How to Make a Wood Go Kart V2 | No Welding Required +Free Plans!

how's it going guys today I'm going to be building the wooden go-kart version 2 if you want to build this go-kart I do have a free set of plans on my website Woodworking nut.com and I have just all the templates the materials and all that good stuff included in this and it's all for free so let's go ahead and get started now before I get started I want to address a few things that I know I'll see in the comments if I don't talk about them now the first thing is that you don't need all these tools to build this project these are just going to make it a lot easier but in the end you really only need like a drill a circular saw maybe a grinder and then a couple basic mechanic hand tools like ratchets and wrenches and stuff like that so you really don't need all these tools they'll just make it a lot easier if you have them the second thing is instead of using regular pine 2x4 I'm actually going to be making my own 2x4s out of soft maple and the reason I'm doing this is because I wanted to use a hardwood and I love the way that soft maple looks so let's go ahead and head over to my table saw where I'll start ripping the boards that I have in half and then I'll Mill everything on my planer and [Music] [Applause] [Music] Joiner [Music] so now I have all my boards ripped in half so they'll fit on my Joiner what I'm going to do is Join one side of the face and one side of the edge and then I'll go over to my planer and plane the other side to make them parallel with each [Music] other [Music] w [Music] [Music] so now that I have all my boards playing down to their final thickness of an inch and a half I want to go ahead and cut them to their final width which is going to be 3 and 1/2 [Music] in [Music] so at this point I have all my boards mil down to what are essentially just Maple 2x4s and if you're buying 2x4s from the store this is exactly where you're going to start so what I did next was I just roughly marked out all my pieces on these boards and what I can do now is make a bunch of rough Cuts then after that I'm going to dial them in for the Final Cut and I'm going to do that all at my table so [Music] [Music] [Music] here so now I have all my pieces rough cut what I want to do first is go ahead and cut my 6 21 in pieces and when I'm making that many repeated cuts at the same length I like to set up a stop block on my table saw fence that way I can just go ahead but it up and send it through and I know they're all going to come out exactly the [Music] same and up next I'm going to cut two pieces at 24 in and these are for the engine mounts [Applause] then I'll do one piece at 28 in long and this is for the front of the frame up next I'm going to do two pieces at 80 in long and this is for the side [Music] frame [Music] then I want to do one piece at 18 in long and this is for the top of the Searing [Music] column so now I want to cut the front and back piece for the steering columns and both of these have a 65° angle on one side and the other side's just a regular 90 so let's go ahead and cut one to 16 and 9/16 in long and then the other one's going to be 7 and 11/16 in Long and I know it's kind of a weird measurement but that's just the way it worked out for these [Music] plans and last but not least the bottom piece for the steering column is going to have that 65° angle on it going parallel with each other on both ends that's going to be 15 and 3/8 of an inch long [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so at this point I have all my pieces cut down to their final size now a lot of these frame pieces have holes that are going to be drilled in them and I want to do that before I assemble the frame together just so I know if I make a mistake I can just cut a new piece and redo it rather than having the frame all glued together and it's just it would be a big nightmare so I'm going to start by taking a 24 in piece and this is going to be one of my engine mounts what I want to do is cut an inch and 1 half Groove in it and that's going to allow me to set in one of these quarin pieces of Steel which is going to mount my uh my brake caliper so I'm going to go ahead and do that on my table saw now this is one of those things it's probably going to be the hardest thing to do if you don't have a table saw but all you do is you take a circular saw you set it to the/ qu in depth and then you just make multiple passes and you can get the same effect so it's really not that difficult in the end but I'm just kind of cheating using a d set cuz it makes it a lot quicker and now with that groove cut on the bottom I can go ahead and drill out the two holes that are going to bolt that metal bar on there and I realized I probably should have drilled the holes first and then did the groove after that way if there was any blow out on the bottom I would have got rid of it when