I've been wondering how to make the pedals and seat. The problem is that my kids are 9 and 6. My daughter is a tall 9. Very tall. So tall that there's no hope of her and the boy sharing the kart without some sort of adjustment in the pedals and/or seat. In previous photos there's been a sort of semi-completed seat (that frame sticking up with the diagonal brace):
Unfortunately, that seat was too far forward and too upright. Also the steering wheel ended up too low. Actually, might have been OK for the 6 year old lad, but no good for the daughter. So begins the challenge of making stuff adjustable.
So first is to relocate the seat further back and reclined some more. This will represent it's third incarnation. It's been even more upright before. I had also put the second diagonal brace in as an X shape behind the seat, so cutting this all off and having to reweld it all was a massive annoyance:
However, it's in. The completed X frame, two extra verticals behind it, a horizontal brace just below where the X crosses, and the seat frame is very sturdy. Because it's had to be moved back, it's meant that the petrol tank that usually sits on top of the engine can't live there anymore, and that's mean that I've had to make another bracket system for that that sits above where the X crosses. Perhaps a better pic of that next time. The bracket for the mounting of the brake caliper can also be seen. It goes from the floor of the kart to the horizontal brace.
The steering needed to be made adjustable too. It's not finished but here's the current state of it:
It's currently in the 'up' position. It can drop a couple of inches from here. Needs a good tidy up and a little extra bracing at the front, but other than that, it's done.
So, onto the pedals. This was a good deal more involved.
Needed to make a spindle onto which the pedals can rotate. I wanted to make a thread on each end so that I can put a lock nut on each end to hold the whole thing together. The bar is 13mm, and so the nearest metric thread is M12 (12mm), so need to turn it down by 1mm. Onto the lathe:
Then need some bracketry made up. I also added the two tubes that the bracket is now sitting on:
The idea is that the pedals are in their own sub-assembly that bolts to the main chassis. There's an angle that locates the sub assembly onto the two tubes. Spindle is there in this shot, however, I might end up with R clips and not lock nuts. We'll see. Next make some pedals:
This is from the front, so throttle pedal is on the left. I used two different designs for the pedals, and i prefer the brake. So the throttle may get modified. The aluminium spacers can be seen too. The pedals fit nice and snug on them. Made the spacers on the lathe:
Then I realised that to actuate the brake, but have the whole thing adjustable still, that the brake master cylinder needs to be mounted where the pedals are. So that was next up:
This arrangement was a bit trial and error. The master cylinder is sitting above a piece of the same box section the chassis is made of, the two mounts are welded to that, and it is also welded to the pedal bracket. It wasn't strong enough like that, so the extra piece of bar was welded in alongside:
Lots of little finishing up things to do on it (there's a linkage between brake pedal and cylinder to make, for example), but it's getting there. The pedal thing has taken probably 8 hours (including my usual 'putting stuff down and forgetting where' time wasted....)
