All wrapped up. . . . . mostly

Took it out for a test drive. It goes pretty good. This is what it's really all about. I say mostly because of course I want it to go FASTER! But, the next project should move pretty good.

We've picked up this little Honda xr80 and I whipped out a rough draft of a basic chassis. Time to do some lay out and design.

Thank you That will be all.

Oh SNAP! EEETZ ALIVE! Muahahahahahaha

So there she is, Pretty much all put together. Yeah yeah. the head's not on there. But it will be soon enough. Fuel tank all cleaned out. carb all put together. I forgot to document how all the linkages were hooked up before I took it all apart but we figured it out. 

Oh Look at that blurry terrible picture of the Hot gasoline burning goodness. all that and it RUNS! YAY. too late for a test drive when I took that picture. But it needed throttle control at this point anyway. How do you speed up if you cant control the throttle ;-) And you see that right there. I told you the head'd be bolted down soon enough :D

Alright. Check that bitch out. All put together after a test spin around the block. It goes pretty good. and I may just leave those bars on the front. they make for a pretty good handle for turning this thing around and junk. just hit em with some black. There are some final adjustments. We need to finish the paint details, and I need to get some locktite on a few screws. The cover for the fuel pump diaphragm screws back out a little and cause a leak spraying on the muffler. That is not a good thing. But an easy fix. The whole rear axle re-config is going to be quite a bit of a project. But, I will have more control of the gear ratio and speed of the cart doing proper math with known values :D besides that drive belt is not in the greatest shape. All the parts for the new setup look like they are pushing around $160 or so. not too bad. but it can wait. 

 Front rear and side view go kart porn for ya'll.


Cheers.

Moar kart love

Well we got the gaskets and junk, But didn't get a chance to put it all back together. So. I took some time to do some initial painting. Damn, the boy picked a good color. Now what to do about those green wheels :D a little chop is in order for the front. those bars sticking out are going to be cut, and welded into a front end support. I learned a valuable lesson tho. I used some lacquer thinner to get some stickers off for paint prep but didn't realize I didn't get it all cleaned off. so the bottom of the seat pan has some VERY sad fiberglass. Meh, no biggie. We have some more details to paint on and a finish coat. not my best paint job ever. but that blue is pretty. Hopefully we can get this puppy running tonight. The front tires sit wider then they did before. The hack job we did for the back tires makes it drivable but alas. thats just not quite right. New tires wheels and drive set up are in order for a later date.


Cheers!

Go kart part deux!

Well now, I was bested by that damn wheel. I created a custom tool that I thought would do the trick but alas. The tire would not stretch. . . at least without some kind of tire machine I have never seen. AH HA! my roommate had a fabulous idea. "why not take the one from the other side and move it. then just find one that's the same size for the free wheel?" Pft, that's WAY not overly in depth or complex. No wonder I didn't think of it. :D

Alright then, so off to the hardware/small engine repair/tire place/napa/equipment repair place. .. . . . Yeah. I'm looking for a tire and or wheel 12" overall diameter, ~3.5 wide with room for a 3/4 axle and said bearings. All measurements written down, one of the wheel bearings in pocket to see if at least the races will work.




NOBODY HAD ANYTHING :( Ok. so its like new 13"+ tires and wheels and a WHOLE lot of fab work I really don't want to do. Or, 10" hand truck wheels and hope there is clearance for the drive wheel pulley. I opted for the 10s, the bearing race fit my existing bearings so no biggie. I got 2 so both sides at least have the same size tires. Oh. . . will you look at that. Maybe 1/32" of clearance to the ground. This will not do. not even for like a perfect tarmac. Ooooh. the front wheels are 11" that may work. That gets me an extra inch or so of clearance. better then ripping the drive system up on a pebble.

Moved the fancy new wheels to the front. They do look nice. prettiest part so far had to remove some of the washers on the spindle. nice and smooth. We got the free wheel all mounted and set up. These old tires are in pretty rough shape. But we are going to run out of  weather pretty soon. test fit looks alright. Now to modify the drive setup quite a bit.