I cut that Groove but hindsight's always [Music] 2020 now I want to take one of my 21in long boards and I'm going to drill a 5/16 in hole one on each side and just about an inch and a half over and an inch down and this is going to allow my throttle and brake cables to pass through [Music] and now I can take two more of my 21in pieces and these are going to be for mounting the seat I'm not going to drill the mounts for the seat yet cuz I'm going to do that once it's installed but I am going to drill out a hole 2 in down from the center on each end of these boards and this is going to let me bolt my plywood to the underside of the go-kart [Music] so now I can go ahead and focus on the steering column for a second and then I just have it taped together to show you guys but uh I have a pillow block and I'm going to mount one on the back and one on the front and this is going to allow me to slide my steering shaft through and give me nice and smooth steering so I'm also going to be drilling three holes in the bottom and they're just going to be a/2 in thick and that's going to let me bolt my steering column onto my [Music] [Music] frame so at this point I've drilled out all the holes that I can without having the metal pieces made up so what I'm going to start working on next is those metal pieces I'm just going to be using my drill PRS here and I found that using it on the second lowest setting and then using a lot of cutting oil it really helps me get better results so I'm going to go ahead and start drilling out those holes and then once I'm done with that I'll go ahead and paint my metal pieces and then I'll use those as a guide to drill the holes in my wood so I'm going to go ahead and start with my piece that mounts my brake caliper and what I did first was I went ahead and I took my engine piece that I cut that notch in the back on and I clamped it in place just making sure it's at a 90° angle and I'm going to start these holes by hand just so I know that they line up perfectly and then I'll do the rest of them after that [Music] I and with that drilled I can now start drilling the brackets that are going to mount the live axle and up next I'm going to drill out my pedal guides and I actually went through multiple variations of this so when I paint these up you'll probably see one of the older variations but this is going to be the newest and most current and I did make a template that's going to be included that you guys can download if you have the same pedals it should just make it really easy for the start bolts and the stop bolts and everything should line up for really [Music] nice and last but not least I want to drill out the two pieces of metal that are going to sandwich together and make the spindles on the front of the [Music] go-kart [Music] [Music] so with all my metal pieces drilled up I went ahead and sanded them all nice and smooth and then cleaned them off with mineral spirits and now I'm going to go ahead and paint them and originally I was going to use primer and paint but the primer can keeps clogging so I'm just going to go ahead and just do straight up paint and I got this high performance enamel that's going to be matte black so I think this will look really good on the metal [Music] pieces [Music] so now that we're all caught up to speed on the metal Parts I'm going to go ahead and start drilling out this front frame piece and this is probably going to be one of the trickier parts of this project just making sure that my top hole is line up with my bottom and when I drilled out these metal pieces after I drilled one out I went ahead and took the other one and used it as a template and drilled exactly in the same spot so I know the holes on the metal are the same it's just getting it it to go through the wood the same and uh I'm just going to use this on top here as kind of a guide get all my holes started and then I'll probably finish them up at the drill [Music] [Music] press [Music] and I'm just going to finish it up by hand with my 12-in long [Music] [Applause] bit so after absolutely smoking that drill bit I went ahead and just mocked everything up real quick and it looks like four out of six of the bolts go through these two in the center aren't really lined up enough to the point where I can smack it with the hammer and send it but uh I might upsize those holes to like 5/16 just so I can get them through so that might be the play on that but the good news is the end bolts do line up perfectly so I'm pretty happy with that and this is kind of like the most worried I was about building this thing so so it looks like this should work out just fine and I'll figure out what to do with this at some point I'll probably just upssize it all right so now I can start focusing on my side pieces and I'm going to start with the metal bracket on the back this is what's going to hold my pillow block to my live axle