Who is this guy ?
I'm Richard Bebbington ( a.k.a. Captain Cleaver ). As you'll see if you read the rest of this page, I'm also quite insane when I get my hands on a welding machine...
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Bodywork
( what bodywork ? )
Many thanks go to various people for their help while I was building this thing, especially Rob, Richard and Andrew
The main chassis is built from various sizes of steel tube from local hardware stores, scrap shelving units (!!) and an old roll cage. It's all fully welded together with my trusty MIG welder. The chassis is still around, I've stashed it at the back of the garden, behind some bushes, since you never know....
All the suspension was attached to standard Mini front subframes, these bolt into the chassis. Since the buggy had two front subframes to allow the engine to be put at the back, I could have 4 wheel steering, but I'm not insane enough to try that ( yet ).The rear hubs' steering was locked off with adjustable length tie rods, to prevent it from doing an impression of John Cooper in the infamous twin-engined Mini ( which almost sent him to meet his maker when the rear tie rods broke ). The front frame has extra steel welded into it to make it really strong, since the driver's feet are inside it...
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The engine and gearbox was from an old Automatic Mini
which Andrew and I scrapped ( we murdered it in his mother's driveway using
a meat cleaver -
- hence my slightly odd nickname of "Captain Cleaver"
! ).
Even though it's only a 1 litre with less than 40 hp,
it still accelerates like a monster because it's so lightweight!
Using an auto' box made some of the building easier -
I didn't need to make a complicated gear linkage, and there's no clutch!
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The brakes are based around standard Mini front drum brakes - disc brakes would be too powerful, locking up the wheels at the slightest touch! Even with ordinary drum brakes, the wheels can lock up easily if you're over-enthusiastic with the brake pedal....
For safety, I've used a dual-circuit master cylinder (
from a Mini of course ! ) feeding a front-rear split system.
No servo is fitted - it's just not needed.
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