Lots Of Steering And Not So Much Stopping

My father was a toolmaker, back in the days when you apprenticed and worked your way up to tooling godliness. So he was a bit overqualified to make a go-kart, but I really wanted one, so we embarked on an interesting mission to create something smelly and dangerous and illegal. I "helped" as much as a ten year old can help a toolmaker with a metal project. Mostly he did the design and construction, and I operated the vice and held a wrench or two and mostly goofed off.

It (because I never named it) was constructed with an angle iron frame, with plywood for the floor. It was a very unusual mix of super low-tech, cast-off scrap parts combined with ultra high-precision milled aircraft quality components of my father's construction. For instance, the wheels were solid rubber wheelbarrow units (max rated speed: 5 MPH), mounted to a killer rack-and-pinion steering system that would make a Formula-One mechanic green with envy.

The engine was garbage-picked from the neighborhood, and once powered an old 3 horsepower Briggs & Stratton edger. It needed some work, but my dad had no problem getting the thing going. The stickler (because there is always a stickler) was fixing the coiled-up spring winding system. My father commented that getting that four foot long spring wound and back into the casing was akin to "Poking a wet noodle up a wildcat's ass". It took us a whole day. But once fully assembled, the engine ran well, and we linked it to a direct-drive gear and chain setup that required that you be ready to go when the engine was started, no excuses.

Despite high gearing, the kart really did go. You had to push it to get started but once you started you were off and running in high style. And there were no brakes, so the only way to stop was to reach back and kill the engine and hope you had enough coast-down distance before the next street. Running into a curb to stop was your "Plan B".

As fun as it was, it was a little ornery and temperamental. It started when it wanted to, and not sooner - usually just as your back was giving out from pulling the cord. Parts (important ones, like the drive chain) often fell off at very bad times. The steering was very, very fast, way too fast for the capacity of the wheels to communicate the intended changes to the ground. All of this gave the Kart a mean-spirited, dangerous feel. It didn't really like people hanging around it either, I was burned more than once on the exhaust and still have the scars to prove it. Loud, hurtful shocks from the ignition system were common too.

Still, it was about as much fun as a youngster could have outside a candy store. We had many adventures riding that audacious, raging chariot from hell around the unsuspecting neighborhood.