Ok, here are some pictures. School is pretty crazy with exams coming up in just a couple short weeks, so there isn't the long writeup I'd hoped to do.
Some early pictures of the frame build. The frame (or at least the bottom part of it) was very largely based on the plans I was working with, dimensions changed of course.
Roll cage in progress. I didn't have access to a tube bender, so one of the vertical roll bar pieces was bent by hand, filling the length of tube with sand to prevent crushing, heating the bend point with an acetylene torch, and bending the pipe around a small bit of tube tacked to a table.
The day I tried to bend the second vertical piece, it was very humid and the sand was clumping, so it wouldn't go down the tube. There was an old cart behind the welding shop that had the EXACT width we needed at its handle, so we cut off the handle and welded on the lengths of pipe we needed. That one, along with the bending trick, was my mentor's idea. I guess years working in industry make you pretty inventive.
(That's my senior project mentor in both pictures, I was the photographer.
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Finished cage
Cut the cage back off after that to make it easier to work with the axle, etc.
Axle and components on
Had to improvise the brake caliper setup as the plans were kind of vague.
I ordered a caliper bracket , but ended up just welding a plate to the frame to hold the bracket. It works well enough. I ran a length of aircraft cable from my brake pedal, through the plate, to the arm on the caliper.
Steering! The steering setup the plans called for was quite interesting. Instead of the traditional tie rods and whatnot the plans use a system of chain welded to a long tie rod and then connected to small "wheels" on the steering shaft. When you turn the wheel it pulls the chain which pulls the tie rod. I ran into the problem of my tie rods not clearing the rollbars, so I cut the rod, dropped it down, and rewelded. This has already proven to be weak (joints broken twice, and just feels flimsy) so I plan to get a 1/2 or 3/4 rod to replace it, and just bend it instead of cutting and welding.
In that picture, it hasn't been cut and dropped down yet. Until I tried to put the wheels on I didn't realize my improvised system wouldn't clear the wheels.
Here you can see what I initially tried to do:
This was about the time I stopped taking tons of pictures, so the pics will skip a step or two.
Painting. Between steering and now, I added the floorpans with a cool sloping design and the box that my second seat sits on.
Here, the box and front bar are painted. The box is hinged to act as a storage box and has a bracket for a lock on it too.
Rest of the kart painted after the purple dried.
Guess where I'll be going to college.
The finished product, all assembled and pretty!
