Hello, I am Patricia. I have just discovered that the yellow jelly bean sitting in my barn is a Subaru microcar 360, dune buggy style. I need recommendations for a good restorer. I am in Virginia.

Thank you for the enthusiastic help I have already received in the last few days I learned about my good fortune.
Patricia Thomas

Welcome Patricia. I'll be the first to ask pics please?????

Patricia:

Welcome to the club! I will be the second to ask for PICTURES!!

CDJ
Sumner, WA

Let me see how this tech dinosaur is able to post pictures.
Patricia

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Nope, that didn't work.

I don't know how to post the photos of the Dune Buggy model I have. I have tried. I don't know if I need further permission from the administrator or what. When my secretary gets in on Monday, I will see if she can help me. Otherwise, I'd be pleased to email them to somebody else if you provide an email address, who can put them up for us.
Thank you.

Patricia

Patricia - If you e-mail the photos you e-mailed to me to Steve Michelsen in
NJ he can post them on the website.

To everyone else: this is the same as the "Frog" that Ralph Lopez had,
several other members have these. There are some pix in the BOR
P. 254 in BOR Vol 2 gives the history on it, Malcolm Bricklin ordered
the conversions, either 24 or 30 were made depending on who you
believe, but in any case they are RARE.

Ed

Hi Patricia,

Welcome to the Club from downunder!

Instructions for posting pics are at: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3575&p=27819&hilit ... 68e#p27819

Cheers,

Ian

Welcome Patricia, I'm in Charleston WV, Would love to see the pics too. What part of Virginia? I'd be willing to help all I can.

Patricia of Virginia asked me to post these pictures of her dune buggy. It has "been in her barn" for an undisclosed length of time. I have heard of great "barn finds", but IN YOUR OWN BARN? Cool!

Wow !!! Patricia, you are a very lucky young lady! That has to be a great barn you have.

here is that mention in the BOR...

Looks like a really nice barn, I see a spoked wheel from another barn find. Remind me just what needs restored?

Gorgeous car! Congrats on identifying and choosing to restore it.

The style convertible she has there has been called by many sources a Jolly, Island hopper, and Yacht (probably because they used to market the fiat jolly to rich aristocrats for use with or on their large Yachts)



It's not really much of a Manx style dune buggy as the article describes.

i.e.



The description of the vehicle in that article sounds more like this rendition of our favorite ride.
I know there are more incorrect answers about the variations of the rare 360's than actual facts.

This model version was reported to have been built by Bill Cheesbourg's Cheesbourg Enterprises.

I believe this is the vehicle that was dubbed the nick name 'Cheesbourger'.






One thing I do find interesting is that Patricia's jolly is based off a Young trim package sedan, and not a Deluxe.
up to now I have only seen examples of this style in deluxe trim.
That would make it even MORE Rare!

StevenM wrote:Patricia of Virginia asked me to post these pictures of her dune buggy. It has "been in her barn" for an undisclosed length of time. I have heard of great "barn finds", but IN YOUR OWN BARN? Cool!

DSC02007 (1024x768).jpg

A Young-Buggy?

Another thing that's interesting is that all of her fiberglass panels are blended into the original body work and not simply overlaid like the deluxe trimmed ones.
We would never be able to know if that was a change made by a previous owner or from the mod shop itself but that and the addition of a cooling vent makes this one ultra unique!

The only thing that stands out of line are the DLX bumpers, hubcaps, and mirrors....there is no Ignition/Illumination switch panel and ....well and the wipers are pointing the wrong way...

Ok, ok... so it's a deluxe body with some components of a Young's interior..




Other examples for comparison:






Oh yeah.. and this one......



Any way you slice it, this is a beautiful rare example of this style vehicle, Good luck with it and if you want to unload it I've got DIBS!

Sigmaz wrote:Another thing that's interesting is that all of her fiberglass panels are blended into the original body work and not simply overlaid like the deluxe trimmed ones.
We would never be able to know if that was a change made by a previous owner or from the mod shop itself but that and the addition of a cooling vent makes this one ultra unique!

The only thing that stands out of line are the DLX bumpers, hubcaps, and mirrors....there is no Ignition/Illumination switch panel and ....well and the wipers are pointing the wrong way...

Ok, ok... so it's a deluxe body with some components of a Young's interior..




Other examples for comparison:






Oh yeah.. and this one......



Any way you slice it, this is a beautiful rare example of this style vehicle, Good luck with it and if you want to unload it I've got DIBS!

How does the engine get cooling air?

Maybe they open up to the wheel well ?

Sigmaz wrote:Maybe they open up to the wheel well ?

Dune buggy? Suction air intake in wheel well? Gives new meaning to "pack sand" !

Seriously, you must know how much cooling air a Subaru 360 draws in @ 5000 rpm?

Lol!

Well, typically this body style car would be used on and around beaches and not so much intended for wailing around in the dunes, but sand is sand and being open to the wheel well could be not so great...

I really have no idea where they are drawing cool air from...

