like so the blisters had to go. 

 With the elimination of the blisters the rear trunk or deck looks a lot cleaner and will afford a much larger trunk lid that will open up between the roll bar supports that extend from the roll bar to the tail of the dune buggy.  The best guess I have for the size of the trunk lid would be roughly two foot by three foot in size.  Not overly large simply because the roll bar supports take up some of this area.  I will know more once I can measure the dune buggy itself to see what I can make work on this idea. 

To add a bit more detail to the design I thought a carbon fiber wrap would be a nice touch to add to the recessed areas of the deck. This would be a fairly simple task to accomplish and would be much cheaper than real carbon fiber inserts.

Here's a closer look at how the carbon fiber would look like in the deck panels for the dune buggy. I nice touch I think.

In this image from my Fusion 360 CAD software you can better see the layout of the panels that make up the enclosure for the new trunk for the dune buggy. The center panel would have two carbon fiber inserts and a center lock just like any other trunk of a car.  The two side panels would only have one panel of carbon fiber and be mounted to the rear of the dune buggy body at the mounting points that are used for the roll bar supports. 

The assembly for the trunk as shown above would be made up of four separate panels.  The three top panels that you see here along with a larger panel that is mounted just behind the roll bar at the floor of the dune buggy. In the image above you can see two "U" shaped mounts that hold the trunk face panel to the roll bar.  The center trunk lid would be hinged at the trunk face panel and the two smaller side panels would be bolted to it as well. 

Also on the front panel you can see a small rectangular door.  This would make a nice glove compartment that will also be lockable. Something that the dune buggy also does not have and would be a nice addition to the vehicle. 

These last to images that I created in Blender 3D software give you a good idea of how the dune buggy would look with  and without the rear trunk area added to it.  As I never planned on having a dune buggy with more that two seats the rear area looks much more finished with it being completely enclosed and allows me to have a lockable storage area should I need to haul something that I want to protect when the vehicle is left alone.  

That's the plan for now.  Lots of design work will need to be done once I have the vehicle in my hands but for now this portion of the design gives me some good ground work to lay it all out in the coming weeks.  Once I have the dune buggy  safely in my garage I will shoot more photos of it.  Then I will be able to get the correct measurements of the project and hopefully get started on this addition to the vehicle.  Should be interesting and fun all at the same time.