UVA Fugitive

The honest answer to why I bought the Fugitive whilst I was building the buggy is that it came up on eBay, looked good, wasn't too expensive and I wanted it! After seeing it on eBay, Tina and I had nothing particular to do on the Sunday and so we decided to go down to Poole for the day to have a look at it without expecting too much. It turned out to be better 'in the flesh' than it looked on eBay and we took it for a brief test drive, which was great fun. In fact, we liked it so much that I made an offer on it before leaving Poole but it wasn't accepted and the auction was allowed to run to the end. I didn't expect to win the auction, as I only bid what I'd previously offered for it, but the gods were smiling and a week or so later we had it at home in the garage :-)

The justification for 'wasting' good buggy building money on the Fugitive is that I had very little, or no, practical experience of building a car (even though I'd owned several Beetles many years ago) and it was proving very difficult to separate fact from fiction with all of the research I was doing: i.e. will a stock 1600 be powerful enough; what is the maximum rear tyre diameter that will result in a drivable car with stock gearbox ratios, etc. Experience gained from owning the Fugitive would give me a reference point on which to base judgments about what will or won't work on the buggy.

The basis of the purchase was that I'd just drive it as much as possible in order to get a feel of what worked well and what didn't on this type of vehicle. The intention was to do as little work on it as possible and not to modify it, so that it didn't sap any more money from the buggy project than was necessary, and in the first year of ownership, I put about 3000 miles on it, including some long trips of up to 300 miles, and changed very little. During this time, I learned the following:

• A passenger foot rest is required, especially on high speed uneven ground
• Drum brakes are more than adequate for a car of this weight and will easily lock all four wheels
• The light weight front end can cause understeer when turning into corners
• The stock VW brake configuration is too biased to the front and can cause front wheel lock-ups, but this can be corrected with the adjustable bias bar
• The weight at the rear of the car can cause pendulum oversteer if tight cornering and hard acceleration are combined
• A 10" steering wheel is a bit too small and results can result in excessive steering effort at low speeds
• Positive off-set wide wheels can result in a wide turning circle
• Adjustable driver's seat position is required to accommodate a wide range of driver sizes
• A stock 1600 with dual carburetors provides plenty of power for acceleration and a top speed of over 90mph
• A top speed of much over 80mph is a waste of time, as the car becomes unpleasant to drive any faster than this without a windscreen
• Cheap coil-over shock absorbers are are too stiff for the light weight front of the car and negatively effect the ride quality
• A steering damper significantly reduces driver fatigue, especially on uneven surfaces
• A front anti-roll bar causes understeer is not necessary on such a light car
• A rear wheel diameter of more than about 30" will not work well with a stock 1600 engine and stock gearbox ratios
• Good targets for overall gear ratios are 30mph in third at 2000rpm, 40mph in fourth at 2000rpm and 60mph in fourth at 3000rpm, with the 30 and 40mph targets being more important in terms of drivability
• Lack of wing mirrors makes motorway driving (slip roads and lane changing) difficult, especially as four point harness allows virtually no body movement

The following table gives the specifications of all the major components of the Fugitive WHEN I FIRST GOT IT: (see the Modifications section below for current status)

The following table lists all the modifications that I have carried out (or will carry out) to the above specification, in order to either improve the Fugitive, test things out for the buggy or enable the easy exchange of parts between the Fugitive and the buggy:

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