2007 Piranha Sandrail

From a certain perspective, sand is glorious. This is evidenced by the simple fact that shooting a tire-full skyward can put a grin a mile wide on your face. For decades, motorsports enthusiasts have put most everything on wheels in the sand.

Robert Huerta lives in Litchfield Park, Arizona, and is one of those guys who likes playing in the dirt. With his faithful VW buggy showing its age, he turned to friend Skip Nippress to fab up a go-fast sand car. The formula for the build was a two-seat buggy with healthy power and light in weight.

Starting with a stack of steel tubing, Skip went to pulling on the bender in his home shop. From that effort, the chassis arose and was constructed on a jig table. Much of the structure is built from 1.25x14-gauge wall tubing and the final wheelbase ended up at 115 inches.

The build centered on a chosen powerplant.

A wrecked 2000 Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle contributed its motor in the form of 165 horses of sand-slinging power. The stock Hayabusa tranny was used and a custom chaindrive setup was combined with a rear-axle carrier to get the engine power to the ground.

Bob spends time in both sand dunes and running parts of the Sonoran Desert near his home. As such, the car was designed with a long-travel suspension to provide a smooth ride for the rail that weighs a bit less than 900 pounds.

All of the parts such as the spindles, steering knuckles, rear-wheel carriers, drive system, etc., were manufactured by Skip in his home garage. Suspension design can be credited to another of their friends, Bill Ford.

Bob wanted a color that was vibrant and stood out well. His choice of tint was Safety Yellow. The glossy powdercoating was shot by Arizona Powder Coat in Phoenix. The chassis and a number of the mechanical components were coated to match. The A-arms, steering shaft, and shifter were powdercoated in "chrome."

Run your eyes across the photos on these pages and we think you'll appreciate the design of a rail that's built to be light and nimble. We got the chance to slip behind the wheel and stomp the gas ourselves. The engine has punch and screams to redline at about 11k rpm. We now know that sand smiles and playing in this car is a blast!

Out back, the car utilizes a five-link rear suspension with all double-shear 1/2-inch rod-end mount points on the wheel carriers and transverse links. The two trailing links are attached in a single-shear configuration. All links are 3/4-inch aluminum-swaged tubes.Rear-suspension travel comes in at a solid 18 inches.

This photo shows the full droop travel of the rear suspension and the extreme operation angle of the Porsche CV joints. Check out Bob's modified floor jack. He replaced the original casters with taller wheels in front and added lift extensions to the rear casters to give the jack some much-needed height and mobility in the dirt.

An exhaust header was fabricated from scratch and then finished in Jet-Hot coating. A water jet-cut intermediate flange was installed to allow possible future installation of a Chrysler K-car turbo modified to a T3/T4 configuration. A SuperTrapp stinger combined with the custom exhaust finishes the gas exit.

The rear-outer hub assemblies serve to support the 4340 chrome-moly Porsche 930 drive axles mated to Porsche 930 CV joints. The CV joints have been modified with 0.002-inch-smaller roller balls replacing the stock balls for more angle capability. A limit strap is used to control the droop of the Fox-shocked carrier.	This bird's eye view above the cage shows the Hayabusa powerplant sitting under a quad array of K&N filters. Skip utilized the stock ECM, along with some wiring modifications to fool it into applying full advance curve and fuel map all the time. It also uses a modification to the wiring so that if the oil pressure were to drop to zero, the ECM will shut down the engine.	The rear-carrier assembly jackshaft is made from 300M material and has been splined for a Type 2 VW with a Porsche 930 CV flange. The assembly is held together with a bearing spacer and the bearings have been pressed into a piece of 3-inch DOM tubing welded to the chassis rails. Since the drive system is a 530-series super-duty chaindriven "live" axle, the rail currently utilizes a single-hydraulic caliper from a VW Karmann-Ghia to haul it down from speed.
The rear-carrier assembly jackshaft is made from 300M material and has been splined for a Type 2 VW with a Porsche 930 CV flange. The assembly is held together with a bearing spacer and the bearings have been pressed into a piece of 3-inch DOM tubing welded to the chassis rails. Since the drive system is a 530-series super-duty chaindriven "live" axle, the rail currently utilizes a single-hydraulic caliper from a VW Karmann-Ghia to haul it down from speed. Bob is looking into upgrading to a four-piston caliper for a little more stopping power.	Closely spaced front-link mounting points help keep the link lengths long and provide the 20 inches of smooth front travel. Inside the front nerf area rests a heavy-duty rack-and-pinion center steer with extension for minimizing bumpsteer. The A-arms are jig-fabricated from 1x.0120-inch wall 4130 chrome-moly and use 5/8-inch rod ends and high-angle mis-alignment spacers.