Street legal rails

Are they any fun, or a novelty that wears off after a while?

Seen this morning in small town Missouri. $3500, he says.

I feel this is highly dependent on how its been set up. IIRC the big thing is to get the brake bias right, you swap the wheel cylinders around so the larger fronts are in the rear. Also get the front end softened up by disconnecting one torsion bar.

I had a small chassis Berrien rail a few years ago. 1300 single port was adequate for the street and didnt really work hard to get the rail up to speed. I had disk brakes in the rear and up front the drum brakes were set up to use rear wheel cylinders.

The rear suspension was set up to sit low and I used Corvette air shocks to level the rail. I forgot how I set up the front... getting old.

work in progress photo.

nearly finished photo..

I thought it was a fun toy and was marginally safer than a motorcycle.

Berrien buggy sells a chassis, I believe it's called was a Stalker, that has the seating positions moved a little further forward than the usual rail. Our old off road racer was based on this chassis. Moving the weight forward helped the car turn better. Really fun buggy, definitely would be a blast on the street

I was thinking something like that but use a 5.3 setup from a gxp. Rear mounted of course.

In reply to stan_d:

That wouldn't work, too much weight, it would be doing a wheelie parked. I can stand in the pushbar of my dad's fairly heavy VW based one, lift the front tires off the ground and walk it around like a cart.

Come to think of it I think I'd probably front mount the battery too on one set up for any amount of street usage, maybe throw a spare tire up there as well, just to make the front grab a bit better.

Interested to hear other replies. They are all over down here, and I've always thought they were cool. I can't imagine they'd be a ton of fun on anything more than a short ride, but that's all I'd use it for.

this thread disappointed me, since i have a different definition of what a "rail" is:

One of my coworkers daily drives a vw powered version. Unless its raining. Then he drives his supercharged 350z.

I hate him. At least I think I do. Or maybe I want to be him when I grow up. I bet my wife is hotter though.

if street legal, next question is, who will insure it for road use.

In reply to trigun7469:

I'd always thought something light, 4cyl would be great in a 'rail.

trigun7469 wrote: if street legal, next question is, who will insure it for road use.

I'd assume anyone who insures kit cars...

93EXCivic wrote:

trigun7469 wrote: if street legal, next question is, who will insure it for road use.

I'd assume anyone who insures kit cars...

Are they not normally tagged as VW beetles? The one I looked at was.

OSULemon wrote:

93EXCivic wrote:

trigun7469 wrote: if street legal, next question is, who will insure it for road use.

I'd assume anyone who insures kit cars...

Are they not normally tagged as VW beetles? The one I looked at was.

It's got to be tagged as something if street legal. I really doubt it would be hard to insure. I see quite a few around here.

trigun7469 wrote: if street legal, next question is, who will insure it for road use.

Most are tagged under the bus or bug that was the donor.

I was interested in a sand rail for the road or autocross, but around here the prices are in crackheadville. And absed on how brutal it as to drive my 64 Spitfire without any windshiled, I think i want no part of it. It was fun though for a while and 45 mph feels like 70.

BTW bugs hurt like hell.

I want to thank this topic I found a chassis with transmission 200 I am picking it up Friday.

Street legal depends where you are, too. The one pictured above would be pretty much impossible to drive here...and even if you added fenders, sunvisors, wipers etc, you would still have to drive around with a copy of the traffic act and prove it to every cop in the city on a daily basis.

I'll just leave these here. Old 80's British rail based kits. UVA made traditional off road type rails (but still street legal) and these. The exposed front wheel version was the F33 and the enclosed was the Can Am

Would totally rock one of those as a weekend car, would be good to see the confused "what the hell was that?" look on peoples faces when ya drive by.

Buddy many years back built a street legal 2 seater rail buggy with a NASTY 1800cc dual port. That thing would yank the front wheels off the ground in 1st and 2nd, if he hit it just right it would lift them in 3rd a little bit too. I never drove it but did ride along, it looked squirrely and fun as hell to drive.

I once went in halvsies on a dune buggy which was nothing more than a VW floor pan, body had been removed, the fuel tank relocated to a plumbing pipe (!) roll bar in the back. It wasn't fast but it was a helluva lot of fun. Sold off my part to help finance another dirt bike.

As much as I like dune buggies and have thought about street driving one, that was not the first thing that came to my mind.

It followed me home some body save me, Please I can see this being way too much fun.