Wooden electric go cart in retro style

[wooden]

Hi,

I want to share with You with my diy go kart project.
I've mede retro/vintage electric gokart for my son. He enjoys it very much

The go kart frame and sensitive body parts were made from.. wood. Yes, from wood. I used pine for the frame - it's ligth and flexible wood, good for such construction. More relevant parts like front suspension were made from oak which is hevier but also way stronger than the pine. If You are thinking that it is not good idea, bare in mind, that first cars were also made from wood. Anyway, after few months of riding my go cart by my son everything works perfectly fine.

I choose the 24V 350W DC electric engine. It's enough for my son. I projected the whole thing to run with top speed about 9MPH. Engine RPMs was reduced by built in gears/trannsmision to 600 RPM and then with two other gears from motorcycles. To power the rear wheel I've used freewheel to avoid back currents (ie. when riding down the hill). Such back currents could broke the engine controller. Controller is some cheap chinese device which I also connected to the scooter hallotron used as gas pedal.

I've used two 12V 18AH batteries. They last for 3-6hours of driving the car. It's ok for my sun.
Batteries are in the front of the car to balance the engine weight (which is on the rear).

If You have more questons - I will answear them.

I tried to add photos here but I couldn't so here You have the video of my car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzjhxA2gNfg

 

[tinamcjittles]

Sid whats up with the YouTube video embedding? Can it be made automagical with an 'if' statement that checks URLs for what site they contain?

Love the build man, and the part where your kid looked like an old timer was great hahaha

For a charging feature you could put a diode inline from the batteries to the motor! It would only be a half wave rectumfrier but should be fine.

 

[itsid]

cool kart indeed.. 9mph sounds nice, it also looks quite heavy compared to the 350W motor you've been using, which is quite impressive to say the least.



And yes, few early cars were made on woden frames (frankly.. the morgan plus eight had a wooden frame until just recently IIRC)
BUT: those are perfectly engineered and way more expensive than a similar steel construction especially since it's not just any wood at any graindirection etc.pp.
But for a kart like that it ought to be okay..
In this config, I'd say the wheels collapse before the frame would

Tina, I no understand you ask-thing?
His embedding is fine on this end of the computerscreen *shrugs*
And yes, one could fabracobble any if statement one would like..
But the "One" in this case isn't me.. it's Robert.
What urls you think should be checked (I really don't understand what you were asking, I'm afraid )

'sid

 

[wooden]

For a charging feature you could put a diode inline from the batteries to the motor! It would only be a half wave rectumfrier but should be fine.

Oh.. Yes, It could be agood improvement. Currently I have to remove batteries, charge them and put them once again to the car.

 

[Tom Knight]

Very nice, another happy child on the road. Very similar to whats called a cycle kart. Some CK's are elec. most have 6.5hp motor. I like your construction ...thanks for sharing...old dog