Apocalyptic    Kart    Creation
 

This site is intended to either help or give ideas to anyone that maybe contemplating building a go kart for off road use or whatever. I have been inspired to produce this site as a result of not being able to find many people in England that are keen off-road kart builders (or perhaps I'm just crap at looking for sites). One of the sites that I have found very useful is Chris & Teds site. Here is a site that has had much effort placed into it, as well as a lot of engineering to build their karts. 

My idea of building a kart all started back in winter 2000, when I thought it would be a damn fun thing to have a fast off-road kart with large tyres to blitz around my farmyard. Not being satisfied with larried up mobiles (see key for translation), I was looking for a mobile on which i did not have to pay any tax or insurance, as I am a lame ass student with nothing more to do than get mashed at the weekend and spend the remainder of the week trying to grow tomatoes. Anyway, back to the kart. I would like to point out at this moment that I am not a qualified mechanic or anything, nor have I any major skills when it comes to metal working or go kart production. This is therefore important to note as anyone with a reasonable amount of knowledge about working on cars etc, can construct a perfectly enjoyable bundle of fat fast metal that makes noise. However I am lucky in the way that I know people who can carry out specialised engineering work for me. My main inspiration to build one was a petrol water pump that I found in the shed. It was only a 50cc 4-stroke, and rather old and decrepit, but I thought it may be worth a try. Anyway to cut a long story short I got hold of a frame and started to contemplate what I was going to do. Basically I spent most of the beginning of 2001 just thinking about what engine I would really have to use to make an off-road kart really fun and bloody fast. I decided that a minimum of 8hp would be required, and ideally a centrifugal clutch, as this would save a lot of time and money looking for some sort of gearbox. I basically planned the kart as I built it, apart from the frame, which I designed with help from looking at designs on the internet.

 

The engine I chose, or rather came across, was a 125cc Piaggio 4-stroke moped engine. I purchased a whole scooter; a Piaggio Sfera model for £40 second hand. I got all the brakes and accessories with the bike which meant I did not have to buy much more in the way of engine parts etc. After I tested out the speed of the bike and found it to be very quick, I stripped the bike down and removed the engine. Basically, on a scooter the driving wheel is driven via an output shaft from a metal casted "bar" at the back of the bike. In this "bar" are all the torque converters required to give the bike excellent acceleration as well as a good top end (aprox.60mph).

To mount the engine on a frame was going to be difficult, and at first I tried to make it fit onto the frame that I had been given. 

The frame was not matched to the size of the engine therefore I needed to make another frame from scratch. To see how I built this frame, please go to the building section.

I have recently added a forum (15th August 2001) to enable all vistors to leave their advice/criticisms/regrets etc. To go to the forum please click here.