Customer Reviews

Build Your Own Off-Road Buggy for as little as 100

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Okay, so you want to build an off road ATV for around £100 using parts from a donor motorcycle...sounds good in theory. So first off, let's buy the wheels : The cheapest place I could find quoted me £130 for four (they were only small ones too). So that's the budget exceeded already without a single hole being drilled or a tube being cut. I doubt you'd get a donor motorcycle for anything less that £100 that wasn't a useless pile of scrap. Then there's the steel tube- have you seen steel prices lately ? Add the cost of all of the other parts you'll need and you're looking at around £400. Then there's the tools. Oh boy...this is not taken into the account at all. For instance, how's this for the mother of all cop-outs : "If you have access to a metal working lathe, bore out the centers of the differential flanges, if you don't get a local engineering shop to do it for you." In the unlikely event of an engineering shop giving you the time of day, they are likely to want payment for this service too; it's "stealth costs" such as these are going to push up your budget to an unacceptable level.

As for the content of the book itself, the author tends to go into immense detail over no-brainer stuff (such as welding tubes together) while skipping over the more advanced parts (such as machining and putting together the rear axle) which most people are likely to have difficulty with.

As for me, in the end, I gave up and bought a used one off ebay for £370. It still runs great and I've never looked back.

This book isn't too bad overall, but don't go getting any silly ideas like you are going to be able to build this thing for anything like a hundred pounds (about a hundred and fifty US dollars), because it isn't going to happen. You need access to a lathe and a welder, as well as drills and other tools, which you are assumed to already own. The amount of money you would end up spending on it, you would be better off buying a second hand one, as I doubt you will learn much from this book that you didn't already know. So overall, I'm not sure if it's worth bothering with, especially when the author's other book : "Build you own sports car for as little as £250 and race it" is available. That's a much better choice in my opinion- it really teaches you a thing or two.

If you have ever gone to see the sequel of your favorite move only to be horribly disappointed, then you know how I felt after reading this book. It really is not in the same league as the author's previous excellent work. "Build Your Own Sports Car" is a classic and well written, but this book is really just a piece of fluff. The product you would get if you completed the project is merely a child's toy, and the instructions are poor. Skip it and buy the original book... you'll be happy you did.