It is Balancing when Turning?

Alright people. We are on to another day of working on the kart. Of course we were out there when it super hot and an hour after we were done it started raining and cooled off so much. But it is okay with us because we got some stuff done.

Hubby came home and he immediately changed into work clothes and I told the kiddo to go get shoes on and head outside to help his Daddy. Once we were all out there we were tackling the steering issue that we seemed to be having. When we would put the kid in the kart and have him turn the wheel one way and the two of the tires would come off the ground and then turned the other way, everything was fine.

We took the steering components apart and started to troubleshoot. On a kart, the steering is pretty simple. You turn the steering wheel and the bar it is connected to is connected to two bars that are connected to the wheels. No big deal to take apart, but it was a huge pain in the butt making sure that everything was connected together at the same lengths because it definitely was not like that when we got the kart. After about an hour of measuring and remeasuring we were able to make everything as even as possible and straight as possible. The tow out that we had was gone. WOOHOO!

When we put the kart back down on the ground and had the kid get in to test it out, the wheels were still doing the same thing. We were dumbfounded. When we bought the kart, we were told that there were two different sets of wheels on it. The front two were the same and the back two were the same. Husband then decided to see if they were the same size tires in the front. The tires were marked the same so it did not seem like this would be necessary, but oh it so was.

The tires had been used by the previous owner and we were so happy to actually get a set to use for him to practice with. After measuring the tires we found out that they had completely different wear on them. I am not really sure how this happens, but in this case one was bigger than the other even though they were the same size tire. Well that explains why the tires are lifting when the wheel is turned one way. Just because husband decided to check the measurements of the tires, I decided to check the air pressure in the tires. That was completely different between all the tires too! The front ones were off by about ten pounds of air!

So if you ever decided to buy a kart and you get some used tires, DO NOT TURN THEM DOWN! Just make sure when you are working them that there is equal air and equal wear on the tires. LOL.

We let our son get in the kart tonight and with it running and let him get on the gas a little. We had a giant helmet for him to wear so he wouldn't go deaf by the motor noise. Here is a video of him and the kart. We had it up on some wood so it would not go anywhere, in case you were wondering.