How much power does the average gokart have? You know, like the ones you buy at the big box stores for $599 or whatever and your kids you have it wrecked within the space of the afternoon. Usually no more than a couple, right? The best of them have a 5 horse Briggs. This one has two, count ‘em, two Briggs & Stratton 5-horse motors to power the rear wheels. To paraphrase the old Kanye, no one man should have all that power!
This little monster is based on a traditional Manco Model 415 frame with a modified steering rack and column to reduce understeer. You can see two little momentary switches on the steering wheel which are temporary kill switches to aid with drift initiation (!!!) and cornering. The ad says the kart will do as much as 40 miles per hour.
This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you hand off to your twelve-year-old. They will end up with it stuck in a tree 30 miles from home somehow. There’s no belts, no roll protection, no lateral bolstering, and the rear tires are fried, which should probably tell you something about the handling dynamics and power delivery. I love it to death. And it just might be the death of me.
The best thing about this particular kart is that it runs the two wheels independently, so you don’t have the traditional solid axle problems with a “regular” twin-engine kart. Here, I’ll let the seller describe it better.
The two engine, two wheel drive set up is a different machine from the more common two engine single axle (live axle) setup. De-coupled wheels is the key. The biggest difference you can feel and HEAR is with cornering. When a live axle corners, the inside wheel must slip, loosing traction. So the outside wheel is the only one transferring combined HP to the road. Full HP, half the traction. But with the Twin Wheel drive setup, in the corner the inside wheel does not break traction and continues to put its 5hp to the road. Full HP, FULL TRACTION, sticky, precise, and a bit violent. And since the inside wheel turns slower while cornering, the engines’ RPMs and exhaust notes become out of phase and a lovely phenomena takes place, heterodyning. You’ve got to hear and experience it first-hand!
The seller lovingly refers to it as the Twinny Twin. It sounds like it has quite a lot of engineering time and effort spent on it. It’s a really dumb way to spend $800, but I’ve spent more on dumber stuff. At least this will temporarily plaster a smile to your face as you slam the throttle head first into your grave.
If you’d like to die sometime shortly after purchasing, you can check out the full listing for more info on Craigslist in the Inland Empire. California is the true home of speed, after all.
