Homemade Go Kart Revival

So through a trade deal, I'm repairing my cousin's dirt bike and atv and in return I required back my homemade go kart.  It doesn't have a clutch right now but I'm debating whether to just throw a centrifugal back on it or go with a torque convertor.

Looks fun. Go with a torque converter. It's amazing the difference those make. My go kart will climb about anything now. They're not expensive either.

bit issue with Torque convertor is that I only have 1-1/4 of crankshaft. That’s pretty short

Saw your video earlier! Man been a year since you youtube last! Great stuff!

Not sure of the strength but could spacer be put in there to take up the space?

Get your machine shop buddy to bore out a chunk of keys shaft, V the end of the existing crank and the new piece, run a bolt through into the existing shaft, line them up with a key. Use a good bushing with a hole in it to keep it strait, use the hole to zap a few tack welds with the tig. once tacked in and strait, weld a little here, weld a little there, let it cool off and repeat!

Crude.... but it would totally work.

@TheBeal I may just have to do that.  I also have an interference dilemma I need to figure out with the chain and CVT.  I pressure washed it, fixed the flat tire, moved the seat backward and figured out the top speed will be 28 mph.

Today I cut the motor mounting plate loose and built a mount from bed frame angle iron to relocate the gas tank.  Now there's plenty of room for the CVT if it ever gets here.

Cool little cart

Nice job rehanging that tank. Looks like it will be easy to service there and still easy looking to get to the pull start.

It moves!

Awesome to see it driving!

Nice! If you paint it white and put one of those radio antenna things that looks like a satelite dish on the front on a pole, you'd have a mini lunar rover.

LOL you're right is does look like that.  I brought it in to the basement to finish weld it today and did the ten year challenge with it.

Does that have front brakes or do the hubs just look like that. Looks like that frame should be good for some heavy pounding if nessesary.

Nah black rims on silver hubs. One advantage of a CVT is the engine braking, I"ve barely had to use the band brake in testing. I need to take it out to the farm soon for a real test. The frame is really heavy 1x1x11gauge.

Worked on some more finishing touches.  I was troubleshooting the CVT.  It needed just another 100 rpm to fully shift up so I just bent a little tab on the throttle plate and that worked well.  I installed a fuel filter, duct tapped up the tear in the seat, welded on a tab to re-connect the brake bracket to the frame, installed the fenders and notched out the clutch cover for the chain. It rides bumpy so going to try 3 psi in the tires.




I want to give this a few good laps out at the farm and do a top speed test before I pull the motor and touch up the paint.

I'm gonna guess 14-16mph with those sprockets. 

Looks good carl! I kinda think bumpy is just how go karts are, lol

@MightyRaze So I've actually measured the RPM of the axle with one of my tachometers, did some math and got 28mph! which is what I calculated in one of my videos. I'm dying to see what the Top speed app says though.

@Crazy_Carl That's awesome!  About perfect actually!

Well turns out these torque converters do have a slight overdrive because this is the top speed measured with a GPS:

Very nice. More than I expected.