The Spider

We happened across this in the opening line-up at Ladoga 2007 and at first thought “God, that's rough!”… but in a starting lineup that included (supposedly) a million-dollar vehicle, a man and his son had built something truly amazing for absolutely no money, with basic tools and incredible engineering.

The more we looked at this (and under it) the more astounded we were by the skill and determination.

This dude had built his own portal axles. He'd built his own chassis too. And bellhousing. And PTO driven centre-mounted winch. And roll cage. And bodywork. In fact there wasn't more than a few square inches of the car which were not made from scavenged-up parts of other cars cut & joined together

His track rod alone was at least 4 pieces of metal welded together, because he had a steering bar and rod ends off of something, but it wasn't long enough, so he cut it in the middle and joined it together with an extension, and maybe a lump of angle iron to brace it. Someone asked what the rod ends were from, he replied “I don't know, I found them”.

I think the engine was Daihatsu diesel. Possibly it was Russian. Who knows. The gearbox was from something else entirely via a hand-fabricated bellhousing made from lumps of plate stick-welded together. The transfer case I can't even remember but somehow he'd made a power takeoff for it to run a centre-mounted winch that was made from a rear diff of something else.

Even the wheels were made from other wheels welded together - the centres to fit whatever hubs he had used for the portals and the outers to suit the 2nd hand tractor tyres he was running when all around were using TSL Boggers that cost more than his whole budget.

This thing was slow, probably the slowest thing out there, and sounded like it was going to throw a rod at any moment - but it kept going in an event where trucks costing 100x the budget drop like flies.

He was last out in the beach race, by then the weather had turned cold & miserable, but we stuck around to cheer him across the start line and waited in the rain while this truck plodded round in a cloud of diesel smoke and rattling to finish. The guy's a hero.