[Kartbuilding] wooden chassis fibreglass kart

[Stephen Burke]

Hi Rob,

You seem to know what you want to do regarding the kart. I would be a 
little weary/cautious of achieving the speeds you mention. You are going 
to have to give a lot of thought to the bearings, axles and steering of 
the kart. There wont be much room for error. Also, if you are going down 
the wooden spaceframe chassis path, you need to make sure that you do 
everything properly. I cant even recommend or say of anyone who has made a 
wooden kart chassis from wood and for it to achieve 60+mph. However if you 
are still going ahead, I would suggest using a hardwood (teak or ash) for 
the chassis with all joints glued and assembled properly.

I wouldn't worry too much about the fiberglass at this stage. I think it 
would be more critical figuring out the drive, axles, bearings and 
steering. The chassis is going to need a lot of time. As for blueprints, 
you are going to have to get a pencil and paper and sketch out various 
designs yourself. Again the following page has links to two chassis design 
pages which should help:
http://lists.kartbuilding.net/2008-May/000556.html
There is more information regarding space frame design, however I dont 
have the material in electronic format.

I suggest you google for off-road karts with the theme you are looking for 
and go from there. Once you have your initial chassis shape and layout, 
you can take things from there.

Best of luck,
-steve


On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, robyn young wrote:

> hey my name is rob and i hope you can help me. i am going to build a kart
> using a wooden chassis and a 125cc powervalve motorbike engine. the kart is
> going to be relatively big as i am going to make it look like a hotrod and
> would need to fit an adult. if u could give me suggestions or draw me up a
> blueprint for the fibreglass shell/body it would be great. i also need some
> help with how to fit a starter motor and the accelorator mechanism. the kart
> will be fast and have a top speed of between 60 and 80mph (the engine in the
> motorbike has a top speed of 115mph and 0-60 time of 8sec). The chassis i
> will be making from wood will not be crude and will be a sort of space frame
> design with many struts. i will put a fibreglass floorpan over the chassis.
> i hope you can help and thanks for taking the time to read this
>