Maybe they are just pulling ambient air from under the fiberglass cap.

It doesn't seem like it's sealed all that well where it rolls into the passenger compartment.

Looking at Patricia's you can see they've added some padding to the edging, perhaps that made the addition of the cooling vent on her Jolly necessary?

I'd love to find out.

Jolly interesting!

Well to all you members out there wanting to touch this little gem be jealous because I have. It is in great shape. It, like many others have set and deteriorated but It still has a lot to offer. Patricia, Wanda (I beileve, sorry if that's not correct) and Al were only able to stand the cold for so long I think it was 21 degrees out side with lots of wind and it felt like the barn was air conditioned. I could have stayed longer who needs toes anyway? They were incredibly nice and interested in extracting everything I knew about it. I think one of the three of them has caught the 360 bug, but that's just my speculation. One big problem I found is that the gas tank needs fixed but it cannot be removed without cutting the fiberglass or undoing all the blending bodywork and removing the fiberglass or cutting the fiberglass. I didn't see it out in the daylight but the blending work looked as good in person as it does in the pics. Does anyone know of any reason why cutting the fiberglass above the tank would not work as a way of removing the tank? Anyone with Fiberglass experience, how could one reinforce the edge of the fiberglass when you put it back together so it would look as good as possible? Any suggestions welcome. I had planned on taking lots of pictures but by the time they gave up my fingers didn't even want to work the camera. Had it been 50 degrees warmer I would have loved to fire it up. I think if I had an warm afternoon a clean carb and good oil pump we could have seen it run with little work.

One big question was how many were made? I thought somewhere between 800-1000. From what Al had read he thought 800 had been produced. Does anyone have good proof of the number made?

It also had silicone brake fluid put in it at some point according to the note written on the fire wall. There was no fluid in the reservoir so it must have leaked out. Could it have evaporated over 20 years? I'm betting on leaked out. The master cylinder was not stuck but did not return very fast if at all. I didn't check it a second time. It did go to the floor though.

If anyone can help with these questions please pm or post here what you know.
Thanks

There were either 24 or 30 of these made.

The Cheesebourger was the one that was "mass-produced" for about 900.

Patricia's is the first I have seen that has been permanently attached to
the original unibody. I think cutting and repairing the fiberglass is a
good solution. On the Fastrack II I had to do a lot of fiberglassing, but
to me that is a lot easier than body work on steel, especially when it
comes to making the seams invisible.

Ed

Ed, Am I correct is saying they were only made here in the states?

kjrcace360fan wrote:Ed, Am I correct is saying they were only made here in the states?

Yes like the BOR says...

Thanks for posting that Steve, I would have had to hunt
for it. With the BOR available FREE every member should
have one!

Ed

That thing is awesome!

I wonder whatever happened to Patricia's Jolly

Its Sitting in my garage

The orange car in the pix way up the page is a Cheesebourger, made in Tucson
on a pre-68 Sambar chassis.

If a dune buggy has wipers that park to the RIGHT it is on a Young chassis.
If they park LEFT it's a sedan chassis. That is the one item that gives it
away regardless of seats, front hood, or other young-specific items.

Ed

I find it amazing that there seems to be only a single Cheeseborger to ever pop up for sale in the last 10 years, yet supposedly there were several built. Those photos above, and a couple of a fiberglass shell (meant for a full length chassis) are the only evidence I've ever seen that they even existed. It's sad to think those things were all scrapped, but that's the likely scenario I suppose.

Welcome to the club from
So Cal Long Beach

Sorry, just saw the question - Dune Buggies were made in Brea CA out of
24 or 30 (depending on who you believe) 360 sedans that Uncle Mal got as
part of his termination by the company he founded, SOA.

Mal never paid for the work so half were GIVEN to Brea HS for the auto shop,
and the other half sold to anyone who had the cash.

Many of the half sold to the public are owned today by Club members.

Ed

According to Bobby Decola, he has two Cheesburgers. And one Jolly. I'm hoping to make a trip down to his place soon to see how the pedals and the steering is mounted on the cheesbugers. Does anyone know if you could rotate the rack on the truck/van chassis and use the truck van column? I'm guessing this is what was done with a shortened shaft. But I just don't know. Also figure they just cut the frame to accept the pedal assembly from the front of the frame where they needed. Anyone who knows any details on these two issues I'm all ears. Or eyes as this case may be.

kjrcace360fan wrote: ↑6 years ago According to Bobby Decola, he has two Cheesburgers. And one Jolly. I'm hoping to make a trip down to his place soon to see how the pedals and the steering is mounted on the cheesbugers. Does anyone know if you could rotate the rack on the truck/van chassis and use the truck van column? I'm guessing this is what was done with a shortened shaft. But I just don't know. Also figure they just cut the frame to accept the pedal assembly from the front of the frame where they needed. Anyone who knows any details on these two issues I'm all ears. Or eyes as this case may be.

nothing a universal heim joint can't fix for the steering colunm