I really enjoyed building mine, but there are a TON of small things that will nickle and dime you to death, when you build from scratch. If this is your first build, find yourself a jeep or toyota, or sami, and tube it out. Gain your experience with the easier stuff and relativly simple fab work. Wheel the piss out of that, then you will know what you want out of your buggy.
Just my .02
Dan
Lots of knowledge and insight in those few sentences, take that to heart, Dan knows what he's talking about.
... If I were to do it over again I would probabaly start with something like a TJ like gregs or buy one outright. It's the little stuff that kills ya
I was all about getting the TJ on the trail ASAP, yeah I used a bolt-on lift kit and didn't 'built it', but it works very well.
How much money are you willing to throw into this project? What's your planned build time? What are your fabrication skills and what tools do you have at your disposal? Have you done anything like this before?
From what I'm hearing, I think building a Formula Toy is right up your alley. Look here-
Hendrix MS Formula Toy
You basically buy an older solid axle Toyota truck or 4Runner, strip off all the body and sheetmetal and weld a pre-assembled, pre-engineered chassis onto the frame. You can keep the leafsprings or 4 link it later on down the road. You could pull this off pretty cheap IMO and have a very capable, strong buggy. They even make a 4 seater chassis if that's something you'd be interested in.
If I ever decided to build a buggy, I'd have a hard time NOT going that route.
