I know someone here mustve done this. I've got a few broken riding mowers, and a good 18 horse motor. I want to build a go cart/pit vehicle out of whaat I have. There's a website about pro-street lawnmowers that I found, and that's about it. My google-fu is weak on this one. Any reccomendations for places for plans/how to's?
Anyone have a build thread of this kind of insanity?
Keep in mind that the mower engines sit vertically so the engine will not maintain fuel flow or oil themselves properly. Make sure your design can make up for that. I forgot about that whole then when mounting a mower engine to a cart. Now I'm looking for something just as powerful. 
Have you checked to racing lawn tractor websites?
You might try searching for "racing lawn mowers".
there was a GRM article a while back about this, they called them yardcarts.
yes please.
moparman, my thought exactly. except with slicks and on pavement.
I had planned on using the vertical shaft engine left in its current orientation. one of the mowers has a seven speed, one has a 5 speed.
im now off to google racing lawn mowers, etc.
gonna try it, at least. please keep the ideas and google links coming.
A friend made a documentary about mower racing:
I inherited a water-cooled Honda mower. Parts are expensive and available only by cataloge so I removed the deck and turned it into our pit cart. Pulls the car with little effort and takes Debbie's pit supplies from the grid to the pits. Much easier to use than a ATV.
whenry wrote: I inherited a water-cooled Honda mower. Parts are expensive and available only by cataloge so I removed the deck and turned it into our pit cart. Pulls the car with little effort and takes Debbie's pit supplies from the grid to the pits. Much easier to use than a ATV.
Never seen a water cooled model unless it was a really big garden tractor. Pics?
I wrote the yardkart story for GRM a few years back because I was building a lot of lawnmower-powered stuff with my kids. There aren't a lot of good web resources out there (and I haven't put anything out there myself) except the racing sites. The good news is that there is a lot of standardization and interchangability of parts, so you can often adapt and modify things pretty easily if you aren't afraid of some minor fabrication. My main piece of advice is to find the biggest lawnmower junkyard you can and just look at what's out there, what's common, what seems to break, etc., then go home and make a plan.
18 horse is a ton of power for one of these things. We've got a 6 HP motor going 35+ on one of my kids' karts plus (it's got the power to go much faster, I just haven't changed the pulleys because I want to keep my kids). Much of the power on the lawnmower is spinning the blade, so once you've eliminated that, you can go plenty fast without a lot HP. We built a replica brass-era car that's about golf-kart size and it goes about 20 with passengers on a 10 HP motor.
--Carl
Carl Heideman wrote: We built a replica brass-era car that's about golf-kart size and it goes about 20 with passengers on a 10 HP motor.
Maybe go karts/lawn mowers should be added as a class to the Challenge. Maybe put a $500 cap on it?
id do that in a skinny minute.
so you have a copy of the article, carl? I couldn't find the issue in my librabry.
and im figuring ill detune this thing for my kid, and run it wide open for me.
and reccomendations on getting the COG lower?
im actually planning on starting on this in the near futire, as I have to do a lot of property work anyway and ill have to move my "junkyard" as the wife calls it for grading. so I figure that's the prime time.....
and the funny thing is i just sent a letter to grm about a different issue and made the comment that they had never covered lawn mower racing at all and this tread pops up....
the idea about the racing mower on slicks and caged for autocross has been corssing my mind to be very cheap and showing up to the challange with it would be amsuing....
ckosacranoid wrote: the idea about the racing mower on slicks and caged for autocross has been corssing my mind to be very cheap and showing up to the challange with it would be amsuing....
pivot cone + zero radius turning = win
In reply to Gearheadotaku: I will try to get you one. Two cylinders with approx 18hp as I recall but only 38" cut. It just purrrrrs.
You'll need to log in to post.
