ghostofChrist
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Hi all, my friend and I are mechanical engineering majors in college, and both of us work in the construction industry (for now). Neither of us have much engineering experience, we are both freshman in college, but we decided to combine our love for building things and cars and came up with the idea to build a go kart. Now we need some help with frame design, we have a design we took off of google, but we question its strength. Some info on the kart we are building, its a street shifter kart. Since we just happen to have a Kawasaki ninja engine laying around, we are building it around that. We are taking this step by little step, learning along the way. We know our way around fixing engines and a few car mods but that's it. I can weld and do some pipe work but not much more.
My specific questions are: Frame design- Can anybody show us a design or give us some tips on a frame that is strong enough to handle up to a 90 hp engine that's built mainly around cornering made only from straight pieces of metal? We can cut angles but we aren't master metal workers and it would be difficult for us to curve and bend our steel.
Second: Are go kart axle bearings and kits like you would find at go kart supply strong enough for this kind of power?
We are building this around handling but also to accommodate this engine, so what kind of suspension setup should we use? Live axle?
I apologize for the post being all over the place and asking so much, we greatly appreciate any help you are willing to give. We understand this project is likely way over our heads but we figure worst case scenario, we already have a lot of the material and we fail at least we gave it our best shot. This project is meant to be a learning experience with a fun, useable result. As previously stated, we have mechanical experience, we have SOME metal working ability, and we are pretty good with using a wide variety of tools. We would rather spend some extra money on something that's going to work well with this build to make it as safe and doable as possible than to cheap out and do this on a tight budget, so if we need something we will get it. Again thanks a ton for any input.
My specific questions are: Frame design- Can anybody show us a design or give us some tips on a frame that is strong enough to handle up to a 90 hp engine that's built mainly around cornering made only from straight pieces of metal? We can cut angles but we aren't master metal workers and it would be difficult for us to curve and bend our steel.
Second: Are go kart axle bearings and kits like you would find at go kart supply strong enough for this kind of power?
We are building this around handling but also to accommodate this engine, so what kind of suspension setup should we use? Live axle?
I apologize for the post being all over the place and asking so much, we greatly appreciate any help you are willing to give. We understand this project is likely way over our heads but we figure worst case scenario, we already have a lot of the material and we fail at least we gave it our best shot. This project is meant to be a learning experience with a fun, useable result. As previously stated, we have mechanical experience, we have SOME metal working ability, and we are pretty good with using a wide variety of tools. We would rather spend some extra money on something that's going to work well with this build to make it as safe and doable as possible than to cheap out and do this on a tight budget, so if we need something we will get it. Again thanks a ton for any input.
for that idea.....