and I just want to bolt these through with a/2 in Bolt so I'm going to do something similar I'm going to start it here on the table and I'm going to move over to the drill press to finish it [Music] off and now I just want to do the same thing but with the pedal guides on the other [Music] [Music] end [Music] so at this point I'm almost ready to start assembling the frame the last thing I want to do is go ahead and take two of my 21in boards and originally I was going to butt these together to make a te but then I decided let's step up my game a little bit and make this a half flap instead so I ended up cutting a piece to 24 1/2 in and making a half left and I did that off camera for some reason I don't know why but I already got it made up I just need to go ahead and glue it together and then this is also going to allow me to go ahead and drill the holes for the three steering column bolts that are going to go through so I'm going to do that once I get this glued up and have those holes drilled I can then start assembling the frame and we should be off with the wind after that and just like all my other boards I went and clamp it up to align it to the bottom and I'll just use that as a template to [Music] drill and with those last three holes drilled I can now start to assemble the frame and I'm going to start out with my half flap joint and for that I'm just going to be using some tight Bond two and a couple clamps to hold it in [Music] place [Music] [Music] now while I'm waiting for that to dry I'm going to go ahead and start assembling my steering column and all these joints on the go-kart are going to be held together by screws but I am going to be counter syncing all them and pre-drilling them I'm just not going to show that on camera just to save a little bit of time but I will be gluing and screwing everything together and then afterwards I'm going to be plugging all the screw holes with dowels to help hide [Music] them [Music] I so unfortunately the frame is just too big to assemble on one of my workbenches so I got to work on the ground so it's not the uh ideal situation but I'm going to I'm going to do the same thing where I pre-drill everything beforehand and then I'll glue and screw it on [Music] [Music] camera [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] 1 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah and for your seat brackets and your steering column you want to shim them up so they're an inch off the [Music] ground and on my top hole here I'm actually going to use a 2-in screw that way I don't have to worry about it going through the pass through cable for my brake and throttle linkage [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he [Music] so now I got my frame and my steering column screwed and glued together what I want do next is go ahead and hide these screw holes a little bit and I'll do that just by taking some wood plugs and a dab of wood glue and I'll put one in each of the screw holes and then once that dries I'll take a flush cut saw I'll trim the head of the plug off and then I'll sand it down to a nice smooth finish with some sandpaper and that's not going to make the hole totally invisible but it is going to help hide those screw holes a little bit and it'll just give it a nicer overall look so I'll go ahead and show you guys how to do that on the uh steering column here and then I'll do the rest of the frame off camera just to save a little bit of time so I just want to go ahead and put a dab of glue in each screw [Music] hole and then I can go ahead and take a plug and set it in [Music] place and then I'll just use a hammer and tap it in and now that the glue is dried I can go ahead and take a flush cut Cuts saw and cut the end of the plugs [Music] off and last but not least I want to hit it with some sandpaper just to smooth it [Music] out so you just want to rinse and repeat that process for the rest of the plugs and I'll do that off camera to save some time but what I want to do next is go ahead and head over to my table saw and cut my 3/4 in sheet of plywood to [Music] [Applause] [Music] size so I can go ahead and set that plywood sheet to the side for now first I want to go ahead and drill the holes for my seat to mount and then drill the holes for my engine to mount and I have a template for both of those this is the one for the seat and basically I'm just going to put it on there tape it in place center punch it and then I'll drill my holes from there so let's go ahead and do that for the seat and the engine [Music] [Music] and now I went ahead and put my plywood sheet into position what I want to do next is go ahead and transfer the holes from my frame onto my plywood sheet so I'm just going to use this as a template and drill straight [Music] through [Music] so now with those holes drilled in my plywood I can go ahead and start sanding all my pieces down to a