Thread: Billy Cart - wheel and axle

We would often aim carefully at a driveway (at speed of course), pop one side onto the footpath, let the other side stay on the road/in the gutter and hope the bum (the cart's) dragging along the concrete kerb would slow us down (sometimes for a controlled crash, sometimes just to shed speed before chucking a u-turn).

Next door neighbour once destroyed a brand new crepe soled shoe by dragging his heel as a brake. Only one though - the other was still perfect. Three-quarters of the stuffed one was still perfect.

Where were our parents?


Carts with brakes were for wusses. Or build by Dads.

I remember one of the Billy karts I built had large gearbox bearings (4" diameter) jammed onto 1" dowel for wheels. Man would that not only do 360's, but 720's and 1080's!! However, it was a bit uncontrollable, so the front ones got swapped for 1/2 an old pair of roller skates (the old metal ones you strapped to the bottom of your shoes...)
At least then I could steer it.

Brakes...??

What brakes??!!

I would have thought that the back of your shoe heel was the brake.

Mmmm...ball bearing racers. Round my part of the world the kids just chopped down the cross board until the bearings could be hammered on (bearings salvaged from a the local servo, which actually did real repairs then too). The sparks coming from the 'wheels' were pretty spectacular too.

That all seemed to disappear when some kid found a single strap on roller skate in the junk, took it apart & bolted it to a length of 6x1 pine and made a roller surf board - too bad we didn't know about patents, I.P. claims and all that rubbish then.

yep, our "plans" were also bearings smashed onto cut end boards. Then a nail outside that as a locking pin. Only things we did extra was put a real steering wheel on them.
Rope went up to dowel, wrapped around 3-4 times then a nail thru rope and dowel and then 3 more turns and back to the other side. one piece of wood up middle with a hole to hold dowel at right height.
We used to go down a hill that had a T intersection at the bottom.
2 courts along the drop if you wanted to chicken out and turn off.
Just needed to hope there were no cars at the bottom at the same time as you got there.

Back to the original question. I would consider flipping the front axle around, so that the axle is behind the pivot. It will act more like a caster and want to go straight. At the moment it might be a bit twitchy and unstable.

The wheels axle etc are fine, just some washers either side of the wheels