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The following is a guest article by my brother Aaron. A scooter enthusiast, Aaron maintains the ScootDawg Scooter Forum one of the most popular scooter and moped forums on the Internet.
Over the last year I’ve seen this little car around town, and it always made me smile. What was even more interesting is that it could actually keep up with the flow of traffic. I knew I had to get a closer look…
Guys and gals meet Jory Squibb a 66 year young man from Camden, Maine and his micro car “MoonBeam”.
MoonBeam took Jory about a year (1000 hours) to engineer and build working about 20 hours a week. It’s out of pocket price including the donor 1985 Honda Elite 150 and another 84 Honda 125 was $2500.
Its not a beauty queen, but the Moonbeam suffers from an undeniable cuteness that can’t help but make you smile. Fit and finish are a bit crude but what sets the Moonbeam apart for me was its functionality and practicality.
MoonBeam is Jory’s daily driver, rain, snow, sleet, or hail. He has put over 6000 miles on it since completion. He does park it when the roads are snow covered (its one wheel drive, what do you want!) But it does get used all winter when the roads are clear.
The car has climbed Mt. Washington in New Hampshire (New England’s tallest peak), and has made several longer trips around Maine. It has been trailered to CA for an alternative vehicle show and Jory plans to drive it to Boston this fall for another such event.
Mr. Squibb is an alternative vehicle fan and tinkerer from way back. He climbed Mt. Washington back in the 70’s in a “Volts-Wagen” a VW Beetle electric conversion he built.
Jory is realistic about the demands of society though, and realizes that gasoline is still our best energy source for some time yet. He would just like to see us adopt an attitude change and use vehicles like MoonBeam for commuting, shopping, and errand running. If you think about it, most of the things we use our full size cars for fall well into Moonbeam’s realm of capability.
After inviting me to his home for an interview and demonstration, he graciously handed MoonBeam over to me saying “take it for a ride and then come back with your questions”.
If you can ride a scooter you can drive Moonbeam. The controls are taken right off an old Honda Elite. The only change is the kill switch now operates the windshield wiper.
Getting in and out of MoonBeam is a breeze. The top roll bar is offset to allow easier entry and exit. If you’re riding by yourself, or with a child as a passenger, there is plenty of room in the car. However, Jory recommends that if two adults ride in the car they should be on “intimate” terms with one another.
The seat is crude but functional, and there is a reasonable amount of foot room. In hindsight, Jory wishes he built it about 4″ longer for taller people. At 5′ 10″ I was fine. Below is the foot well with a view of the 1/8″ sidewall steel tubing (cage) and the easy access headlights.
The ingenious sliding canopy is lockable in three positions. Whether you want the canopy open like a convertible, closed like a coupe, or secured halfway like a sunroof, it adjusts very easily even when you are seated. The view out the front is great, but the rear view is limited to mirrors.
To start the Moonbeam all you need to do is turn the key and hit the starter. Once it started I immediately remembered it’s a Honda. Talk about a smooth engine. I buckled my seat belt (3 point like a car) got my bearings, and twisted the throttle.
Big grin time! Moonbeam accelerates surprisingly well for a 400 pound vehicle. The ride is good and handling was amazing. Jory did a great job of getting the steering geometry right. The brakes… well … they are adequate.
He used the stock Elite Brakes so there are drums on all three wheels. Jory would love to add discs, and plans to incorporate them in his next car. Hills were no more of a problem than any other 150 scooter. I got it up to 45mph around town and Jory said it tops out a 53 according to his GPS. It cruises wonderfully at 40-45 mph. The canopy does rattle a bit but its great for a hand built prototype. I was impressed (and I’m still grinning like an idiot 3 hours later).
There’s a lot of storage in the MoonBeam depending on whether you have one or two people in it. There is room on the rear deck and the floor.
Beneath the rear deck is the fuel tank access and engine cover. You do have to remove panels to get to the engine but it is very easy. When you build something yourself you build it to be able to work on!
As I mentioned earlier, this is a four season car. Since the Honda Elite 150 scooter is water cooled, the heating system was fairly easy to rig. Moonbeam has two radiators. The one in the back does the primary duty and the one up front, while it does have coolant flowing to it all the time, has a switch operated fan to provide heat if needed. When doing thing’s like climbing Mt. Washington you can leave the top open and run both radiators to keep the engine cool. Here is the front heater radiator and the hoses from the rear that feeds it coolant.