nice smooth finish [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] w [Music] so after doing a lot of sanding I can now apply the finish and for that I'm just going to use some wipe on [Music] [Music] polyurethane [Music] open all right so the big day is here it's final assembly day on the wood go-kart and I'm going to start by bolting my sheet of plywood down to the [Music] frame and this is just going to be four 3/8 in bolts that are 3 in Long and I can lock them in place with a washer and a lock nut on each [Music] one and while I have it flipped up I'm going to go ahead and mount my seat and for that I'm going to use 4/4 in bolts that are 3 and 1/2 in Long [Music] and the last thing I want to do before I flip it back down is go ahead and bolt my steering column on and for that I'm going to be using four 1/ in bolts that are 4 and 1/2 in [Music] Long and honestly I'd probably bump these all up to a 5in bolt but I don't have any on me right now so I'm just going to go with [Music] it so up next I'm going to mount my bars that are going to make up my spindle brackets and for that I'm going to use a/4 in Bolt that's 4 and 1/2 in Long going across the top I should be able to get six in but we'll see what [Music] happens I don't think these two are going to make [Music] [Music] it [Music] [Music] so now I'm going to go ahead and mount my pillow blocks and for that originally I was going to use halfin bolts but they're just a little bit too big to go through my pillow block so I had to go metric on us so I picked out a 12m bolt that's 70 M [Music] [Applause] long and now I can go ahead and slide my steering shaft through and make sure you have a locking collar on each side when you do [Music] [Applause] this and up top here I want to leave as little room as possible so that's exactly what I did and I can lock these locking collars in place [Music] [Music] and with the shaft in place now I can go ahead and take a 5/16 inch bolt that's 3 and 1/2 in long and slide it through the end here and this part's on fortunately a little bit too high so instead I'm just going to go below it and that's why I'm using this longer bolt so I'm going to lock this in place with the lock [Music] nut and now I can go ahead and take my tie rod for the left side and put that on now one thing to note is this is a 5/16 in Bolt but this is a 3/8 in tie rod so I just have a little bushing that's going to go in there and make it fit nice and snug and then I'm going to thread on a 5/16 in nut just to act as a spacer and then I want to do the same thing and put my tie rod on for the right side and I'll finish it off with the lock [Music] nut and now I can put my spindle on now I only have a 4 and 1/2 in Bolt and really it should probably be about a 5 in one so I'll adjust the plans for that and just know in the future I'm going to change this out and I'm going to put one washer on the bottom and then I'll have eight up [Music] top and it connect my tire to my spindle I have a 3/8 in Bolt that's 1 and 3/4 in long and I'm just going to drop it through and then I have a/4 in thick spacer and then I'll go ahead and drop that all through and I'll finish it with the washer and a lock [Music] nut [Music] and then you can go Ahad and slide your wheel on and I do have a 1 and 1/2 in spacer on here and then I'll put the lock nut on and I'll wait to torque this until it's on the [Music] ground now before I connected these tie rods off camera I did a lot of adjusting to get it relatively close and now with my ti on I can just fine-tune these by turning them and adjust the toe in and toe out to make sure everything is pretty much as straight as possible and I've temporarily put the steering wheel on just so I can line everything up with where I want [Music] [Music] it and once you're happy with your alignment you can go ahead and lock your jam nut into place and you do want to make sure that you have enough thread going into the actual tie rod itself so just keep that in [Music] mind so now I can go ahead and put my steering wheel on and I did already put the Hub on for it and it's just three bolts and three cotter pins so then I just want to line it up and then I'll secure it in place with a washer and a castellated nut that's going to have a cotter [Music] [Music] pin [Music] so now I'm going to focus on the back half of the go-kart and the first thing I'm going to do is go ahead and take my metal mounts and bolt these on and that's going to be 1/2 in bolts that are 3 in [Music] long so after putting these through I realized I'm not going to be able to get my pillow block mounted because the bolts now going to be blocked so I actually want to back these off a little bit mount my pillow block and then finish putting these in and for my pillow blocks they're just going to be 2in [Music] bolts and now I can finish installing the bracket [Music] so I actually went ahead and