1972 Muskin Dune Cat

Driving out of the Hawkeye Downs race track, I saw the Dune Cat. It as you can see wasn’t much. The fiberglass body was busted & cracked. The engine with its hard to find clutch set up was all missing. The steering seized up & its linkage broken along with the frame broken & all the tires rotted away. It was rough & tuff no doubt! But as I looked at it I had a vision of it all done up & it looked cool. I had never seen one of these before, my dad had sold about every type of off road thing back in those days but Not those… So with me already having enrolled both my sons AJ & Robbie in 4H & with AJ needing a project to enter in the local fair the next fall, A deal was made & all the parts packed in my little 95 GMC Jimmy. We researched the Dune Cat online & found that they were originally built by Muskin cement company in Sacramento CA in 1972 only & sold from 72 thru 74. They were available in 2 versions of a pull rope start 3hp or 5 hp Briggs & Stratton with a snowmobile clutch set up with a jack shaft & about 8-10 mph top speed. Since “Dune Cats” never had electric anything, we had to fabricate a bracket to mount a small motorcycle battery & we built a complete wiring harness with a fuse block. The cracked & broken fiberglass body was repaired & sanded, primed & we took it to my brothers body shop where he applied black paint base & then using only House of Colors orange metal flakes mixed with A LOT! of automotive clear. He recreated the original look of sparkle orange. We had the original Dune Cat decals copied& recreated for at a local sign shop. We added spoke wheel hub caps for a golf cart & then added marker & taillights shaped like cats eyes along with a “Cat on a Hot Tin” license plate. All That went on & on until we had it all done & here is what we ended up with. In the end after 200 hrs of work & $2000 approximately. We took it out for a drive & revved it up & clocked it at 42 mph top speed over 4 times what it was designed for Lmao!. He was awarded a 1st place Blue ribbon & a huge trophy at the 2010 Richland county fair. All that work may seem quite a bit of overkill for just an old go cart but in doing all of this it paved the way for Austin (AJ) to learn how to do engine work, build a “working” wiring harness, metal fabrication, paint & body work. Above it all it shown him how to make a thought & picture in your mind turn to reality & then the satisfaction of having fun with the end result of your all hard work.