I started getting interested in the traction aspect of buggying and had put off buying one for some time. I was willing to buy a second hand one but after seeing some of them I decided it wouldn't be to much work to build one of my own. At that stage my dad was upgrading his boat and had just found a cheap source of stainless steel tubing. The local metal recyclers often had lenghts of tubing and other offcuts I could use. I ended up buying about NZ$30 weight worth in stainless steel which was more than I needed to make two buggies. My dad had to have some of the sections bent for the frames he required and he offered to have my side frames bent too.

I asked around for some wheel catalogues from the local suppliers and eventually found what I needed. I was after 410mm diameter x 145mm wide, square section, ribbed treads with high speed sealed bearings. Only problem was that they were out of stock and I needed the buggy within the month. I ended up buying something different altogether which gave me some interesting results. The wheels where about 75mm smaller in diameter and about 90mm wide, round section with a ribbed tread pattern.

After talking to some other buggiers I found that they sheared a lot of axle bolts. I had a contact at a hydraulic fitting company turn me some solid axles and bearing spacers. It only took about a weekend to assemble and building the fork took up most of that time. I only had an arc-welder at my disposal which proved to be another problem. Stainless steel can be welded this way but tends to burn and the heat tends to cause it to warp. It only took a little more patience and finesse and the end product turned out quite well.

This was the buggy with the first wheels I bought. It is dwarfed by most other buggies especially the Peter Lynn "Big Foot". It was great for carrying to the local park for some practise and proved some of the easiest to trick and accelerate in low winds. It got it's name at the first meet I took it too when I was assembling it next to a Peter Lynn "Big Foot". Someone walked past and mentioned "little foot"!

Next day we found ourselves on the beach in winds in excess of 40 knots. I had just recieved my 4.2 C-quad and the only other smaller kites was a 2.4sq.m. NPW5, 3.3sq.m. Windtools Traction and a 2sq.m. homemade bridled/sparless flexifoil toyfoil. Seeing as I've never buggied in such excessive winds I chose the latter and got up to a decent speed too. The small wheels proved awesome on the hardpacked part of the beach. I soon went for the Traction3.3 and managed excellent speed though I lost traction, flipped and wiped out in style on a few occasions. I also realised I had to stay clear of soft sand after heading straight into it and doing the "chin meets knees". The following day saw almost no wind which ment I was one of the few cruising along under a 4.2 C-Quad with little rolling resistance to speak of.

I finally found a source for the wheels I was looking for and replaced the small ones on my frame. They added more thn 5kg to my buggy and the traction improved tenfold. I was a little spoilt with "little foot" as it took me a while to get used to the slower acceleration. But then I took to the soft beach sand and did a real heavy power turn without sliding and I was happy again. Unfortunately when you do flip the buggy it does hurt a lot more but being able to hold on to more power off the side does seem worth it.