There is no question that the car is small. It does have a well thought out safety cage, but Jory admits if you’re hit by a large
vehicle at 60 mph, there is not much you can do. That said, as a fellow motorist you can’t help but notice the MoonBeam and vehicles like it. Your eye is just drawn to it like a moth to flame, just make sure you give them plenty of room!
Here’s the MoonBeams Honda Elite 150 drive train from the back. At 6000 miles the tire is pretty worn!
Legality Issues of a Homebuilt Car:
In Maine it’s pretty easy to accomplish non-mainstream ideas. That said, Jory went through some hoops to get a legal inspection sticker on this vehicle. There is a sub class of vehicles in Maine known as “Cycle Cars” and MoonBeam had to have a windshield wiper, seat belts, and more other various safety devices installed. A very understanding State Inspection Station Owner helped Jory immensely with this process. It can be done if you are so inclined.
For more information about the MoonBeam and Jory Squibb visit www.moonbeamplans.com.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Try to commercialize this and you’ll discover the real impediment to energy efficient cars: government.
I bet it won’t cost $3k and get 100mpg once you add 360dgr of air bags, anti-lock brakes, hundreds of pounds of emissions capturing apparatus, hundreds of pounds of reinforcements and crumple zones, put it though years of impact and safety testing, buy hundreds of millions of dollars of liability insurance (good luck, by the way), pay several megadollar-per-year for tax accountants, IP and liability legal staff, spend at least tens of thousands on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, pay for all of each employee’s medical costs, without exception (this will soon be the case, as we all know.)
. . . and so forth.
Meanwhile: GOVERNMENT SAVES PLANET! EVIL CORPORATIONS EXPLOIT THE PROLETARIAT!
Love it!! My main concern would be safety. Doesn’t really look like you could put a car seat in there. But it’s definitely cute. I hope he does well with it.
A lot of people gripe about the safety issues regarding small cars, and well, when that F-350 SuperDuty hits you at 45 in Moonbeam, yes. You will be dead. But when one Moonbeam hits another at 45, not so bad. I think that safety for small cars is perfectly fine if that’s the size of everything else on the road. Anyways, very good job Mr. Squibb.
Pretty cool electric car conversion, we have been doing our own for over 10 years and can appreciate the hard work that went into this.
Want more information to do your own electric car conversion? Just follow the link and we would be glad to talk to you
Electric Car Conversions
All the best,
Les and Jane
Sheeple, you’re completely right, except for one or two little issues.
It’s not a car, it’s technically an “enclosed scooter”, so therefore does not require anti-lock brakes, emissions or crumple zones.
Save for the safety testing, which won’t take years for something like this, all the rest is a load of crap.
Looks better than some of these smart cars hitting the streets….
I think it is great. I would probably go with a brighter color and a bike flag on the back. I would love to drive something like this for my daily commute.
http://www.WeLearnAsWeGo.com
The “American Dream” is undergoing a paradigm shift as we speak! SUV’s for sale, but manufacturers of them going broke, and folks in the streets and neighborhoods building eco-cars! From the great oil rip-off comes the revelation that our current lifestyle is a dependent one! This is as UnAmerican as you can get! We have looked up! We have rebelled! We will attain fuel independence! and woe to those who hinder our path to freedom! Was the short-lived $147.47 a bbl oil swindle worth the whole ballgame for the oil barons? I doubt it! There is no way to turn back the clock now, and solar, wind, wave, hydro, tidal, and geo-thermal are raging ahead to replace oil! Nuclear has even been touted as our freedom ticket from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan/Turkmenistan and elsewhere on the planet! We can clean up that technology for certain, and fusion is under study as we speak! People are building sensible Eco friendly homes, the McMansions are dead, and survival through the cyclic capitalist economy is at the forefront of every builders plans! We will no longer locate at the corporatisms behest, in ‘burbs close to the cheapest land for their factories! We will no longer subsidize corporatism’s Factories by paying for cars to transport us to work at the shift times they specify! We are no longer suckers! We want the same privileges as Cruise-Ship Employees, Free room and board, of decent quality through-out out stay in the corporations factories, and a clear pay packet at the end of our stay! Even the Chinese communists get this! We want the better part of the year as free time for our own endeavors, not tied to a phony “seniority” scheme designed to extract our very souls! We will build better cars, for entertainment purposes, not in corporative service or to subsidize the capitalists gains! We will have the time to play, as G d intended for his children, and drop the shackles of corporate America and the world and learn again to love life and treasure it and make it last as the most beautiful thing on earth!