Construction!

Finally, I've been doing some construction for the electric kart. Here's (part of) my setup out in front of my garage, earlier today. Be reminded that I'm a complete rookie when it comes down to this type of mechanical construction work shizzle.

We have decided not to break the scooter or any of its parts, we just want to use the parts in a non-destructive manner. This requires some extra creativity, but it must be possible not to break the scooter while extracting parts, get a modular system running on the kart and rebuild the scooter with the extracted parts once upon a time.

I've been welding a metal frame to hold our hub motor onto the kart, as in the next picture. This was my first time at trying to weld something useful, it looks more like diarrhea than smooth welding joints. But it sticks. The frame is pretty modular, and is easily and strongly bolted onto the kart's frame. The last job left is that I need to cut grooves in the standing bars so that the motor can rest in them. This needs to be done precisely, such that our motor's axle aligns exactly parallel with the rear axle.

Below is a picture of the motor and a sprocket that we bought from the local karting shop. With Dale's help, we found a ring that tightens perfectly around our motor's built-in drum brake (you can see the ring in the picture, separating the motor and sprocket). I'll weld (6) screw threads onto the ring, which can then be used to fasten the sprocket to the rotating engine with bolts. This seems to be the simplest and strongest solution that we can figure out. (Together with Walle and Dirk I had some discussions about other (flawed?) designs, it's now all upside-down, inside out).

I'm getting more optimistic at getting a running kart by HAR 2009.

Btw, in the process, I've been cutting/drilling/welding/burning my fingers/eyes/balls as well. Nothing lethal, so far.

EXP +10.