The Go Kart

Me and my friend Jack are currently building a go kart.

It WAS going to be a petrol one, and I even bought the engine, but it didn't really work out... The engine was really old and damn hard to start.

So...

I now have a starter motor from some car.



I don't know anything about it, except that it runs on 12v.

Hopefully I will be able to get a couple of crappy old batteries from the wreckers I got the motor from.


This is the schematic for the PWM motor controller:



The four MOSFETs are going to be changed into 5. May seem excessive, especially when they are rated at 169A each! But they are only little TO 220 packages, and I don't know how much power they can dissipate. They are, however, quite happy running at about 70°C.

I am getting these MASSIVELY rated MOSFETs from Ross at Bright Sparks for $4.50 each - Thanks Ross!

Jack and I have just finished putting the Battery supports on. It is long enough to hold 3 - 4 batteries | || || | <-- Like that. I welded some angle iron onto one side, and the other side alreay had a bar. I used aluminium diamond plate for the actual support, and that it supported by another angle iron bar. It is all nicely bolted down.


Will keep posting updates as they come! Should be another one either this weekend or next. Getting the accelerator pedal hooked up to the potentiometer should be a bit of a challenge...

Will put everything into nice boxes :-). Due the the fact this kart is electric, I can have reverse too! It involves a single relay...!