a.craw4d

Nice power plant choice One thing I've found with these is they need full right foot to get moving. Once up to speed however they have a little power on hand. Good to start on flat hard ground then hit the rough stuff with full commitment.

Cool bike. There's a good thread on fuel tank cleaning on here. I had great success with a shitty old cheap battery charger and baking soda on Briggs and Stratton fuel tank. It had sat empty for 30+ years.

Still to get some action pics and video but took this up to the local school with the kids the other day. Bad news: The boy isn't too keen to try it yet. He's a cautious type but once he's ready I'll have trouble getting him off it. Good news: I had a blast hooning around the asphalt. Has fairly good traction even on the hard tires. Bum got a bit saw sitting on the bars (I don't fit comfortable with the seat in) and started getting a hot back due to the exhaust being almost against the back. So a heat shield and more hooning required I downloaded a GPS speedo app to clock this. It's no power house but can do a donut, skids and feels fast. Ticking all the boxes.

Boring but important update. Extended the wires and mounted the kill switch on the handle bar. Quick test in the workshop and works fine, just hoping for a nice day over easter to take it for a good long spin.

Not sure if a seat belt is a good idea or not on this, hadn't considered it until now. It has a half cage (lower half) to roughly keep you in place

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys. OS seal of approval means a lot. Hope to get some footage of it in action this weekend. There's a school just up the road we'll go play at. This will be nowhere as fast as yours Bart, I'm guessing 30-35kmh? Enough for a laugh, more than enough for the kids (for now).

In my head it's an awesome video with multiple camera angles including front and rear mounted go pros, tyres squeal over a 2 stroke soundtrack and a getaway through the carpark, round a corner and up ramps into the back of a van. Reality would be a horrendous crash in the isle of value damaging product, customers and myself. Kart impounded and me in court on multiple charges including grievous bodily harm. And the kids still waiting for their turn.

Oh the fun of a high speed trip through pak n save without getting caught. Kids don't need to know that idea.

The boy has asked if we can take it shopping

Also fixed up the rubbing front wheel issue by chucking some blobs of weld on the steering bracket. I found when the wheel rubbed it actually locked up and aided spinning out. Was fun but not all the time.

How it looks almost ready to rumble / ring-a-ding. That little red bit by the tank is the kill switch. Just need to extend the wires to mount it on the handle bar and fix the earth.

While testing it with the dodgy hand throttle I broke the earth wire and was unable to turn it off. Turned off the fuel and let it run out. This was good though as it stopped my endless testing and I got back onto finishing it. As mentioned earlier the accelerator cable is quite short, it reaches to just beside the seat on the right hand side. Plan is to tie it off there with an old bike cable bracket, link it to a bar that runs down the side and hooks onto the accelerator pedal somehow. Was rather proud of my cable to bar link, drill a couple holes and two hacksaw cuts Probably can't see it very well in the pic. Also hand a blow out on my jandles so had to put on the safety bare feet. Welded a couple of nuts to the basket for the bar to slide through and poked it through a hole on the pedal. Will see how this works, I do have my doubt's but we'll see.

You're welcome. What can possibly go wrong? (Enter drunk antics with a motorized shopping trolley). Lol at the potato sack race suits, Also get one of those kids helmets that look like a water melon. Other option is dress them as Randy Campbell.

That's cool mate, good job. Make some smaller scale one's for the kids and go on a family ride. All with matt black helmets of course. Would be lol and get so much attention.

Thanks mate. Yeah I googled shopping trolley go karts before I started this and there were some very average looking ones. The best looking seemed to be set up more like a bar stool racer, with the motor inside the basket part and the seat on top of it. I wanted it to look as much like a shopping trolley as I could so kept the wheel base snug. Also since it's for the kids they can easily sit inside the basket. I'm a small person and can fit comfortable without the seat. Next time you're at the supermarket, jump in one to see There is an older build thread on here with the bar stool type setup but most of the pics are now gone.

