I bought a complete racing kart a while back for $500. Previous owner seemed to be good about bearing maintence, all are super smooth and roll for a while. Spindle heims are tight but tie rod heims have a little play. May use them for clutch linkage. Here parts I'm keeping that I might use in the build.
The axle and front wheels also came from the kart. I think I have the motor, clutch, and pit buggy sold for $350. So i may be able to get all my money back off the parts I don't need.
Here's my balancing act so I can get a measurment on how wide the front axle needs to be.
I cut the camber plates of the kart frame and tacked them on my axle. I flushed the plates to the back of the tubing so I could weld it directly to the frame and maintain the correct wheel base. Tubing is 1x2 11 ga.
The spindle (not a typo...) has 10 degrees of kingpin inclination built in. So the plates go on at 10 degrees. The right side was off by only a half degree so a very slight tap to left one made it match. The right could have been corrected but I would have had to grind the axle beam. Everything looked to good to worry about that. Spindles are what set the kpi anyway.
Hard to see in the pic but I had it run the top heim out to get the camber set on the right side (left in the pic).
So I scratched my head double checked. Pulled the wheels checked spindles directly. Scratched my head. Pulled spindles and rechecked the axle beam.
Turns out the right side spindle was built with 5 degrees of kpi. So...
I had to cut it, clean it, and reweld it.
Set everything up on the table to axle position measurements. Frame is 4 1/8 off the table and I have 3 pounds of air in the tires. I will be able to adjust the front and rear up or down 3/8's of an inch. Total of 3/4's adjustment.
I drilled the bottom hole for the bearing cassette on one frame rail.
Then I clamped the two together to drill the other.
Now here's a question would this be legal in the uslmra? It says primary mounting point not sole mount point. Not trying to cause a ruckus or anything. I know welding flanges to the frame is legal. I do plan on bracing the top but everything will be based off the factory frame.