Not your typical build

thetoddjohnson

Each year the Bald Head Island annual 4th of July Golf Cart Parade Contest typically has some entries that get to be pretty elaborate. I had a blast creating an entry for this year's parade. I thought you guys might enjoy how it came together.

At the entrance to the BHI golf club is a condo development known as “The Villas”. There are 56 units. My parade entry (named “Villa 57”) was a replica of one of those houses.

The villas look like this:

BGW

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thetoddjohnson

I started the project with a 36V non-lifted DS. I wanted to be able to attach the structure directly to the frame without having to deal with the DS body, so I did the teardown. But I needed to be able to operate the cart so I had to build a temporary “seat” out of plywood. This was something I thought would be really easy to do, but it turned out that FNR and charging receptacle aren’t so easily mounted on a 3/4” thick “body”. After considerable effort the cart looked like this:

thetoddjohnson

Although functional, it wasn’t very comfortable. As soon as I came across post #109 of this thread:
http://www.buggiesgonewild.com/road-...der-way-3.html
I ran to the local farm store and picked up a pair of seats.

thetoddjohnson

Next I built a central “tower” out of 1/4” square aluminum tubing. The mounting holes on the DS frame were ideally spaced to make the tower 48” x 48”. The reason I say ideally is because that made the little house exactly 1/4 scale. Which was really convenient because all the trim on the actual villas are 4” boards, so I was able to make all the trim I could possibly need by ripping 1” strips off a 4x8 sheet of lauan.

thetoddjohnson

Then I had to make 4 identical “wings” for the cantilevered rooms. (FYI, the villas are extremely ugly, but very functional. The wings are (a) a kitchen, (b) a living room, (c) the master bedroom, and (d) the 2nd bedroom. Upstairs is a loft that is typically configured as a 3rd bedroom with a bathroom.) The front and back wings could be permanently bolted to the central tower, but the sides had to be easily removed if necessary. When the spectators line up along the route expecting a processional of golf carts nobody anticipates anything 9’ wide to be driving down the middle. I didn’t want to get into a situation where the whole parade stopped because I couldn’t fit.

thetoddjohnson

The structure for the roof was made of pressure treated furring strips.

thetoddjohnson

After we had the front and back “wings” made we temporarily threw the roof truss on the top for fun.

thetoddjohnson

The shingles for the roof were made by “filleting” some corrugated cardboard boxes to expose the texture. Believe it or not this was perhaps the most time consuming part of the project. To cut down on the monotony I took a break and made a plumbing stack vent out of a toilet paper tube.

thetoddjohnson

After the frame was completed we covered it with insulation foam board, then painted it to match the villa complex.

thetoddjohnson

We then created 4 “lattice panels” to wrap the “foundation” of the building and assemble the deck and upper level porch.