We designed the first chain drive rail in the late seventies
after realizing that it's no fun replacing CV's, transaxles
and clutchs during every ride. Now, almost thirty years later,
our rails have evolved into the most effective two wheel drive
off road hill climbing vehicles to date. As you know, to stay
on top you have to keep improving, so we have changed the
Chaindrive system over the years to better suit the application
of climbing those extreme hills and rocks. When it comes to
hill climbing, if you want to be the baddest of the bad you
will need one of our ChainDrive Rails. It's that simple. With
our Chaindrive system there really isn't a limit on tire size,
wheel travel, ground clearance or engine you want to run.
Everything on this web site is copyrighted. Nothing can be
used without written authorization from the owners of the
material. We here at Chaindrive Rail DO NOT advise or recommend
hill climbing or take responsibility for your actions in any
way. If you have any questions or suggestions just Email
us or call (423) 507-8232 and ask for Curt. We hope you enjoy
the site and hope to see you in the woods soon.
Check out the new video section.
Special thanks to Joe W. for all the great PICS. Until I
figure out
how to make our site play well with others, it's best to view
it
with I.E.Thanks, Curt.
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We're a small company in South East Tennessee.
We have been riding Rail Buggies since the late 70's. After
going through too many trans-axles and CV's to count, it didn't
take long for us to see that standard VW parts just weren't
going to cut it. So my father Bernard came up with Chain Drive
trailing arms. The first design worked very well, but the amount
of travel was still limited by the CV's. The next design cured
the travel problem and worked even better. Now we have trailing
arms that can withstand anything you can throw at them.
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This is the hill beside the "Wall"
at Etna
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This Rail has a turbo charged V-6 Chevy engine riding on studded
18-44's. It had hydraulics on the suspension so it can change
the ground clearance. It now has air bags on all fours, doing
away with the need of hydraulics to change ride height.
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We started selling rolling chassis in 1995.
Our chassis have been sent all over the US. Our Rails (Buggies)
are built for the safe climbing of very tall, steep hills, and
anyone that has seen our Rails climb have seen one of the best
climbing vehicles built to date. Our Rails are NOT hard to drive.
Most of our customers have us build their rails with an automatic
transmission and large engine to get them up or out of any situation.
Our Rails have a tremendous amount of wheel travel along with
large tires that can easily have up to three feet of ground
clearance (as seen to the right of this page in the "ground
clearance" photo) under the entire rail without worrying
about breaking any part of the drive train.
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This is the engine that I was using in my
personal Rail. It is a late model NorthStar Cadillac engine
that's all aluminum with four overhead cams, four valves per
cylinder, twin turbo chargers, and twin propane units. The engine
did a great job, however my dad being my dad decided it needed
a little more. I now have a 400 cubic inch small block Chevy
engine.
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NO this isn't a PhotoShop image trick.
This is what our suspension and air-bags can do.
Those rear tires are 18 X 44's. That can give you a good
reference of how much suspension travel is possible with our
Chain Drive system, not to mention the incredibly smooth ride
and the ability to change ride height at anytime just by flipping
a switch.
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