Work, Life and organising events really slowed down the progress on my build. Whilst not being ruinning by the NSW BBQ Event, I got enough done to be able to showcase what I have been up to and to give people an idea on the build process of a cyclekart.

Since the last update, I have completely skinned the front 2/3s of the kart in 0.5mm aluminium and punched about 3/4 of the louvre vents. I made an assortment of punches out of scrap plywood and old merbau timber decking. I used the merbau to make punches and then made dies out of 12mm plywood. It works well enough on the thin aluminium - the dies are stronger than the sheet itself and will split it if you aren't careful.

Ive made a lot of progress on the fibreglass nosecone. I've smoothed it out, put the front cutouts in, painted it and started making a grille. Though not quite finished as a I would like, I have made big progress.

I have made a dashboard from 12mm ply which i have skinned with aluminium and dressed with brass. It contains my keyed electric start ignition and an 85mm GPS speedometer. For 12v power, I got a Milwaukee M12 battery adapter that tucks up behind the dash out of sight to power the 12v accessories.

Steering wheel is about half way done and roughed in to shape. It is made from lasercut 3mm steel and clad in 12mm Plywood with Red 1mm G10 liners between the wood and steel which I had left over from my bladesmithing escapades

Ive also started on the windscreen and side view mirrors which are a work in progress.

Whilst Im a long way off completion, I am hoping to get a lot more done before the Goulburn Car show in November

Cut some key-ways in a shaft.
5mm slots in a 3/4" 304 SS. round bar.
First time I've done one like this, rather pleased with how they turned out.
The mounting fixture might have been a tech school project, I found it at a garage sale.
It's bolted down to the cross slide vice on my little lathe drill mill.
Budget Chinese slot drill in the drill chuck, 'cos my collet chuck has imperial sizes (1/4" collets, not 6mm).

Haven't updated in a while, but work is progressing slowly.

I've just about amassed all the parts I need to complete the build apart from brake lines and a chain.

I now have a boxed in cabin which I am skinning in 0.5mm aluminium. I've found that with such a thin metal its quite easy to get a nice radius on body panels by running the sheet over your legs back and forth like you are drying yourself with a towel. Sounds crazy but it works.

Also made a foam buck for a nosecone. Got it into shape over the weekend and laid down my first layers of glass and resin. By far the messiest thing I have ever done. I just used chopped mat for the fibreglass, but in hindsight i would use woven cloth for straight lines and simple curves whilst saving the chopped mat for the more intricate compound curves. Now time to sand, cut and recoat where necessary

My front wheels have arrived. Chinese dirt bike, nice quality.....and the price... around $54 ea. with free shipping. Whoo Hooo!
These were on Aliexpress, you need to spend a fair bit of time sussing out the bargains and pay particular attention to the shipping cost.
Bit of tension while monitoring the tracking, they were held up at Chinese airport for a couple of weeks to get on special "oversize'" freight flights.
I actually got some discount vouchers because of the delays.

My original plan was to build my own wheels around some nice 1970's Yamaha MX hubs I have. Then sourcing the 17" rims and custom spokes, tyres, tubes and rim bands, add the time to assemble and true and we are looking at hundreds & hundreds of $$$$$ for 2 wheels.

Now that I have the wheels, I can finish the pillar spacing and the stub axle design to meet the track width spec.

front axle starting to take shape and more parts slowly starting to arrive.

Some slight design changes, there's a plethora of Austin based karts already, so have decided to base my design on the ERA Type-B. I will most likely model mine off chassis no.10, ERA R10B of Peter Whitehead who won the 9th Australian Grand Prix in this car at Bathurst in 1938.

Original plan for driving the trike was with a rear mounted engine and a swing arm. (Simple)
In order to fit it into the available space, I was planning to extend the motor drive past the front of the wheel and put the Torque Converter on the other side of the wheel. This was not going to be a problem as one of my 'donor' engines is from a portable generator. These have a tapered drive into the alternator rotor, press the rotor apart and away we go, extended shaft, (Simple). Next step was a short swing-arm pivoting in-line with the output sprocket of the TC. (Simple... sketch attached). For proper alignment with the wheel sprocket, I would need to place the drive sprocket on the inside end of the TC. (Simple) Apparently, this is possible with a genuine Comet TC. My Chinese clone, TAV20, on the other hand, has a 5/8" shaft through the rear pulley and drive sprocket, expanding to 17mm through the alloy bearing support. (Not so simple??) New Plan in development.