Cart design questions

[Nick]

I joined a group at my University that is going to build a mini baja cart and we are trying to decide on some basic things with the cart. like:

Front Suspension - what type Single or Double A arm or McPherson strut or other
Rear Suspension - solid or independent if independent what type such as single or double A-arm
Drive method - belt, chain, gear box
Steering - geometry and method such as rack and pinion or swing arm
Transmission - standard, automatic, cvt

Any opinions on these? I don't know a whole lot about this kind of stuff so Im going to have to do more research myself.

Thanks

 

[souperman000]

I would go for a motorcycle engine. That has a manual gearbox and is chain drive. search around on the forum for suspension ideas, there have been a lot of good ones.

 

[B man]

for the rear id just make it a swing arm design.

 

[OzFab]

The first thing that comes to mind is "edge products piranha". It runs a motorcycle engine which have a gearbox built in & are chain driven, has 4 point double swingarm suspension, rack & pinion steering, all the good stuff.

Plans or kits can be purchased from edge products. If you find it's too big just scale the plans down; there must be at least one engineer in the group

 

[Nick]

Plans or kits can be purchased from edge products. If you find it's too big just scale the plans down; there must be at least one engineer in the group

Actually its a whole group of engineers haha thanks for the info though.

 

[OzFab]

Actually its a whole group of engineers haha thanks for the info though.

Even better, should be easy to scale down then.

Good luck with the build; make sure you create a build log for us