well, i've been thinking of building my son a pedal car or go kart, looked around on ebay and what not, and they are way too expensive for what they are, i figured i could build one alot cheaper and alot better. but anyway, i was wondering if anyone had any kind of blueprints, parts list, or dimensions to build one.
i was wanting to use a grille off a 32 ford thats been laying in my garage for years, and a few other "actual" car and truck parts. gonna go for more of a rat rod look. oh and i've got an old briggs and stratton side shaft 8HP motor. could this be used? what kind of horse power do most go carts have?
anyone have pics of pedal cars or go karts they fabricated themselves?
any tips or suggestions are much appreciated
thanks
skot.

 

Look under craigslist.com then under mororcycles, usually several go karts and pic for sale. chuck

 

8hp sounds good how old your son becausce that 8 horse can go pretty fast with the right gear on it so you might want to gear it down

 

he's 5, gotta get him addicted to trucks early i'll have to do some research on these motors and what kind of gears i can get for it. i've never built a go kart, but have built a bunch of trucks. how different can it be lol.

 

had all sorts of carts as a kid , but the closest to " building one was a riding mower that got kinda chopped up and " hot rodded " that had a 20 horse kohler i believe . it got sold at a garage sale , as it was dangerous >>>> LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anything is dangerous when it has no brakes and a fool riding it ............

 

It's been a long time since I built my first Kart at 12-13, actually the term Go-Kart hadn't even been coined yet so we called it a "jalopy". Used angle iron bed frame material for frame, handbuilt the tube front axle and spindles along with the live axle rear. Used Piper cub tailwheels and tires on the front. pnuematic wheelbarrow wheels on the rear The rest was cobbled together from scrounged bits and pieces. My Father and I welded the whole thing together with a borrowed OxAc torch setup using wire coat hangers for fill rod! Biggest side shaft lawn mower engine we could scrounge was a 2 1/2 hp B&S, so we used an aux jack shaft to gear it down to get enough torque to get going. I designed a belt tensioning hand operated "clutch" that would overcenter and lock until you released it, dragged our feet to stop. The dimensions were designed around what would fit in the back of our family 57 Ford Ranch Wagon! We'd load up the jalopy, a gallon can of gas and my younger brother and sister (6 and 5 at the time) and take it to a nearby high school that had an expanse of periferal roads and interconnected parking lots and spend the entire Sunday afternoon taking turns riding around until we burned up the can of gas. A couple years after that the G0-Kart craze hit with adults driving 1-4 chainsaw engined racing machines at high rates of speed and getting hurt so most places closed off their parking lots to them and us. In frustration I took apart the jalopy and built a Mini-Bike (nope, no one was calling them that yet either, to us it was a scooter) out of the parts and motor that we rode up and down the sidewalks in front and thru the field behind our house. Our neighbor next door was a policeman and we knew all the town cops so we didn't worry about getting arrested. In fact he would frequently get wiskeyed up on his off Sundays and race us with his riding lawn mower. The neighbor across the street (owned a body shop and had loaned us the torch set) would soon bring out his mower and we'd have 3 vehicle races!!! Our backyard had a dirt oval race track around it where we had obliterated the grass.

Today Northern tool sells all the parts you need to build a sidewalk Kart. There are companies that build more sophisticated racing Karts. We often have kids with Karts at our Autocross events, SCCA has 3 Jr Kart classes for 8-15 year olds.

A lot of the top Nascar drivers and road racers started as kids in Karts.

 

great story, coat hangers, whiskey, and motors lol. thanks for the Northern tool tip AXracer. i wish i had room to ride it around my house when it gets built, i live on the side of a freakin mountain! hardly no yard.

my neighbor use to build rail buggies back in the day, he passed away some odd years ago, but he left all of his old Volks Wagons(i guess he couldnt take em with him lol) but anyway, i'm about to go over the hill to the V-dubs and scrounge for parts(there is 241 VW bugs in my back yard) thats right two hundred and forty one!! crazy.

thanks everyone, gonna go look for stuff to take apart

 

5HP is common. 8 is enough to pull you nicely, If you don't make the kart weigh a ton.
Look into a "Torque-a-verter" Northern used to carry them. It's a double pulley and belt system. At engine idle there is no pull, as RPM increases the pulleys come together. Faster you go, the more the pulleys swap sizes. Generally 3.5 to 1 to start and better than 1-1 high end. Basically a variable speed automatic transmission. Eliminates the need for a clutch.
We have built several. Find the locat Kart club and ask around. Racing karts become obsolete. We have gottem them for free. Lots of good steering parts, hydraulic disc brakes, carrier bearings, etc.
Here's my sons last creation. 8 HP, Torque A Verter, hydraulic disc brakes, Scary fast.

 

mostly52f1




My dad built this go-cart, and mounted a ( G.E. street light ) for the body, because he

worked at G.E. lighting ! We used to take it to a go-cart track that had an oval track

he would give the lady that owned it a few buck so I could do some hot laps ! Pretty

FUN times !


https://www.ford-trucks.com/user_gal...&albumid=20741



https://www.ford-trucks.com/user_gal...107499&width=2



Wally Womack

 

That reminded me, the first motor we used was from a gasoline engine powered washing machine, it had a pedal starter you stepped on to start it! It didn't have enough power to start off without a push, so we soon replaced it with one from a lawn mower.
The variable speed pulley system is used in snow mobiles and ski dos.

 

Here's a good site for plans:
Free Go Kart Plans
They actually don't try to sell you anything.

 

don't remember the frame on mine, been too long, but I do remember the twin homelite chainsaw engines.. we had centrifugal force clutches. as the RPM increased the central part expanded to clamp against the outer shell which had the drive chain gear on it..

I do remember the wicked fast tho..

Sam

 

Back in "72 I built a cart with a honda 305 scrambler engine, It was a blast. had the trans and everything in one package. I have a 550 that I could send you ( 4cyl, 5 speed ) LOL.
I've got a cart in the shop that I bought for the grandkids, I'll take some pics and get them on here, it has a 8hp w/ the converter that you might like.

RICH

 

Craigslist is full of minibikes and go-karts, rolling frames or complete. Cheaper than building one, or a good head start. The chinese are pumping them out like crazy, so caveat emptor as far as welds etc.

When I was 17 I wanted a kart because we lived in a fairly rural area, and there was an abandoned rent-a-kart track I could use. For $75 I got a pro-made frame with slicks and disc brake, with a MAC-7 engine, a 2-stroke ported engine that put out almost nothing until 5,000 RPM. From there on it was (literally) a chainsaw engine, man what a ride!!

Check YouTube for shifter kart movies, I really really want to do that someday! Make a street legal one with a Sportster engine and full body...

 

Shifter Karts are wicked fast! They are usually the quickest class we race with.