loosened the nuts that hold the pillow blocks in place just a little bit so they can slide back and forth so that way when I got to put my live axle in I it won't get hung up on anything and then I'll tighten it afterwards but what I want to do next is go ahead and install the bar that's going to hold my brake and for that I have two bolts that are just 5/16 of an inch at 2 in [Music] [Music] long and then I'll use two in and 1/2 long 5/16 inch bolts to mount my brake [Music] bracket and now I can slide my brake caliper into [Music] place so I went ahead and clamped my brake disc into the caliper so that way when I slide my axle through and I'm slipping my locking collars in I don't have to worry about holding it up in place it's just going to be held by the caliper so let's go ahead and Slide the axle through and you want to make sure that you put all your locking collars and all that on as you're going and then I'm going to have the sprocket on the inside as well my key stock into [Music] position and slide my tire [Music] on and just like the front wheels I'll just put this on by hand for now and then once it's on the ground I'll fully torque [Music] it and at this point I can go ahead and set it on the ground before it gets too heavy where I can't pick it up by [Music] myself and now I can torque the wheels [Music] down so now what I want to do is go ahead and I never drill the quarter-inch hole for this brake bar to go through cuz I wasn't sure if it was going to be positioned properly so I was waiting but everything looks like it's lining up good so I can go ahead and drill that and drop a bolt [Music] through and now I can drop in a 4 and 1/2 in Long Quin bolt with the washer on each side and a lock nut on the bottom so at this point I'm getting prepped and ready to mount the the engine now what I want to do first is go ahead and bolt on this Riser plate and I have this because my engine has a torque converter installed on it and if you haven't seen it already I made a video about the engine I'm putting on it it's a just a predator 212 but I added a stage one kit to it so hopefully it's making about 2 or three more horsepower than normal and uh one more thing I want to mention about this is all the reviews said that the uh rib nuts that were installed on it were just cheap and they would strip out really easy and whatnot so I went ahead and just drilled those out ahead of time and I'm just going to be running bolts straight through mine so I don't even have to worry about [Music] that and with that Riser Block in place I can now go ahead and bring the engine over and I just want to point out that I am using some rubber mounts just to help reduce vibration from the engine into the go-kart frame so just real quick from the future here I actually went ahead and didn't use the rubber mounts cuz they ended up causing me more trouble than what it was worth so I just went ahead and replace those with 5/16 in bolts that are an inch and 1 half [Music] long now before I torque the bolts that mount the engine I want to go ahead and cut my chain to the right size that way I can get that all lined up and push it forward if need be and then I'll tighten the engine in place [Music] [Music] I messed up so accidentally cut the chain one link too short so I got to wait for the new one to come in but in the meantime I'm going to show you guys how to set up the pedals so I'm going to start by taking a/4 in Bolt that's 1 and 3/4 in long and I'm going to feed it through my pedal on the side here and then I can go ahead and add my return spring and then what I want to do is go ahead and put a washer on and then I'm just going to slip a regular nut down there just to kind of act as a spacer and then I want to put another washer on and then I can go ahead and slide my cevis on and then I'll put a washer on the outside and finish it off with a lock nut and you want to make sure you don't lock this down too tight otherwise it won't be able to rotate freely so now I can take my pedal guide and put it in place and all my bolts are 5/16 of an inch for this so what I want to do is take my first bolt which is 4 and 1/2 in long with a washer on the end and slide it through and this is the bolt that's going to hold my pedal so what I want to do is go ahead and put another washer on and then run a lock nut all the way down and I'll just temporarily put this bolt tin to hold it in place and before I fully tighten this I'm going to go ahead and build up the rest of my stack so I'm just going to add another washer and then I have a 1-in spacer and then I can go ahead and put my pedal in position and using a ratchet I'll spin the whole Bolt just to thread it on and now I can go ahead and tighten that lock nut and then I can put a washer on the outside and finish it off with another lock nut [Music] and once again make sure it's not too tight otherwise your pedal