Putting on the body - Huge Step!!!

Lots of preparation, checking, riveting etc... With Riki's help, we took the body dolly out for the first time in years, and got ready to lift and place onto the chassis... It was pretty tough to bolt on the long stainless steel exhausts as the lock nuts were tight, and the hangers had to bolt thru into the foot wells.   Lifting the body without  bending it too much was pretty difficult, and once we got the front on, and bent the dashboard sides round, the back prived hard to push into place. We also discovered that the exhausts had to be taking off to put the sides of the body on, so emergency exhaust removal had to be done on the driveway

Testing the functioning go-kart!

Last bits of testing  in the garage – propped the back of the kart up, started the engine, and gently ran through the gears including reverse.

Lot of fun driving around in the go-kart checking for leaks, testing brakes, steering etc – very noisy and fast!! Nice bday present for Dad.

Quite scary the first time we took the go-kart out of the garage and down the driveway with no power - very worried the brakes wouldn't stop it and so moved the cars and bins to give us space. Accidentally stepped hard on the accelerator and dislodged the throttle wire - took ages to bundle the ends and re-tighten!

Greasing joints and adding all fluids...

Wow - almost in the final stretch of getting this working - using the 10k PSI grease gun, injected all the joints with red high performance grease (nearly blew up one fitting because the grease had nowhere to come out, and we kept pumping), and tightened all fittings to ensure no leaks as fluids were added - transmission fluid, rear end gear oil, motor oil, coolant etc...