Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Go Karts, Ever raced them?

I haven't, just rode them, but racing them if I was a year or two younger would be a riot! Have you raced them?

Not technically, but I knew a guy who put an RM-80 motorcycle engine on a racing cart frame. 5 forward speeds with a clutch lever on the shifter. It was a hoot.

We'd set up a course in an empty parking lot with the 50 or so orange cones he had, then take turn timing each other running 5 laps. I weighed a lot less than him and usually won.

Yep- - - -early 1960's with twin McCullouch Mac-14 chain saw engines. The team was sponsored by a local outboard motor shop, and the owner of the shop built a show cart with a chrome frame and a water cooled Mercury 40 HP 4 cylinder 2 stroke engine on it. Radar clocked at 136 MPH down the front straightaway at a 1/2 mile round track just east of Memphis Tennessee.

They are fun……..
It’s also a fun work out.

Not any kind of sanctioned racing.
Informal roundy round dirt track at an
unused part of a friend's hay meadow.
Roughly 30 yard straightaways.
I had one homemade with a honda ( 18 hp ?)
industrial type engine that had enough
torque to push me along to stay with the
pack. One time another person tapped
my front wheel in the turn and at the next
turn my steering broke and I ran off the
track into a 5 strand barb wire fence.
Luckily the steering wheel caught the wire
that stopped me instead of beheading me.
I never did that anymore.
It was fun while it lasted, but it got too
competitive and everybody started staying
mad at each other instead of having fun.

Yep. Was fun

Yep was fun

Pretty much the same here. As a kid, my Dad had 2 Fox carts. One with 2 twin ported and polished McCulloch Mac-9s, and the other a dual carbureted Mac-9. Lots of fun drifting those carts thru the turns. In my later years I took it up myself with much newer equipment - Kali chassis and either a Yamaha 100 motorcycle engine or a US820. BIG difference in handling. The newer chassiss could be steered thru the turns, and drifting was a thing of the past.

In my youth there was a group of guys that would race them at a dirt track in a local farmer's pasture. They would let us kids drive them at times. I'm sure we were just puttering along but as a 10 year old we thought we were going 100 miles per hour. So about 30 years ago I built a funcart for my stepsons and their friends and boy did they have fun. The youngest was fearless on it and that got me thinking of getting him into the sport. We even have a nice sanctioned dirt track nearby. Well before I could set things into motion he rolled it and he was never the same fearless driver after that.

Interesting you posted that... About a year after I got outta the USN I bought a cart frame, and a wrecked Kawasaki motorcycle.. Mounted that 125cc engine onto the frame, rigged a lever to work the 6-sp trans and that baby would MOVE! The neighbor kid I was great friends with had a similar rig with a Bridgestone 175cc (IIRC) engine and a 5-sp.. We wired lights on 'em and cruised the backroads long after dark.. I heard rumors the cops were on the lookout for us but they never found us..

The neighbor's family had about 80A of mostly pastureland and we graded out a dirt track on it.. Right alongside the freeway, and we'd be doin' about 60 mph and look over to see semi drivers looking at us with wonder... Man, those things were fun...

I got a chassis, going to get one of those predator race cart motors for it, they have a video on youtube on how to get 23hp out of one of those motors.

Then I'm going to haul ass around the neighborhood.

Soundsike you're talking about the Predator Ghost engine. There's an off the shelf performance kit for theat particular engine.

Long before the commercial race cams for B&S engines came out, one of my high school students hand-filed an increased duration and lift cam for his cart. Then he started breaking those aluminum connecting rods by the truckload!

I think the commercial 125cc shifter carts have around 50 hp and the 250cc models (if they still make them) are as fast as formula 1 race car. I almost bought a 125cc shifter cart about 8 years ago just for fun but I was afraid my old back couldn't handle the cornering G's.

Oh Hell yeah!

Never raced go carts. They race the super carts and have a short sprint track over in Kansas where I grew up at.

160ish mph with your azzz 2;inches off the asphalt

Cool schitt

I read about it back in 62 or so.