Looks fun for screwing around with, but I’m looking for something that I can really get down with performance and driving-wise. I’m definitely ok with suspension, but that’s obviously way outside of what anyone is going to do with a sprint kart frame. Unfortunately, it’s a very strange market out there for offroad four wheel vehicles. There’s nothing even roughly equivalent to the type of value proposition sprint kart manufacturers offer in terms of price/availability/capability. One can get a piece of utter crap from anywhere from $2000-$10,000. There’s also a bunch of “kit buggies”, which are way cooler and could fit the bill theoretically, but the work involved with building something like that is wayyyy beyond anything I’m interested in tackling. And there’s just all the UTV’s which weight 1500-2000+ lbs and cost $15-$45k. It’s pretty bleak, but I’m sure I’ll keep a casual eye in case anything worthwhile pops up. This is what I had about a year and half ago, Honda FL350 - 350cc two stroke, but they only made it one year - 1985 and sourcing parts is a pain so I got rid of it before I drown.
Wow, that’s pretty cool and bold to go for it like that. I might even be interested if it were either a kit or at least well out of the prototyping stage and into the proven and tested realm.
At times our karts can sometimes feel fairly complex in some ways, but my short time with the FL350 and its suspension and more sophisticated steering layers showed me that we have it pretty easy in reality. Those areas, if they’re not right or undeveloped can be deep rabbit holes.
My efforts to make a backyard track that’s smooth enough for a dirt kart are back on after leveling up my terraforming game.
What changed?
Well, in my first attempt I tried to make the track just using the front loader of my tractor, which was claimed to be sufficient to grade with, at least according to YouTube . After a lot of time spent, I found out that this was not actually true, at least not to the degree that the results were useful for my purposes.
But fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when I hooked up a box blade to the tractor and things that seemed impossible with the loader are relatively easy, and even more importantly the surface produced is so much smoother than anything I had been able to achieve before. Especially when paired with a landscaping rake [look it up], which is another new tool I’ve acquired.
From here I’ll have a slow pace at working on things because there’s still a lot to do and the seasons of weather we’re heading into aren’t the greatest for the purpose (of making the track or driving on it).
Will update when I reach significant milestones, but I figured there might be at least a couple people out there who are either doing the same, or else interested in it. Cheers.
w00h00 - the track lives and everything is working how I imagined it back when I started at the end of last year. It’s been somewhat painstaking work (though also somewhat satisfying), but it’s paid off, and roost is flying. I’ll posts some videos and photos at some point, and I’ve started marking up a drawings of how I can use the infield of the oval to make the track length twice as long as it currently is (at the moment it’s 350ft from start line to finish).
The tag engine I have on the kart is hilariously over-powered for this little bull-ring of a track, but in a good way. Hard braking off the straights put the kart into a slide to enter the corners, and from mid-corner to exit it’s all about clean throttle control to maintain a controlled slide throughout the rest of the corner and onto the straight.
Finally have some video to post. Longer term plans are to widen the corners a bit more and/or make them a wider radius so that I can increase the overall corner speeds, as well as to continue working on smoothing the surface a bit more (it’s not so much the little bumps anymore, but rather very, very gradual highs and lows that need to be filled in, which is actually trickier)
. After a lot of time spent, I found out that this was not actually true, at least not to the degree that the results were useful for my purposes.