go kart welding question

Sep 13, 2003 4 Replies

I'm helping a neighbor's son build a go-kart. The plans he bought calls for the rear axle to consist of a piece of 1" .080 square tubing. They want you to weld a 5/8 bolt to the each end of the square tubing to serve as the axle. It seems to me that this won't be very strong as you're welding the head of a bolt to the open end of a piece of square tube. Not much to attach to. Does anyone have any ideas of if this will be strong enough or if there is a way to attach the bolt and make it stronger?



Thanks



Jamie


The easyest way to reinforce the 1" square tubing is to put a peice of 3/4" square solid inside, it should slide inside the 1" tubing with little effort. Cut the 3/4" long enough to go past the mounting points for the axle and weld the 3/4" solid inside each end and then weld the 5/8 bolts to the ends.

(Or just get a piece of 1" square solid) Hope this helps Greg

A nice way to do it is to use some good quality ( grade 8) threaded rod 5/8 diameter. Cut it overlength, say a foot then tack weld a 5/8 nut one end. tack another nut at the exit position of the tube. Measure the distance between the nuts and drill a quarter inch hole through the square tube at that location. Slide the threaded nut inside the tube until the end nut is at the drilled hole location and the middle nut is at the end of the tube. Weld the middle nut to the end of the tube and the end nut to the tube through the holes you drilled previously. The nut size for a 5/8 is somewhere around 7/8 or 15/16 ???? Check inside clearance on the nuts first otherwise you may have to grind them to fit inside. Randy

Thanks

Jamie

Good advice. Maybe I could drill a few holes in the 1" tube to weld the

3/4" stock in place after I insert it into the tubing?

Thanks for the advice...something I hadn't thought of!

Interesting idea. I thought about grinding down the head of the grade 4 bolts to allow them to fit in the tubing, then drilling a few holes in the tube to allow me to spot weld the bolt heads into the tubing. That's gotta be stronger than the way they suggest.

Thanks

J

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