drummingpariah
New member
I just purchased a used kart in hopes of building a pit kart for race events. Essentially, I just want to use it to get from the pits to my campsite whenever necessary (our hillclimb races are at State Parks, and some of the campgrounds are pretty big).
For the price I paid ($350) I feel like I did all right, as long as I can solve the few little issues it has.
I have a little more work to do on the front end (the spindles appear to be a backwards design), and I'm still sorting out a lighting solution, but I wanted to get my clutch sorted out before getting too far ahead of myself with the welder.
After assembling the chain, and getting the engine running, I found that the clutch is permanently engaged when the engine is running. Looking up the engine tag, I identified it as a Raptor II Methanol race engine, but I haven't been able to find much information on the carb. The idle sounds a bit high to me, but I don't have a tachometer to confirm.
The problem I'm having is that the clutch is permanently engaged. If I press the brake while it's running, the engine dies. Otherwise, it sounds happy and healthy while running - no wandering idle, the plug looks decent, and it's consistent without any apparent misses.
The clutch I have appears to be similar to the Horstman Greased Lightning, as far as I can tell. I don't have any experience with small engines, so I'm just guessing at a lot of this.
I found a manual for the greased lightning, but I'm sure the tuning details are different from whatever I have, and the tuning details don't address my current problem.
Here's the manual I found
I don't think I care about 'stall speed' yet, I'm more concerned about 'initial engagement speed' (which doesn't seem to have any documentation). It looks like adding washer/weights will only lower the 'stall speed' (100% clutch lockup) and that's the opposite of what I want. I want to be able to put the kart on the ground while running and not have it stall (or drive away on its own).
Help?
For the price I paid ($350) I feel like I did all right, as long as I can solve the few little issues it has.
I have a little more work to do on the front end (the spindles appear to be a backwards design), and I'm still sorting out a lighting solution, but I wanted to get my clutch sorted out before getting too far ahead of myself with the welder.
After assembling the chain, and getting the engine running, I found that the clutch is permanently engaged when the engine is running. Looking up the engine tag, I identified it as a Raptor II Methanol race engine, but I haven't been able to find much information on the carb. The idle sounds a bit high to me, but I don't have a tachometer to confirm.
The problem I'm having is that the clutch is permanently engaged. If I press the brake while it's running, the engine dies. Otherwise, it sounds happy and healthy while running - no wandering idle, the plug looks decent, and it's consistent without any apparent misses.
The clutch I have appears to be similar to the Horstman Greased Lightning, as far as I can tell. I don't have any experience with small engines, so I'm just guessing at a lot of this.
I found a manual for the greased lightning, but I'm sure the tuning details are different from whatever I have, and the tuning details don't address my current problem.
Here's the manual I found
I don't think I care about 'stall speed' yet, I'm more concerned about 'initial engagement speed' (which doesn't seem to have any documentation). It looks like adding washer/weights will only lower the 'stall speed' (100% clutch lockup) and that's the opposite of what I want. I want to be able to put the kart on the ground while running and not have it stall (or drive away on its own).
Help?
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