Engines & Fuel
Originally becoming popular in the 1960s, sandrails used lightweight air-cooled engines like the Volkswagen engine from the VW Beetle and Porsche (~200 pounds) or the Chevrolet Corvair (~350 pounds). Because of the availability of affordable parts, the Volkswagen engine continues to be the mainstay of many sandrails today. More recently, some enthusiast have turned to lighter weight water-cooled engines such as the Subaru engine or Ford ecotech engines.
The need for more power comes from necessity and desire when driving in steep sand dunes. This has driven sandrail engine builders to add performance features to engines such as the stock 28 horse power Volkswagen engine. This includes: larger pistons, Turbo chargers, dual racing carburetors, fuel injection, and high performance cylinder heads to name a few. Some performance engines can run on premium unleaded gasoline. However, many high performance engines must use racing fuel or fuel additives. A high performance sandrail Volkswagen engine could produce well into the 170-200+ horse power range and as high as 700 horse power with Methanol fuel.
Most sandrails use a manual transmission, although automatic transmissions are used as well.
Read more about this topic: Sandrail
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