this week on dirt every day we're gonnashow you how to take a giant motorhome and turn it into a giant man-size go kart! keep going...keep going. this week on dirt every day we're going to build a giant go kart out of a motorhome. you probably remember a previous episodewhere we took a motorhome, we had the motor guys from the polygoats comeover here and help us chop it all up. we threw the whole body and house ofthe motor home in the dumpster and now we have a chassis with a 454 bigblock turbo four hundred and a dually rearaxle. we're going to make this
chassis into a giant go kart. this is the go kart we're kind of basing our whole build up off of. it has a motor in the back, or is that a motor in the front? it has aroll bar made outta square tube. we should probably have aroll bar. there's a bunch of wires and cables running around because this also has a brake pedal and a throttle pedal we aregonna do something similar so we'll still run all these cables andpulleys and gear shifters and everything back andforth so we can actually control the thing.
start it, stop it, shift it, steer it. those are the four 's's. there might be others i can't think of now. what we're doing with this motorhome isnot exactly safe. you probably shouldn't duplicate this athome. we got a lotta crazy enough to pull off and we better get to work. to mount the seat to the frame rail first i took some rectangular tubing. cleaned the ends, cut them down to length, and welded them right to the frame rail.
now i'm gonna take a piece of metal, spanthis distance so we can mount the piece right to it. this is a piece of metal i found behind the shed. kinda rusty, sharp, and dangerous much likeme. rusty, sharp, and dangerous. oh this will be perfect. (vrooom!) now i need a roll cage right here, but now i know how tall the seat is going to be so we can buildthe roll cage off of that. throttle pedal, shifter, steering wheel. few more steps and we'll be peeling out. the next step on my go kart
is the roll bar. it's prettyimportant because if you roll over you don't wanna die. what i'velearned over the years of building 4 by 4s is that if your roll bar or roll cage isdesigned right you can almost build it out of anything. youcould build it out of pipe but you really probably shouldn't. you could use square tube which is alsonot a good idea or build it from round tube which is really the right way todo this. i invited my friend frank up here. nowfrank is an engineer
he's not the type of engineer that drivesa train he's the kind that helps design things that work. so frank what do you think of my go kart? ah jeez.... you'll have such a good time. my friendfrank is an engineer who used to work for big automotive performance company. but about five years ago he dove into aswimming pool and broke his stupid neck. frank and i did a bunch of projectstogether all types of stupid stuff. we'd always build cool stuff or talkabout cool 4 by 4 projects we wanted
to build some day. frank doesn't get to cut, weld, and grind as much as he used to but he's always willing to stop by and hecklecall me. laugh at my fabrication skills and drink my beer while i work. you know with friends like frank you canbuild just about anything. okay frank so here's my driver's seat. got it. engine's way up there so i feel likewe should have a roll bar that's kinda like this, goes over the top of me. sit in it how tall are you over the seat?
uh like that? so six inches. six inches above the seat? six inchesabove the seat. you think about that high? that'll work. should i do 2 kickers or just one bigkicker all the way down to the back? one big kicker. i was thinking one big cross member back there in case we need to put a tow strap on it and get pulled out. you'll never get stuck yougot a big block you'll be fine. that's a good point i'm glad i brought anengineer i'm gonna start chopping metal. so the inside of the frame here is coveredwith some old
undercoating and it doesn't bring offvery well it just clogs the grinding wheel. so i'll heat it up with this torch and scrape it off. you gotta be a little careful because right there is a fuel tank filled with 87 octane. that's safe isn't it, frank? i wouldn't worry. i wouldn't either. themost dangerous dirt every day ever. i hope my mom doesn't watch this. that thing looks hella crooked. whatever it looks industrial to me all the cool kids like that these days. that's the term that's what i meant the thing looks hella industrial. i've had so many people tell me how tobuild a go kart out of a
motorhome which is strange to me becausei can't even find the online forum of motorhome go cars dot com. you need toput the engine in the back and the seat in the front. you got to do this and it's gotta have a back, blah blah blah. no you need big tires, big horsepower, and no mufflers. it's just gotta peel out and be awesome. he fred. yeah? fire. just a small one. i could get these tires mounted on my minivan before you're done with this roll bar i mean come on. we still need to cut andwiden the wheels.
oh jesus. i like to hang with you frank because you're positive. i'm positive i'm not riding in this thing. what's the worst that will happen to you? might break my neck. break it back together? that actually looks pretty rigid. if he had a cup holder and a beer he'd be good. yeah this is going to need a cup holder. you know i've built cup holders on this show before. so this is the smog canister it has the charcoal in it.
