Hi everyone,
I got to chatting recently with my lovely wife about a project to do with my kids. She refuses to let them on or near completed bikes, so I came up with this:
I have no idea what kind of kart it is, other then that the last owner assured me it's a "vintage kart from the 60s!" Uh huh. Sure it is. Regardless, it has a strong, straight chassis with minimal repairs and nothing is rusted, except some very superficial looking spots.
The 6.5hp clone appears to run well, although I'm sure it will run better once it's breathing a bit easier. I'm told the carb is a Honda carb - once again, we'll see when I break it down for a good cleaning.
I had wondered about the brake, since the kid I bought it from said it had "no brake, but I have a hydraulic brake I just haven't installed." Once again - sure you do. There's a pic there of a disc and a tiny mechanical caliper (NOT hydraulic) that he included. However, as far as I can tell, the band brake should work fine with a new band and linkage. It has a sort of interesting two part linkage (you can see me holding it in the pics above) - as near as I can tell, the band connects to the linkage and then the brake cable attaches to the other side of the linkage and to the pedal (I think. I may just scrap the linkage and make this a more direct connection - not sure yet).
I also like the jury-rigged throttle assembly. The kill switch you see dangling on the steering column has a fried grounding wire - you have to manually touch it to the block the kill the engine.
At least it's an easy fix. I don't believe the chain has EVER been lubed - it's drier than a fart in the desert. The wheels appear to be steel 4" jobs with bearings that are well and truly fried.
First order of business will be to strip it down with many, many pictures and even more boxes and baggies. Organization ought to be a trip - the 750 already has me piling boxes all over my garage and crawl space!
Then, of course, a thorough scrubbing and accounting for - what's broken, what to do we like and not like, what to replace and eventually generating the parts to buy list. Then we'll paint strip, primer and paint and start the rebuild.
I'm torn about stripping down the clone engine and and rebuilding it versus scouring CL for a nice Honda or B&S, and then tweaking that a bit. Guess we'll just see what comes up. I did find a nice B&S Intek 6.5 in my local CL for $60 today (conveniently attached to a lawnmower) so maybe I'll head that way instead.
So... that's where we start. I'll post up pics as we (my boys and I) make progress, but just don't expect it to be quickly, since the boys are 1, 3 and 5!
Also, I'm told I have to remember it's for my kids, so no aluminum racing wheels, carbon seats, ported heads etc.
Cheers for now,
Scott
