This is a picture of my little guy helping me "size" what will soon be my lawn destroyer.
One day when I was at work, my kids figured they would help dear old Dad by washing the Jeep. They soon realized that bare metal does not take kindly to water. They soon found their shiny car turned into something that Ford Motors would have built,a rusty hulk.
After the first fifty hours of work, I almost decided to bail out on this project, because I thought I had bit off more than I could chew on this one.I had hoped to get this go-kart done for the kids in a few weeks, but never figured it would take over 300 hours to complete.
There's over two 4X8 sheets of 18 gauge sheet metal, as well as over 40 feet of 1 inch square tubing making up the frame. The body was built first, then the frame was built inside of it. I figured this was the easiest way of getting the job done.
The engine came out of an old wood chipper. It's a 5hp Briggs and Stratton. The transmission was given to me by a friend which he took out of a John Deere lawn tractor. While searching through the scrap yard, I picked up a riding lawnmower which had a perfect size differential. I wasn't going to use one originally, but I'm glad I did. I machined a rack and pinion steering from a block of aluminum, and geared it so that it would take at least 2 turns of the steering wheel to go from lock to lock. If I had used the same set-up as I had built on my go-kart, the kids wouldn't have the strength to turn this beast, because when I was done, it ended up weighing 300 pounds.
After all the welding, the body was fairly "straight", but I got out the few waves there were with a thin coat of filler. The entire body was then primed with a zinc chromate vinyl wash primer, then followed with a high build urethane primer. The entire thing was wet sanded, and taped off so I could paint the interior.I mixed some black and white Imron paint to match the gray seat colour, and then sprayed a couple of coats on.
The exterior of the kart is finished with Imron 5000 polyurethane in Freightliner red.It's a good thing this paint goes a long way, because a pint of it cost me almost $70.00 without hardener. Ouch.
The Jeep was finally done after 9 weeks of non-stop work. It was definitely a worth while project after seeing the kids enjoy it so much. My son is only three, so he's only allowed to drive it in first gear. This limits his speed to 8 MPH. Even at this low speed, there's enough mass to do a lot of damage.He hit my well at the front of the house, and took a big chunk out of it with the bumper. So far, the dog has been lucky to get out of his way.
My daughter on the other hand is a different story. She insists on having the Jeep in high gear, which will get her going around 14 MPH. She has taken out 4 inch diameter trees, clipped rocks, and even gone down a 45 degree ditch about 6 1/2 feet deep on the hottest day of summer. It took me 45 minutes of pure hell just to dig it out and get it back on the road.She drives just like her Mother.
The next two pictures were taken recently(spring 2003). As you can see the "Jeep" is still running strong with probably in excess of 3000 miles on it.After 4 years it could use a little bit of body work and a fresh paint job. I'm thinking "Camo" colors with a scale M-60 mounted on a turet would be a little different, but I don't think the neighbours would appreciate it.
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JEEP OVER BUMP MOVIE
JEEP IN THE MUD MOVIE