another fine cup holder project on dirt every day. as night fell on our project and iwas just finishing up the roll bar of course i ran outta welding gas youknow it's bound to happen after dark when every welding store isclosed. so i decided to pack up and call it a day. yesterday was very successful on our go kart build. as we said before this is our small gokart we kinda needed a seat and a roll bar. we've donethat
now we have the spot where the driverwill sit. now we have to work from this point all the way forward to all thecontrols. i got a lot of stuff to do i'll call upthose guys the polygoats from the off road club again see if they can get here it's alreadyabout eleven o'clock saturday mornin. they're a buncha college kids so we'll be lucky if they're outta bed before noon. so this is what we need to do to makethe go kart run and drive. it needs steering it needs brakes, it needs a shifter,
throttle, start ignition, wheels, & tires. rewire the rear fuel pump and clean up the engine to remove anyextra stuff on it we don't need. one rule to the list: you do not mark off anything on the listuntil it is done. otherwise doesn't get done. we are moving right along on our giant go kart project the guys are working on the steering. we've been working on getting the wheelsand tires put together we had to use some really crazy wheelsthat are widened to fit the 16 inch
tires, but they needed to have the 10 lug boltpattern for the rear axle so that's been a little bit of work. we had spent the whole weekendmessing around with our giant go kart and we're really close to making a drive. thekids had to get back to school and i had to get back to my day job of writing magazine articles so even though we can almost taste thefirst test drive we decided enough was enough and we have to finish it up later.
even with the best neighbors ever ididn't want to push our luck too much by driving around the neighborhood, in the dark, with an uncorked big block gokart. it is morning really early morning and we're going to take our go kart out forsome testing today. but first: go kart to do list. brakes we hooked up the brakes with this kind of cable. the shifter is pretty safe. throttle sticks makes this thing kind of dangerous.
steering is done, start ignition is done, wheels, tires. so we're pretty much done witheverything. in fact this marker is also done so get rid of that. we are going to load up the go kart onthis two-car trailer we borrowed from somebody cuz it won't fit on a normaltrailer. we'll put our little go kart on the back, head up the road, and go have some fun. what we'll do today at our testfacilities is a shootout between our normal size go kart and our giant man-size go kart. first let me get my stunt drivers inhere these guys are from the polygoats
you can see we got all our proper safetyequipment, gold sparkly helmet, and a seatbelt. excellent guys you look great. so for thefirst part of our shootout is something that, well, it's somethingthat every go kart should consider. every go kart builder that is. gentlemenhow fast can you start your engines? ready, go! as you can see giant go karts are much better at starting than small go karts. alright.
you lost. the next competition is theobstacle course. it will show us how well each go kart turns, how fast it is, and how muchagility it has. now the goal here is you want to startover there at the start/finish line, go up that little hill, come outhere and go around one of these trees, and then loop back around here and gobetween these two dead cow skulls. now you only have to go around one tree soif your vehicle is too big you might have to go around both treesbut if you're small enough probably only
have to go around one. got that? alright let's go. 32.56 seconds, 32 and fifty-six hundreds ofseconds. i dunno. set, go! go, go, go! that way that way! 55.15 seconds! okay motor trend fans we know you guyslove drag races.
not really sure why but the drag race seemsto be the race of choice when it comes to the motortrend channel. whenever comparing stuff, whenever it's a lamborghini versus a ferrari. we've even seen old jeeps race side by sides and today we're gonna have a drag race of epic proportions. a david versus goliath, a man-size kart versus a little man go kart. alright that was an epic trouncing onthe small man's go kart by the big man's go kart.
so we're going to do a rematch. this time you have to start his engine. what?! you kidding me? nope that's how we're running it give you a little bit of a handicap. gentlemen are you ready? set. go! team work. that's a good thing about an off-roadcar they have teamwork they can help each other do things you know if you getbroken down or your go kart doesn't start you got these otherguys in the club to help you out.
they got your back. don't overthink it. sorry viewers this part of the show is boring. there we go, and they're off. go! ok polygoats there's one moreevent in our competition but first a recap. when we started thecompetition of how fast could you start your go kart the big go kart won. and then we had the obstacle course and thesmall go kart won. then we had the drag race
the big go kart won. so now because you are behind by one point thisnext event is winner-take-all so you have achance to win, you have a chance to win, and either of youcan lose. up next tug-o-war. ah yeah! let's do this get in your race cars stunt drivers. alright that's it for dirt every day if you have a motorhome at home you should turn it into a giant go kart. just don't tell your parents. giant go kart way better than small go karts. we'll see you in a few weeks.
final episode: take 1. we'll probably be fired after this episode (laugh).
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