It started with "lets just wedge the wheel against the pully" I thought that may be enough if it was all tight enough together to act as a cohesive unit. Aww. I need about a half inch more on the axle. Well. lets cut the old mounting pieces off the pully. The old wheel had like fins on the back that slid into notches on the pully. since we are unable to use the old wheels now. we improvised. Oh. there are some bushings between the brake drum and the pully all bolted together . . . . . WAIT just one second .. . . . .The pully and break drum are connected with 6 bolts. . . . . the wheel is a 2 piece. a 4 bolt pattern towards the center and at about the same radius as the bolts on the pully/brake drum 6 more bolts (DING!) Yeah, we will just make 1 piece.

some futzing around with put it on, take it off look at it, measure it, put it on, check it, think think think and BA BAM! thats what we'll do. cut the whole funkey fin/slot things off and create a shim of some sort to add some support between the outside of the pully and the inside of the pully. Its a strange beast. like a timing belt. flat and notched more like a chain only its a belt. and now there are HUGE holes between the part that the belt rides and the section that bolts to the brake drum.

Solution. PLY WOOD. some creative (and fabulous I might add) tinkering ensued. what we devised was what looks a lot like a brake rotor. Only its wood and has holes strategically placed for various bits. Well really I just traced them off the parts. But it bolted up nicely and sits right where it should. Next step is to pick up some longer bolts to mount the drive/brake assembly to the actual wheel. some more creative measuring and we got the numbers we need.

Now I am no engineer. I'm a tinkerer. But I do know if the torque is spread across 6 or even better 8 points then you run a far less risk of something just sheering off. . . . I think. I really should have paid more attention in math and science class :D

But all in all Its shaping up. We have the wheels all (mostly) ready to go. Gaskets and carb rebuild kit will be here early next week. I expect by next weekend to have it all back together and ready for paint/finish. get the seat back in and take it for a test spin. More fab pictures at the bottom. I must say I have never seen such amazing skill on a table saw :D

I believe the smaller wheels will reduce the overall speed of the kart, but will allow a snappier low end off the line hop.

Well that's it for now. Its late. I really should be in bed already. But oh well :D

Two little bushings that were between the pulley and break drum. All the junk slot things removed. 

 Notching for plastic-ey pieces on the back side. You can kind of see them above.

The pieces as they begin their metamorphosis.

 The brake drum / shim / pulley assembly ready to test fit.

 Not quite a good fit. The brake band mounting bracket was rubbing. I told you it was sexy table saw work.

All the pieces mostly done. Last test fit. Still needed to fasten the outer part of the pulley to the wood shim for strength.

Final test fit for all the bits. Really not much clearance at all. But at 30 psi these tires are pretty hard and note the centrifugal clutch up there. its not an off roader. 

Better view of how the brake / drive / wheel assembly goes. the tire should be sitting farther to the left. New bolts and bushings to pick up tomorrow. Maybe I'll edit this post if i get everything cookin with the drive system.

Okay, Now its really bed time. Thanks a ton for checking it out. 

Go-kart project

Yeah, I have a million projects. This one has been sitting for a while now. It didn't run right when we got it and the left rear tire had a leak. The previous owner let me know there was a bad diaphragm in the Carb so I pulled the fuel pump cover off and it wasn't bad it was toast. Needless to say, I didn't take pictures before I started taking things apart. Oh well :D Here we have the chassis with the damn wheel removed. Thats a whole new ball of wax I realized. I have swapped many a tire but this plastic wheel makes things more difficult.

Here is a side view. Nice steering assembly. the tires are all pretty worn. the front are not too bad. They are a little loose where they mount to the um . . . brain fart. the part that they attach too. yeah. We'll get them pulled off, greased up and happy. You can almost see that damn wheel behind the blue thing on the bottom left. Oh how I curse that wheel!

AH HA!

I think I may have figured out a solution to the wheel funk! YAY, Its time to build a custom tool just for that damn tire. should be easy enough. Its like a reverse spin off of the bar from a tire machine. Using the inside of the wheel as the fulcrum instead of the tire machine! Pics to follow. if it  works anyway

This is a fairly good pic of what it "should" look like. This one is missing the spoiler that goes over the engine. As you can see is an F1 style racer. There's that God forsaken wheel right there. the grey and white. One of the front wing things was broke off of ours. I decided on a bold move and put on my body work hat for some quick modifications

So this is a better example. It really took some digging to find it. You can see the spoiler and the way the front fin things are set up. and again. that mother fucking wheel. Oh how I hate that bitch. I ended up cutting the old tire off and patching the tube. Now we have a good patched tube and a brand new tire that I can't for the life of me get back on the damn wheel. Looks like we may do some fabrication for a new drive/wheel assembly and replace it with something actually maintainable. 

I cut that bitch off and filled it. It actually looks pretty good. I slapped a quick coat of paint on it to check my sanding and discovered a few cracks in the fiberglass. Not a big deal. they can be fixed up easy enough. Didn't turn out too bad if you ask me. I wouldn't call it finished by far. there are still some pits in the bondo that need some glazing putty, but for a kids go-kart. . . Yeah its fine :D

See the pits right there :D Meh, whatever. no biggie. the gloss black I had laying around really shows the cracks nicely so getting them fixored should be easy enough. Im going to get all the prep work done and let the kiddos paint this bad chicken. I think sanding on the fiber glass is not a good idea for them.

