Introducing Project Cellar Dweller! A Little Father And Son BangShift Winter Fun


Introducing Project Cellar Dweller! A Little Father And Son BangShift Winter Fun

The best kind of project is the one where you get to blame all the stuff your wife gets annoyed with on your nine year old son. Such is the case with our freshest venture here in the literal depths of BangShift Eastern World HQ. We’re calling it Project Cellar Dweller and as you can tell, this is an old Pro-Kart go kart that my sons and I are going to bring back to life so they can terrorize the neighborhood in the Spring. The best part about it? The dough that is being laid out on this thing is coming from them. Before you call me some sort of a heartless jerk you need to know the backstory.

Both of the boys have been pinching their pennies, saving their allowance, and making whatever extra scratch they can in the hopes of buying a go kart to drive around when all the snow melts and the temps again rise above freezing. While that would have been cool, I think it is exponentially cooler that they are going to spend probably half of what they would have spent and we get to wrench on stuff in the meantime.

Because we don’t have a garage here at Chez Lohnes, we lugged the go kart down into our basement and that’s where we’re going to work on Cellar Dweller, hence the name. After lugging it out of the woods and into the house we took to field stripping the chassis. The boys have decided that it needs to be painted silver so the first thing we wanted to do was blow the whole thing apart. We’ll inspect the chassis and any joints that need to get touched up, I’ll poorly MIG weld them.

So what shape is this rig in? Fair to midland actually and perfect for what I’d like to do with the boys. For starters the 3.5hp Briggs and Stratton engine is locked up tight. Our plan is to try and save that little piece. Weak sauce as it is, the guys are still pretty small and it’ll be a grand education in how engines work to blow it apart and (hopefully) fix it. If that is a dead player, I have an 8hp Robin engine under my workbench that I dragged out of a dumpster years ago. That one would get throttle stopped hard to start with.

The front end is in decent shape. All of the pieces up front are a little rusty but with some oil and elbow grease that end of things should be OK. We’re going to do some basic upholstery work to get the seat back up to snuff, the front two tires are in need of replacement and all the linkage for the brakes and throttle seem to work great. A sweet chrome steering wheel has already been eyeballed to replaced the mangled original.

The rear axle was totally hashed and we literally had to cut the thing off. The boys will need to spring for an axle, a sprocket, bearings, etc but that’s about the extent of it. The rear tires are good. I am going to try and rehab the clutch but if need be, they’ll be sourcing one of those bad boys as well.

Overall I am hoping that this will be an exercise in elbow grease and how to budget your cash on a project. They are going to learn a lesson most of us learned a little later. You know the one. Just how much a “free” car costs!

One thing we could use help on. Does anyone know anything about Pro-Kart go karts? It has been a struggle to find info online and my Google Fu is pretty strong. Got a link? 

Check out the photos of Project Cellar Dweller below –

Thar she blows!

Project Cellar Dweller 1

Here’s the deluxe indoor wrenching facilities at BS Eastern World HQ…our basement.

 

Project Cellar Dweller 2

Overall the kart is in really solid shape and while we have our work cut out, we’re going to have a bunch of fun turning this thing around so the kids can romp around the neighborhood in the Spring.

 

Project Cellar Dweller 3

The first order of business was to take the thing down to its bones and make a list of what we’re going to need to rehab and replace. Sturdily build and very basic, it was fun taking it apart with the boys.

Project Cellar Dweller 5

This chain is not exactly in tip-top shape.

 

Project Cellar Dweller 6

There’s very little rot on the go kart and while the paint is not great, we plan on sanding the whole thing as the boys have decided that silver will be its new color.

 

Project Cellar Dweller 7 Project Cellar Dweller 8 Project Cellar Dweller 9 Project Cellar Dweller 10  Project Cellar Dweller 12

Here’s what we were left with at the end. Now the real fun begins!

 

Project Cellar Dweller 13

Project Cellar Dweller 14 Project Cellar Dweller 15 Project Cellar Dweller 16

 

The list of stuff to do isn’t all that long and that’s good because his budget isn’t all that big!

 

Screen Shot 2016-01-18 at 7.34.35 PM


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7 thoughts on “Introducing Project Cellar Dweller! A Little Father And Son BangShift Winter Fun

  1. andy

    VERY COOL!! Even better than Buford! Fits in a warm space and the boys will stay on yer butt to get it DONE!!

    You’re right….man info is WAY hard to come by…? Is the manufacturer Pro-Kart…or is that the model and it was made by somebody like Kartco?

    I’ll just leave this thread here…a father/son building a used kart for to use with his Rallycross club…
    https://classicmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/deucekid2-and-the-rallykart/104453/page2/

  2. Caveman Tony

    SUU-WEEEET!!!

    That thing got a “posi”? Or is it peg-leg?

    Ours is peg-leg, sucks on dirt/gravel uphills. Gotta use LOTSA momentum!!

    Btw, Bruab… Our track rules, and your driving team is invited for free track time ANYTIME

  3. NOVA427SS

    Cool project..I painted my first cart plum crazy in 1971. Might think about buying some arm/wrist restraints for the steering column..One of my buddies flipped my cart and snapped his lower arm.Still can see him walking back with that arm hangin at 90 degree angle..ouch.

  4. elkyguy

    cool!–my first motoring project was a minibike–same deal as your boys,lots of fun and scraped knuckles—try this link,maybe something here—-http://vintagekartclubofamerica.com/

  5. Huskinhano

    That’s a great project. I built one with my son when he was about 10. I bought a kit and we assembled it. He had a great time driving it around the yard. When I was about 12 or so, my buddy and I built a go cart. We used the wooden one my dad built for me when I was younger. Pretty simple with a center main beam with a 2×4 as the front axle. You steered with your feet. So my friend i bought a old mover for $5. It was one of those old reel type that had a horizontal Briggs. We found a self propelled conventional mover with a mechanical clutch system that consisted of a idler arm with a pully that you pulled to take up the belt slack. We took the pully off the gear box and bolted it to LR wheel on my car, bolted the motor on along with the idler pulley. We steered with our feet, used our left hand for the clutch and our right hand to control the throttle lever. Let me tell you, with no governer, mechanical clutch it make for some wicked, smokey burnouts! It was about as safe as any 12 YO could build, LOL. never forget that.

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