hugowan
New member
Hello, I’m starting a kart project and would like to get some feedback from you guys. I’ve searched extensively in the forum before posting this.
Recently got from a scrapyard a 13hp Honda clone for about $30 dlls. It seemed to be reconstructable, ugly and dirty but easy on the starter so I jumped in. This is how it looked.
As you can see it came from a generator and not surprise: took off the armature to find the shaft to be tapered and about 1 ½” long. I was kind of frustrated after reading a lot of topics in the forum about the difficulty of working with tapered shafts, and after some days I started to accept that my $30 bucks engine was of no use for a kart.
Last weekend I had nothing to do and decided to strip the armature just to see how is it done. Took me about 3 hours! to deal with the mess of cooper wire and metal plates but finally I found that the core of this thing is a 6” long metal bar, 7/8” thick, with an end that perfectly matches the tapered angle of the shaft:
Then I started to figure out that this bar could be shortened to maybe 4” and machined to achieve a diameter of ¾” that match the thickness needed for a cent clutch [key included] and use it as an adapter for the tapered shaft since is the same piece that was attatched to it from the beginning.
My concern here is, how to lock the “adapter” to avoid it slip on the shaft when spinning the axle…? There is no locking key, just a longitudinal bolt that goes screwed to the shaft. I’ll ask the guy in the machining shop what does he think but if any of you have feedback it will be appreciated.
Recently got from a scrapyard a 13hp Honda clone for about $30 dlls. It seemed to be reconstructable, ugly and dirty but easy on the starter so I jumped in. This is how it looked.
As you can see it came from a generator and not surprise: took off the armature to find the shaft to be tapered and about 1 ½” long. I was kind of frustrated after reading a lot of topics in the forum about the difficulty of working with tapered shafts, and after some days I started to accept that my $30 bucks engine was of no use for a kart.
Last weekend I had nothing to do and decided to strip the armature just to see how is it done. Took me about 3 hours! to deal with the mess of cooper wire and metal plates but finally I found that the core of this thing is a 6” long metal bar, 7/8” thick, with an end that perfectly matches the tapered angle of the shaft:
Then I started to figure out that this bar could be shortened to maybe 4” and machined to achieve a diameter of ¾” that match the thickness needed for a cent clutch [key included] and use it as an adapter for the tapered shaft since is the same piece that was attatched to it from the beginning.
My concern here is, how to lock the “adapter” to avoid it slip on the shaft when spinning the axle…? There is no locking key, just a longitudinal bolt that goes screwed to the shaft. I’ll ask the guy in the machining shop what does he think but if any of you have feedback it will be appreciated.
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