All the body pieces hanging out. that spoiler is going to be a real PITA to sand and prep. But I have painted worse :D

Me and the boy went shopping for bits and pieces so I decided we'd pick up some paint. He picked that nice blue color. Looks pretty good. with the black tester paint I got an idea so masked out a stripe up the body like so, and hit it with some of the blue to see how it'd look. Not bad. Now time to wait for the engine parts, and get as much other junk done as we can. That tire/wheel/drive assembly is going to be a good challenge. I believe it will be a lot of fun designing and building the pieces with the kids. 

Well That's it for now. As we progress I will post updates. If you haven't noticed yet I'm a fairly eclectic individual. Those of you that know me understand all too well my tangents. Thanks for stopping in, Cheers and see you all later.

Just a musical interlude

This is a little ditty I came up with. In an effort to try and avoid stagnation Here you go.

http://www.box.net/shared/9doceqrtefmgs55dc5nl

Oh This one is sexy

 

So I found a new one and decided to let you all in on the process. Taking all the pictures seems to have slowed down the work flow. But in an effort to be thorough I figured you would all enjoy it. I must give credit where credit is due. Surfing the internets I stumbled across this. Check it out! This looks like an OUTSTANDING full size model, and by full size I mean FUCKING HUGE! It is 28 full pages, and what I have done here is scale it down to fit 16 pages per sheet printed. Its still pretty good size (compared to the other teeny tiny things) But I believe it will present quite the challenge.


So this is the cover sheet. Yeah that's supposed to be 1 8.5"x11" page. So You can see this is going to be an adventure.

So When you have a lot of pieces its best to separate them out a little. Yeah I made the directions teeny too. The directions are really just an exploded view with labels for each piece. and HOLY SHIT some of these are WAY small. Lets do this shit!

These are the pieces I am going to focus on first. These are the Bulk of the wing/airfoil section. The large parts are the top and bottom. Well . . . actually there are 2 other pieces almost identical under the pieces in the top left. The brown stripe parts are the leading edge of the wings. The black arrow looking things are trim for the inside of the U shape on the wing. There is also a little baffle piece that goes on the end that separates the airfoil part from the control surface. So, 5 pieces total. Lets get to it.

This is the schematic of the part we are putting together first. Its not much. See the pieces over there almost dead center of the image?




                             Right there  ------------------>

We cut out the pieces with our trusty SHARP knife. sharp is important or you get little fuzz and the edges don't look quite right. Plus when you try and pull the pieces apart you risk tearing the paper which makes for sad kittens and an over worked printer.

Once the pieces are cut out we want to score the fold lines. This is an important step for getting a nice crisp fold.  For these little guys I find a paperclip works great. its not too sharp to cut the paper if you're careful. For larger models a dried ball point pen works wonders. I have tried toothpicks but they just mush.

All the pieces for one side cut out and ready to go. Notice the leading edge piece is not folded. There is a reason for that we shall get to shortly. Also note, bottom left of the picture. There's the little baffle piece I was telling you about.

Here are the first pieces glued. Left: That's the leading edge piece. Center: Rolled around the toothpick to give us a nice curve. Right: Glued to the top. -Note- I changed up the order I glued the parts to the second one. It was a real bitch this way towards the final attachments.

That piece right there on the left was the real killer. Thats the long skinny thing. See the baffle thing up there. YAY. and the trailing edge just gets a little glue along the edge and a quick pinch.

This is the final product for one side. A few lessons learned with this first part. 1. Glue the little arrow thing on first. (see below). 2. Taking pictures while you're building really cuts into the time it takes. Maybe I should just build and ask someone else to take pictures. 

Gluing that bad chicken on first I think will make things a TON easier. It was sure easier to get it on there without trying to squeeze it in between the top and bottom piece.

Cheers and thats it for now. Im going to just build the second side and document the other pieces as I go along. Thanks for stopping by.

Here's the dealie yo

So I have decided to begin chronicling some of the crap I make. This right here is some junk I've made. These are some teeny tiny little airplanes I got from fiddlersgreen.net now mind you. Some of those I downloaded YEARS ago. for what's available for free check this out. Yeah they are tiny but Oh so much fun to make.

Well, That's it for this post. I believe I will document the next one I do and put it on here for sharing the process :D