THE MARIO DEATHKART
While having fun with our powersports projects, I was presented with another opportunity to build something nuts. One day coming home I found an old Power Wheels dune buggy sitting by the trash. Obviously the batteries were dead and the kid or kids that used to ride it are too big plus it was a little banged up so for many, the trash was probably the most logical place for this thing. But not for me. My brain suddenly went into gear, thinking of the next crazy project, the Mario Deathkart. This name came to me instantly as this thing would remind me of the Mario kart game where grown characters sit in seemingly small gokarts to race. My plan was to build this thing into a gokart that I can rip around the roads and yard. There were a couple of ways to accomplish this. The first would be to build a gokart chassis from scratch, using aftermarket parts for the steering and axle, among other things. The other option is to find a donor gokart to chop up and graft the PW toy onto. A visit to FBM and the choice was obvious. After getting my hands on a cheap small gokart I was ready to get to work.
I had to chop up the Power Wheels body to get just the actual body, sans frame and wheels. I would be excluding the steering wheel and the "steering column" on the toy since we'd be using the gokart steering. I planned on trying to use some of the body that goes around the toy steering to at least give it some appearance of looking like the original toy, which is hardly going to be the case when we're done. As for the gokart, after removing the engine and seat, I chopped some portions of the frame, then hacked the frame in half, shortening the frame to get close to the wheelbase of the PW toy. After welding the frame back together, I added some frame at the rear to support the Predator 212 engine to the rear of the body. After getting the body mounted at several points, I cut up the steering and reconfigured the thing to allow for the steering column to be removable since in order to bolt the body down without hacking it up more, the steering column had to be omitted then added afterward.
With the body down and the steering reconfigured and bolted back down, the engine was added with a fresh clutch and chain. The drum brake was restored with a fresh band just as well. As for the controls, I salvaged some bike brake handles and cables to use them for both the throttle and brake, since there was no room for pedals in cramped toy. With the controls done, the last thing was relocating the fuel tank. This was done with some tubing to raise the thing above the engine enough to clear the toy body and allow for decent gravity feed into the engine.
I changed the front tires out to some larger knobby tires that were used on an old dolly since the front wheels were small slicks that would've had the body almost touching the ground. During tests, I found that the steering was wacky since this thing was only driving one wheel and a lot of weight was rear of the axles, causing the spotty steering on certain surfaces. I ended up adding probably 30-50 lbs of lead ingots in the little storage compartment at the front of the toy body to at least try to give me some weight balance. It seemed like it helped as I was able to drive this thing all over and drift around like a nut while still maintaining some decent control.
Since the engine is stock with a centrifugal clutch driving one wheel, performance was relatively anemic for a 212 engine on such a light body. At some point I will see a number of upgrades being done to this whole build, between adding a live axle and possibly a centrifugal clutch, along with a disc brake setup and probably better wheels all around. But even in its version 1 form, this thing is entertaining and slightly sketchy, since a full grown person trying to squeeze in this thing and slide all over the place in something intended for a 5 year old makes this thing officially a deathkart, with no roll cage or any protection of any sort.
A shot of the steering column from the go kart, passing through the front of the PW toy body and bolting to the go kart frame underneath. Note the bike brake controls secured to the steering wheel, used for both the brake and throttle, since there's no room for pedal controls on the cramped floor of the body.
The engine mounted on the extended rear frame section. Note how the engine sits to the rear of the axle instead of right on top of the axle, causing some imbalance. Also note the frame that's holding the fuel tank at a high point to clear the Power Wheels body and allow for proper gravity feed to the carburetor. This will later prove important when we upgrade to a Mikuni carburetor.
A closeup of the drive line and the drum brake and band. Note the welded brackets used to hold the brake cable and the band in place to allow the brake setup to function without interfering with the drive chain.
