Hey everybody it's the founder of KartFab here, and today I just put this go kart up
on jack stands and I'm going to restore it.
If you look here, we have old crappy tires, busted shocks, steering wheel is kind of falling
apart.
It comes off on your hand.
Missing seat.
Back tires are shot.
We have an old tecrap- 'tecumseh' engine with a 40 series torque converter on it.
So, what I am going to be doing right now is I am going to be working on it all night.
Hopefully, I'll get it running by the morning.
We are going to put this thing on it.
This is a 13 horsepower honda gx390 engine, and its on a power washer.
We are going to put it on there and put a brand new torque converter on it, put a new
seat on it, and get it running.
Get some lights on it.
I picked up these L.E.D.
headlights, I got two of them.
They are actually work lights, 18 watt, and we are going to put them on the mounts and
see how it looks.
So as you can see, I have these two work lights installed on it.
I have got one here, and one here.
You can see that it has a little adjuster bracket right there, and you can adjust it
360 degrees, then you can tilt it forward and backward.
We got them pretty much lined up right there.
What we have on here is a tecumseh engine.
'Im not sure what the horsepower rating is on it.
I'm sure it says, here we go, measly little 9 horsepower.
It does have electric start, I don't know if you can see that right there, and it's
got keys on it right here too.
I'm kind of excited about that, but who cares, it's a Tecumseh and I can put this baby on
it instead.
Lets check out that next.
Ive got the engine off sitting down there.
Now, I've gotta take the power washer pump portion off here, so the shaft will be freed
to put on
the torque converter.
So this is a quick mock up of the engine.
I've got it not bolted in yet.
That is going to be the hard part.
I got the torque converter mocked up.
If you notice, the previous owner put the torque converter (this is the drive unit)
put the driven unit in backwards.
So, we are going to fix that.
I got a lawn mower battery in here that we are going to route the power to.
So I got the jackshaft all cleaned up and degreased and the motor mount degreased and
took the bearings out.
What we are going to do is take the driven unit here, and remove the jackshaft.
Take the driven unit, flip it around, and put it back on.
I'm just going to take a hammer, and an awl here, and punch that out through here.
The vise will hold the driven unit in place while I'm doing that.
Ok.
We got the driven unit aligned.
I actually cheated and pulled one off of another go kart because I couldn't un-seize the driven
unit from the jackshaft here.
That's alright.
Also, the drive unit here, It normally sits in here for it to line up.
It needs to sit out a little bit further in order for it to line up, so there is a gap
there.
So what I am going to do is take a piece of 1" pipe for the spacer and cut a piece of
it and bolt it all down.
Instead of having the jackshaft sprocket right here, I could push this in and have this drive
unit go in and run the sprocket over here.
For the sake of time, I am just going to keep it all on this side so I don't have to remove
the sprocket down here for the axle.
If you look here on the left, that is the jackshaft bearing.
On the right here are the ones that I replaced them with.
You can check out the links in the description for all the parts that I used in the build.
Looking at these belts, 203785, that requires a center to center distance of 8 3/16" or
something like that.
Anyway, center to center distance is the distance from the center of your engine shaft, and
the center of your jackshaft when they are parallel.
Just looking here, my center to center is 8 3/4", so I can either order a new belt,
or drill new holes back here to slide the engine back about 1/2", so that is what I
am going to do.
I'm going to drill new holes back here, slide it back and I'll have a couple belts that
already fit.
So while I've got the engine off here, I am going to go ahead and replace the shocks.
Brand new shocks just like that.
Just a bolt down here and a bolt down there, and you've got brand new shocks.
So there you have it, you have new shocks (one on each side).
That's about it for the shocks in the back.
I've gotta do the ones in the front, but I'm going to focus on the engine first.
So I've got the engine mounted here.
Ive got the bolt secured.
I also have the chain hooked up.
Cut it to length.
I've got it tightened and everything torqued down.
I changed the oil here, and cleaned up the spark plug, cleaned up the carburetor.
Changed the air filter.
This engine should be good to go.
I also hooked up a kill switch here.
This one right here should be hooked up to the kill switch here.
This one hooks up directly to the spark plug.
Also, going to be working on threading a new throttle cable here.
There we go!
Ok.
Next step is to replace the front shocks, and grease the a-arms.
We will start working on the tires as well.
So here is the wheel being finished painted.
What I did is I took this angle grinder here with the wire wheel attachment, and I took
off the rust because you are going to get the bead right here that normally seats here
and here that would leak air because it was so badly rusted.
That's the finished one, this is the one after I took off the metal (rust) and primed it.
So I'm going to let this dry and in about 15-20 minutes we will put on the new tires.
Well, I didn't make it to morning by finishing it, but I've got three of the four tires on.
I need to put that list tire on.
What I am doing with the tire is I am taking a mixture of water and dish soap, and a couple
of screwdrivers.
And this and locking it onto the rim right up here.
I lock it there to put the tire on there.
The first section is pretty easy to put on.
Back part here slides right over top.
That last section is kind of hard to finish seating the bead.
K.
So I got this battery box that I just tack welded in there, some angle iron, flat bar,
and some rod here (1/4") coarse thread rod.
The battery just plops right in there, and then I'll have a bar with two holes in it
and secure it to the top.
So this next part is the seat.
This is a piece of plywood, and these things (the 1, 2, 3, 4) are t-nuts.
They allow you to drill through the wood without stripping it out.
They actually screw into it.
These are what is left of the t-nuts on the other one.
I'm going to go ahead and cut those off, screw the plywood in, put some foam on it and staple
some vinyl to the top.
So this is the seat.
I painted the plywood black.
Notice how the t nuts are facing.
What we are seeing would be the bottom.
You've got the foam and you've got the vinyl here.
I'm just going to fold it over here and staple, compressing the high density foam a little
bit as I go.
The seat is all done.
I have got the t nuts linked in at the bottom, and it slides back and forth.
Also, I've got the kill switch wired up, lights hooked up.
The lights (the wiring) was pretty straight forward.
You have both the lights hooked up to a hot and both hooked into the ground.
Its actually a three way (three post) switch.
If you can see right here, its 1, 2, 3 connections.
You've got the hot, the ground hooked up and the middle post as well so you can turn both
of them on and off at the same time.
The wiring goes down here, all the way down there, over to the battery.
Battery, like I said, is pretty straight forward.
You get that hooked up.
You have negative, positive, and you have that little cable hooked up through cable
ties, then secured with this little piece here.
With the engine, I had some serious issues.
The engine that I had actually is still right over here.
I put it on the go kart, got it running.
Took it out, it would throttle up just fine, or so I thought.
I cleaned the carburetor out a couple times.
Full throttle would backfire out of the carburetor itself, and shut off the choke switch.
The choke switch would backfire and close it just like that.
Boom.
So, it might be something to do with valves, timing, carburetor getting dirty again since
there was a little bit of rust in the tank there.
So instead, I just used my trusty 11 hp engine that I already had, and hooked it right up.
It wasn't too fun.
With the 11 hp it goes pretty quick.
It doesn't have a ton of torque.
So instead, in a future video I'm going to just go ahead and put this thing on it, because
I have two of these, and they both run.
Its the V-Twin Honda gx620 engine.
So, that's one thing that I am going to hook up.
I am going to hook up the key and wire all that so the key switch over here will turn
on the engine, and turn it off.
So I took the go kart to utah on a family reunion, so the rest of the footage is in
the next video so if you want to see that, you will have to wait until the next video
comes out.
Thanks guys.