There’s loads of vintage racing out there these days and one of the fastest growing segments is that of vintage karting. Karts can be found for reasonable money, they don’t have to put you into the poor house to restore and they can be transported to the track in the back of a truck or a van. All this and then you get to go out there and run full throttle, have fun with friends, and get yourself sideways on the narrow old tires that these things wore. Cool, right? Even cooler once you see this particular kart.
As we have talked about a bunch over the years, when things got really serious with karting, dual engines were the ticket to really haul ass. There was only so much power that could be wrung out of a single engine and rather than incrementally bump that, adding the second engine was a far quicker and easier solution. This cart uses two West Bend 820 engines that made about 6hp each stock. With work guys make 10-12. With 12hp this thing would be fast, with 20-24 it would be scary good.
The neat thing here is that the kart has a gearbox and not chain drives for the engines. While the chain drives are simpler, throwing or breaking chains cost lots of people races. Downsides of the gearbox were the fact that they did have more parts and they were heavier. They were popular for a time but ultimately better chains and sprockets kind of made them more expense and weight than they were worth. They’re boss now, though. Just for the vintage factor.
Check out this kart and if it suits your fancy buy it and get ready for fun!
eBay: 1967 Vintage Margay New Breed Has Dual West Bend Engines And A Gearbox
Swooning…
Karting is boss. A bucks up high school friend and I drove all over central Indiana at least twice a month during the spring and summer for a couple years in the early 70s racing karts under the off track supervision of an old head from the neighborhood who actually had some national karting cred. We didn’t win much, but we sure had a time.
The kart shown in the article woulda been one of the top tier rides during the time we ran. Our {his} kart was single engine, but I believe it was a Margay with a West Bend engine.
The running joke among the 3 of us was about a guy the old man had known who was all about Tecumseh engines and had run a pair in a less than competitive kart while maintaining that they were the hot set up. “Get a couple Tecumsehs, hook ’em up and haul ass!”
BTW, you don’t really need a truck or van, the trunk of a ’68 Torino, ‘Torino Lopez’, worked fine for us.
Cool piece. And if you forget to stop at the intersection the gas tank will double as an air bag when you slide under granny’s Buick.
I had a California cart, with 2- 5 hp B&S. Did about 55-60 mph. Almost died several times, racing around my neighborhood.