Pictureless update. On the noise issue I was mucking around with a piece of tube in the workshop with little miss 3. She found a small pipe with dry mud stuck up it so got a screwdriver and started cleaning it out. It's good when she's occupied. Anyway I blocked one end and drilled a few holes in an attempt to make a silencer. Half hour later I get it done, start the kart and jam it in to test. Quietens it down a little, that'll do. Miss 3 has her piece cleaned out by this stage and says "try mine daddy". Turns out her idea worked much better. Lesson learnt- Keep it simple.

Might do something about that if it becomes an issue, That has been shortened about 150mm. The accelerator cable is quite short so need to work out a linkage of some sort to the pedal. In the mean time a spare bike brake lever fits on the end, stick my thumb through the handle bar hole and I have a hand throttle so long as I keep my hand by my side and steer 1 handed. Kids aren't keen to drive like this which is fair enough, move your hand the wrong way and it starts revving. So I had a hoon with the kids trying to chase on foot, can get up a fair amount of speed in the back yard, managed to spin out = happy Dad Couple of little problems; 1 It is quite loud. 2 It needs a chain gaurd so it doesn't flick oily shit up my back.

While on the search for a fuel tank I remembered the old Briggs from my rotary hoe so stole the tank from that. At this stage I got distracted by Chris's thread on rust removal in a fuel tank. I derusted the inside of the tank, the lid, an old spanner I dug up and a few other useless things because it was fun . Got back on track and welded the tank bracket on. My boy wanted to fit it all so let him go to town on it. He fitted the exhaust, motor and tank all himself :). It took a while to track down an 8mm chain link but found one and chucked it on when he was at school. Put some old gas in it and it actually started too, sitting in it using two hands to pull the throttle cable it easily moved me across the lawn so everythings going well so far.

So after a lot of down hill testing while the kids were in bed I thought it was time to focus and chuck the motor on. After thinking how I'd mount the motor out back I was having trouble working out how I'd brace the mount as the axil was right in the way. I finally decided to dig out the motor to see what I was working with. Oh that's right, it's the size and weight of a jandle. More than strong enough. Next up the exhaust had a big bow in the flange where it bolts to the motor, had no gasket material so pulled it off to file it flat and found this. Bit more manual die grinding with a file. While I was at it I cut the tiny little exhaust tip off and replaced it with a piece matching the rest of the pipe. Don't know if 2 smokes like this or not but the boy racer urges were in charge at that point.

Ha I had to google what that was. Ackerman angles seem to be good enough for me. I went with aggressive castor based on other go kart builds as it lifts the inside rear wheel. My quad has none so when you turn, the rear wheels are still firmly planted and just keep pushing you straight. Anyway this is getting too technical for a shopping trolley. Needs to go, stop, do skids and blow smoke.

The castor REALLY helps with turning, Am learning lots from this build and am going to modify the front of my quad so it doesn't have a 6m turning circle.

Thanks mate. Yeah with limited scrap steel laying around I got creative with 8mm round bar and one of the suspension brackets off the donor quad frame. Also cable operated disc so nothing high tech about it

So I welded the basket on so it took up less space in the workshop. Had a play around with some spare bike parts and scrap steel and came up with this simple foot brake setup. Sorry for the shit pic but hope you can make sense of it. Originally tacked the pedal in and tested it in the back yard, Tightened up the cable, tested again then proceeded to forget it was only tacked in place. Cue 11pm test down a step Dunedin street with hard / slippery rear tyres. Luckily I chickened out of doing the whole street length and tried pulling into the driveway sideways to wash off some speed. Once in the drive the tacks broke and the letter box stopped me. I avoided certain death and just smashed my knees into the handle bars. Letter box and trolley survived unscathed.

Big thanks to Joe and Bart for some better tyres and to Carl the OS courier for personal flying some down to me. Fitted the best to the front and left the old hard ones on the back for better skids, for now. Anyway the front inside tyre now rubs and locks up on full lock, will sort that later if it doesn't sort itself. (That's my mini quad in the background, similar to the donor for this kart. The boy is planning races once finished )

Chucked the basket on to see how it sits. That's an ex Carisbrook seat so a bit of Dunedin nostalgia right there.