It's amazing sometimes how things have a habit of falling in your lap. In my case, usually those things are crap, but in this case I think I came out pretty good.
Nope, it's not a true woods buggy like a lot of you guys have, but you guys have been a wealth of info and I thought I'd show you what I've been working on. I've had plans over the previous eight or none months of building a SEAL Desert Patrol Vehicle. Since Chenowth is out of business and there aren't exactly a glut of used chassis's out there, I originally decided the way to do it was via purchasing a Chenowth 4LWD setup and build it up accordingly. I've seen several for sale over the years and usually while they might be called a Desert Patrol Vehicle, in some cases even with a correct chassis, they aren't built to spec and that disappoints me. It's almost like getting an old military jeep, painting it a shoddy green color and putting street tires on it and passing it off as correct- if you're going to do it, then do it right. So that was my intention, build it as close to spec as possible.
So no sooner than a 4LWD I picked up was delivered to the house, I call a friend of mine for work related business and tell him what my intentions are. He tells me that he had not just a Chenowth Desert Patrol vehicle behind his shop, but also had a 6 man Chenowth SEAL Squad Vehicle as well. While they clearly had seen better days, he said I could have them if I came to drag them away. All parts are there and they haven't run in about 5 years, but they'll be worth having-he was literally going to drag them to the scrap yard. Some people collect military jeeps, I guess I'll have a couple of SEAL buggies.
So both vehicles have been delivered, and I started on the 3 seat Desert Patrol Vehicle first. It was the worse of the two vehicles, but is the vehicle I'm the most excited about restoring. I managed to finish stripping it down yesterday and am excited to start the restoration process.
So a few notes about the 3 seat vehicle:
- There were 120 made. Most went to Naval Special Warfare Group 1 (west coast) starting in 1989, another smaller batch was made for Army Special Forces and UK SAS for Desert Storm. The final batch was delivered to the Navy after the first Gulf War.
- It's got CNC Brakes, hubs and pedals throughout and Saco steering box
- It's got a VW Type 4 engine modded by FAT Performance to 2.6 liter.
- It's got a Vanagon Transaxle with locking diffrential.
Anyway, the main structure of the chassis is in good shape. The area under the seats and gas tank need to be cut out and replaced, as well as one of the supports under the diffrential. I'm hoping to not have to cut out the torsion bar adjustment housing, but we'll see when I get to it.
So, enough of my yapping - here's the pics. Let me know what ya think!
Here it is join delivery
Side baskets
Front end
Ass end
One of the hubs, calipers and rotors - the rest look similar
Mid way through the tear down
Gunners seat base
Gas Tank
Two snapped torsion bars
Torsion Bar Adjustment Housing
Transaxle Support
Stripped Chassis