Chirco is building a Baja Bug! Many of the air - cooled VW parts and procedures used can also be used on Dune Buggies, Sand Rails. These pages feature links to the Chirco online parts catalog.


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PART 10- Front Steering

To install our rack & pinion steering we had to modify the front clip were the beam attaches.

This little modification seemed like it was going to be harder than it was. So that we could run a center steer rack & pinion, we had to cut off part of the front clip. We did this because of the possibility of having bump steer. The theory is, if your wheel hits a bump (Just an example) and your wheel comes up utilizing the suspension it will force the tie rod in or toward the steering box forcing it to move away from the wheel. This in turn will force the other wheel out or in depending. The morale of the story is, when installing a new steering system to your Baja or Buggy remove the springs from the beam and re-install the arms and the steering components. You then make the arms move through the normal travel and watch what the tie rods do. They should not make the steering box move the other tire. Well we needed to lower the steering rack down, but the bumps on the clip would not allow it. So off with her head!!
Actually we just cut it down almost flat to allow some room.
We then made a plate as close to the same size as possible and welded it in. I then used a trusty grinder and touched up the rough spots and Wa-La! 
We then welded on our steering rack mount to the beam at the correct angle we found during our test. Then we placed the rack on the mount to ensure the proper clearance of the tie rod ends. It's all coming together. 
We also decided to fabricate, well modify a front bumper while we were attacking the front end. We started with a raw metal double tube front bumper. These bumpers usually attach to the stock shock towers, well we do not have a stock shock tower so we got out the saws all and cut the top braces off.
New front brace tube were cut and welded from the top bar down to a front end clamp that will attach to the front beam. Then we will bolt another front end clamp to the back side. The bottom of the bumper still mounts to the top bolts of the beam.
To jazz the bumper up a bit, we welded on a top hoop that will protect our driving lights.

If you have any questions or comments about Project Baja please e-mail don@chirco.com we sure would like to hear from you.