Out of interest has anyone ever used on the road, or made anything for road use, that has the direct steering like that on a go kart, ie 2 pushrods from TRE's/rose joints go to a rotating fulcrum on the bottom of the steering column?

I appreciate it's a very basic system & very direct, so possibly a bit of a handful on the road? But karts aren't exactly difficult to drive & it would be extremely simple to engineer, very cheap & very light.

I can't see any reason why it would give a problem for IVA or MSVA

I'm sure there must be some downsides I've not thought of???

Thoughts?

The main thing that sprung to mind would be steering leverage. Most cars use a couple of rotations to turn wheels a few degrees, whereas that sort of linkage turns the driven wheels almost at 1:1 with the steering wheel. Parallel parking would need shoulders like Hercules!!

As for being 'a bit of a handful', I thought the main thing with go kart agility is their overly square wheelbase? With a ratio closer to a production car, and appropriate suspension geometry it may not be too bad.

I'm guessing you'd still have to have an offset steering column for IVA, does MSVA have the same restriction?

They may also be looking for some kind of rotation stop, otherwise depending on how it was set up you could turn the wheel beyond a certain point then the steering would reverse itself. You'd be turning right to go left.

This would be a very light vehicle, I'm thinking trike under 400kg tops - easy to build in a steering stop - I don't think you'd be doing a lot of parallel parking with it.

Maybe run a larger steering wheel - 15" perhaps?

this has it but I doubt it weighs more than 150kg, never did try to turn it tbh








there's also this one by scorpion kit conversions although they have completely the wrong tyres fitted, rather stupid that



[Edited on 9/8/18 by Mr Whippy]

[Edited on 9/8/18 by Mr Whippy]

That's interesting, a slightly different take in that the kart puts the inner rod ends opposite one another, probably easier to build lock stops in with the arrangement you've shown, I'd figured quads must use that system, but of course handlebars do give considerably more leverage.

I think the bottom one might weigh a bit more than 150kg!!!

Not for road use, but built for a down hill push kart race a few years back. Pretty simple really and I have to say, pretty effective too!

One point I should add is that I made the steering uprights myself as well. I angled the steering arms and leant them back to give it some caster, but didn't build in any camber. Not the end of the world for a push kart, but something I suspect you'd need for road use.



[Edited on 10/8/18 by nick205]