A Sand Rail is a light weight off road specialty vehicle designed for their ability to sail across sand dunes with ease. They are often mistakenly called dune buggys and although there are similarities, Sand Rails typically have no body panels or doors and have a low center of gravity allowing it to take tight turns even on sand. They also have a tubular design and integrated roll cage. They were kept pretty basic being mainly composed of the frame, engine, transmission, wheels and a couple seats. This very well built 1973 VW Sand Rail utilizes a ton of high quality components. While it can handle the sand no problem this one was also built to be street legal. We have seen some of these before that really aren't ideal on the street but this one can zip around nicely. The frame/body is painted in a Candy Purple paint that has a great shine. It has nice chrome headlights and an overhead light bar. It rides on custom wheels with Hoosier Pro Street rear tires.
The rear mounted engine is a Volkswagen 1915cc motor that is basically all new from top to bottom and heavily modified. Nothing is stock. It has an Eaton m-62 supercharger that is fully ported and makes 22 pounds of boost. It is all balanced and fitted with a Scat counter weight forged crank, forged rods, forged pistons, 44x37.5 gtv head CB turbo springs, Steve long custom grind blower cam, forged rocker arms, chromoly push rods, Holley 750 cfm blower carb, a deep sump oil pan, and a full flow oil external cooler. It also has 4 custom fan blowers and cooling tins with 2 on each side. The freshly built swing rhino case super differential was just done by B&D Performance and it has Wedel gears, a 300m input shaft, hydraulic clutch, billet flywheel and 3 stage Kennedy pressure plate. This Sand Rail is very quick with lots of power.
With a focus on performance the cockpit has been kept fairly simple with diamond plate floors and dual Black/Gray high back seats with 5 point safety harnesses. To the center of what would be considered the dash is all of your gauges and the control panel. It has a GPS Speedometer and the controls include a push button start as well as toggle switches for the ignition, oil cooler fan, fuel pump, driving lights, head lights, top light bar, horn, lower fans, and upper fans. Up by the nose a tachometer with shift light, boost gauge, and oil pressure gauge have been added.
It was reported by the previous owner that over $40,000 was invested so if you are ready to have some fun in a Sand Rail here is an opportunity to get one at a fraction of the build cost and without having to go through the build trouble yourself.
- Exterior ColourPurple
- Engine Size1915 cc
- Interior ColourBlack & Grey
- Year of manufacture1973