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

[admin]

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 […]

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[Beagle]

Hey, I can't comment on the main page?!!!

Needs a build page on the Forum!

These are your kids. Buster Brown shoes do not make good brakes!!! I don't care what you read in HotRod when you were a kid, it needs brakes!!



I don't see BRAKES on there.

Anyway, the first place I would look is a site called Vintage Karts. (vintagekarts.com) and see what they might have in both classifieds and information. A lot of early karts used a 1" solid shaft for the rear axle, and as with all things motorsport, it evolved. The last stuff I was looking at was 30mm hollow tube unobtanium. Point being, there's a lot of old usable parts out there that somebody has warehoused from their race kart. When I hung out on that site years ago, those guys seemed to love karts, and kids, and would go out of their way to be helpful. Hopefully, it' still the same. I'm using a cell phone for internet at the moment and it ate it's high speed data pretty quick. Maybe when I get near a wi-fi I can find out something.

Northern Tool probably has all the junk you need to get it on the sidewalk. I was thinking a good starting point be to put a peg legger rear wheel on it (sprocket goes direct to one hub) that you can convert later to a live axle. With a 3.5 it may not have enough power to get over it's desire to go straight with a live axle. You could use a couple of collars on a keyed shaft and swap it over to live axle / disc brake later. The brake goes on the inside of the sprocket on a one legger. Most of the ones I saw were an expanding drum brake, but I have also seen compressing band brakes on the outside of the sprocket hub.

If the 3.5 seized, odds are pretty high that it's had water in it and the bore is thrashed. Briggs and Tecumseh both used aluminum bores in all of their homeowner stuff by the time you or that kart were born. They wear out pretty quick and will pit horribly if any water gets left in them. Just the gasket set for the Briggs I went through with my son several years ago put me in sticker shock. Jack's Small Engine or Tulsa Engine Warehouse may be good sources still. I tried buying them locally, and decided none of the small engine shops around here deserve to stay in business or desperately need a parts guy! Briggs has good online catalogs if you have the model number and code. It'll probably be crap, but the experience is good... like how Briggs relies on a splasher oil system instead of an oil pump. Butt grinding valves, solid lifters, flat heads, and governers, oh my! Hell, if it's old enough, it will have POINTS! If it's that old, there is a special tool for putting the condenser spring back on that doesn't require 3 hands, and another for the valve springs. I have loaners if you go that way. You can do it without it, but it's a lot easier with it.

I'm guessing you are talking about a Robin-Subaru or a Japanese made Robin. An 8 hp Wisconsin-Robin probably weighs as much as both of the kids and the kart together!! The import Robins are way cool engines. We had one on my kids kart and it laughed in the face of 3600 governed RPM. We tweaked that up to 4500 pretty much first thing and it never cared. It's as good or better than a Honda, they were intended to be industrial from the beginning. Only thing I have on that is keep fresh gas in it, the main jets love to clog with modern green fuel. Literally grows weeds in the jets and passages.

That's a great deal for you and the kids... Start a thread man!!

Oh - That looks like a #35 chain - can you verify? I may have a roll of it here. The clutches of the day were rebuildable too. If the clutch hub isn't grooved beyond recovery, you're probably in business.

edit again -

I finally got the first picture, it didn't load the first time. That's a pretty new engine. Won't have points. Bummer. Haha. There's a date code on the cowl , can you get the numbers off of it? It'll be something like Model Number, Code, Serial Number. Hopefully it's not so new they are on a sticker that fell off. They're usually either on the top where it attaches to the head, or the side of the starter cowling.