Go-Kart again...

Below is where we left it last. I've done one half of the side rail, done the lower part of the chassis, and got the axle in and squared up.

And this is it now. Both halves done, front bumpers on, engine sitting on steel where it should sit (not  mounted up yet - going to work out how to do the rear sprocket on it before I can do that).

You can see that the wall behind the kart has gained a few more bits and bobs hanging up. The far right is the cheap & cheerful ebay welding lid I was using. I had to give up on this. I was moaning in the last post about my welding, and truth be told, I was getting the arc-eye thing where you close your eyes and see the bright spot of light even after finishing welding. So. The black thing in the middle above the swanson square is an Esab Sentinel A50 welding helmet. Can't recommend it enough. Where I was blind, now I can see!

And you can see the result below. Last time I didn't dare show the welds I did, this one, I'm almost proud of. I can see the welding puddle moving and I can now see how people talk about controlling it. With the cheapo ebay lid, I couldn't see a damn thing - i was mostly running on guesswork. So, if you want a welding lid, I'm sorry, but for your eyes sake, and your welds sake, you can't go cheap...

I decided to fit a centre bearing for the axle - it's quite wide, and I don't want it to whip.

The sort of post in the middle in the below pic is to mount the steering on.

So we think this is roughly how it's going to end up. But with front wheels and everything....

View from the side - the seat leans too far back. Although a good position for driving, I am going to make a steel and wood seat and cover it with memory foam and have a layer of motorcycle seat vinyl covering. I'll make the back higher too, for more support.

I'm getting to the stage where I really need my lathe working to make wheel hubs and steering bosses and so on....

More Go-Kart

I got the partly-done chassis out and laid it on the floor. The wheelbase is planned to be 1300mm. I'm not sure about the size of the rear wheels. They might be too big! If they are, then I have in mind another project for them....

Here I've got the chassis up on one of the sides - I'm trying to sort out the welds. I'm really not great at welding (yet). I'm so worried about not doing proper penetration that I end up blowing through. Actually, the other thing that contributes is that I don't weld fast enough. I'm trying to do lovely looking welds with that kind of 'overlap' pattern. It slows me down, and either pushes too much wire into the joint, which ends up piled up on the weld (molten, but the welds are high), or blow through, because I'm there on the weld too long and it gets too hot. Where I feel I'm rushing the job actually end up being better welds.

Here I've got the 2nd rail on the chassis, and the triangulation in. Also you can see the axle going across the kart running in the two bearings. The far one in this pic is welded in properly, the near just on one edge. The axle is EN8 steel.

This is just the view from the other side.

Although week by week, the progress is slow, I feel like it's going well - it probably adds up to 8 hours of work so far, which I'm pleased with as I am having to work this out as I go. I am probably as good an advert for properly planning and drawing (perhaps in some CAD package) as any!

Off Road Go-Kart

And for my next trick.....

I'm going to build an off-road go-kart. I started with the small bits. These are the bearing the rear axle will run in. The idea is that they'll be attached to the angle steel, which will provide a surface to attach to the chassis rails. The chassis will have two  rails for strength and safety, so these will fit between them.

I've got one of those Rage Evolution saws that cuts metal. It doesn't spark, but it does fling chips. Best to be wearing googles and ear defenders.

Clamping and marking up for the holes. It's quite important that this is right, and that the two axle bearers are the same, because it's this that's defining how far apart the rails are, and it's preferable for that to be the same both sides. Turns out to be 118mm as the distance. I am kind of making this up as I go along....

That's them both made. Time to mock it up a bit and see....

The front is important, because obviously the front wheels need to turn side to side to steer. So the chassis has to be narrower here than the rear, but the front wheels need to stick out about the same as the rear, or at least the same or narrower. Looks weird with a wider front track to rear.

Here I've clamped the axles bearers to the bench. The bench is 900mm wide, which is what I'm going to make the go-kart frame. It might be wider than ideal, but what the heck.

Here I've cut the two chassis rails and set them parallel to each other and clamped them. The brace beetween them is held by welding magnets. These hold steel at various angles, most commonly 90deg.

Here's as far as I got today. I've welded up a few of the ladder cross braces, and added some triangulation to stop lozenging. You can see the rail is cut at an angle (see, just behind the wheel), that's to bring the frame in for the steering.

And mocked up once more. I think it's too long in the rear. But we'll see. If I end up having to cut bits out I've already done, it will be a bit of a blow, but these are the breaks - I've not done this before.

I really need to do the front to see where everything will end up. I think it's best to work from the front backwards, but of course I didn't. I'll probably change tack now....

Really, for much more progress, I need my lathe back in action, but I can keep on with the frame a bit more.

If you like lathes, mine's here. Our last house had 3 phase electricity. This one doesn't. So I need an inverter, and some time to mess about with getting the motor out of my lathe. Not looking forward to that - it weighs about 600kg, and is against a wall. And the motor's at floor level, by the wall. Fun.

Zip Wire

With the kids getting bigger, I thought they might like a zip wire. We're fortunate enough to have a part of the garden that has a few trees off to the side of the main grass area, so I selected a large willow tree and off we went:

This is the tower for launch...

And up..

And up some more...

Needed to get an arch together so that it would do for  the landing zone....

This is about as far as the tower got...

But we got the cable up

And figured out a retrieval system so that you could wind the trolley  and seat arrangement back once you'd slid down...

Unfortunately, our neighbours, who'd not noticed all the building of zip wires apparently up to this point suddenly did. And decided they didn't like the look of the tower. You could see into their garden from the top of it, so that wasn't ideal. Long story short, the lot had to come down.

So part deux, more holes, more concrete, more cable, more digger hire, more timber, more rope. It's bloody expensive the first time, and although not quite double to do it twice, it wasn't far off. That'll teach me I suppose.

Make some foundations, get the tower partially broken down, and get a digger:

That tower weighs an awful lot. Tipped the digger aa couple of times. 3.5 tonne digger. And that's only the bottom and next floor

Then we had to put the top floor back on. Because I'd needed to take a chainsaw to the tower to get it to pieces, it took a fair bit of rebuilding to get it back to being one tower again.

Then it needed a sort of outrigger for the launch platform because the branch we were using for the line didn't go over the platform properly. I don't like heights, so bit of squeaky bum time building that. There are two removable planks so you can get the zip wire seat up there.

You can get something of an idea of the scale of it from this pic. The arch for the landing zone has now been moved, is facing the other way, and a new cable is back up.

You can see the attachment of the cable in this shot - heavy duty turnbuckle too. Not sure what the breaking strain of the cable is - it's about 9.5kN I think. Plenty in  any case. - 12mm steel cable.


Anyway, in action, it looks like this (the orange lines are to retrieve the zip line post slide):

I was in my best clothes for this one....