won't spin freely and then I can take a 4in bolt and feed it through this back hole and I'll put my washer on right now and then I'll put a lock nut on as well and I'll slowly work that until it's all the way over and holding the spring this is going to work as a hold for my spring and the uh full travel stop [Music] and then I want to add another 4in bolt and this is going to be the forward stop and I'll slide my washer on and a lock nut and then I'll add a 3 and 1/2 inch bolt in the [Music] front and then I can line the stainless steel bracket up with my cevis that way my cable can go through there nice and smooth and originally I was going to drill just a hole through this bolt but it's a little bit too low so I had to go ahead and get a bracket since this is a little bit [Music] taller so with my pedals installed I can go ahead and start setting up the brake and throttle cables so I'll go ahead and start with the brake so originally I was going to have a bolt just run through this arm and then I'd have a hole drilled in the bolt and that would go up and down but that's not going to work out because the bolt would actually be hitting the rotor so that's something that I didn't really plan on so what I did was I made a little extension and this is basically going to extend the arm that way I can put the bolt a little bit further back [Music] and then I went ahead and picked up this 3/8 in Universal clevis pin and I'll just slide that through the back now I do have to use some washers to get the spacing on it right and then I can just go ahead and slide a cotter pin through [Music] and with that longer arm on there I'm actually going to drill a new 332 in hole just a little bit further back so it lines up [Applause] [Music] better and now I can go ahead and run the casing for the brake cable [Applause] and now I can go ahead and feed my inner wire through and this Cable's all actually cut to size so I'm just going to add this little Barrel on the end to hold it in [Music] place and I might add another one since this is the brake and I don't want anything to happen and on the back I'll just route the cable through and I got a lot of extra right now I just got to cut it off once I'm [Music] done and then I'll go ahead and add a 3-in return spring just to help that lever come down and originally I didn't do that so you'll probably see some footage of it without the [Music] spring and I'll add another one on the back just to be [Music] safe and I'll throw a zip tie around here just to keep it away from my torque [Music] [Applause] [Music] converter so we can go ahead and use the same process and do the [Applause] [Music] throttle so picking where we left off with the engine the new chain is here and I already cut it to size now I just want to go ahead and install the master link and when you put this clip on the open end you want it facing the opposite way of the engine so when it's going it doesn't have the chance of accidentally hitting it and knocking it off somehow so I always like to have the back facing that way that way I don't have to worry about it and now I can go ahead and put my key stock in and slide that into place [Music] and now I can lock the set screws on my sprocket and the Locking [Music] [Applause] [Music] collars and now I can go ahead and lock my engine mounts down [Music] [Applause] [Music] got [Music] got him [Music] I [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so that's going to be a wrap for the wooden go-kart version 2 I got to say having the steering wheel is way better than the original feet design I had in my first one and then hitting over 40 mph on this was my first Big Goal when I set out to build this so I'm extremely happy with the way this came out and let me know if you want to see a video on potentially doing like a stage two or stage three kit on this engine cuz I would like to see how fast I can really make this thing go so let me know if you guys are interested in that as always if you enjoyed this video please give it a big thumbs up hit that share button and be sure to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already I am trying to make a push for 100k so I would greatly appreciate everyone that does so that's going to be a wrap for this one and I got a lot more projects coming in the future so as always I'll see you guys next time [Music] oh

Channel: Eric Lindberg

Views: 1,386,106

Keywords: Easy, Simple, Fun, Wood, Wooden, Homemade, Tutorial, Eric, Lindberg, Woodworking, Nut, Wood Nut, Woodworking Nut, go kart, go, kart, cart, go cart, fast, no welding, welding, welder, bolt, bolt on, diy, torque converter, predator, predator 212, engine, 6.5, 212cc, 6.5hp, stage 1, stage 1 kit, bmi karts, gopowersports, go power sports, steering, wheel, live axle, free plans, templates

Id: Y5k2c6W7L1I

Length: 56min 31sec (3391 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023