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Here is what the kart looked like with the seat installed. The only drawback I found is that this is very large to store and transport so the cloth seats may get a plastic cover soon to make them weather resistant. |
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Here we have the final steering bar and control arm installed. The kite kart is a unusual experience at first because your extremities are fully involved with piloting it. You use your arms to control the kite and your feet to steer. There is no break on this system because you can just turn the kart 90 degrees to the wind and coast to a stop easily. |
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Our day at the salt flats was exciting and dangerous. One thing I didn’t think about was a double nut on the rear wheels. I was piloting the maiden voyage of this kart and was being followed with a friend’s truck and the rear tire fell off. The wide stance prevented it from rolling over but it scared the hell out of me and it took us a half hour to track the kite down and get back. While I was only moving along at 15 MPH being so close to the ground alters your perception of speed a lot. Luckily I had two of these and we barrowed the nuts off of the second kart to make one safe kart between the 2 of them.
So I learned a lot in the project and it’s a fairly safe and simple initial design. In future versions we will have a lot more angled cuts, some form of dampening system to make the road less bumpy and I need to solve a conflict between seatbelts, harnesses and kite tethers… lucky for you all I am experimenting with this stuff so you can learn from it! |
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