Started on the airbox tonight with some Greatstuff expanding foam. Taped off all of the plastic with painters tape and then went nuts spraying it. I'll cut it down to shape as soon as it hardens, tape it up again, and then start laying fiberglass over the top. Here's some pics of tonights progress.

 

Don't use expanding foam. This is why. The outside fully cures and doesn't allow the gases from the curing mix in the middle to escape, making a huge goopy mess.

I switched to blocks of dry florist's foam that were glued together and I think it turned out much better. Much easier to work with and shape and much easier to sand.Here's a pic or two of the foam plenum mold before I glass it.

 

Just picked up a head for an F3 for DIRT cheap, like $45 free shipping cheap. I'm going to use it for mockup of the headers while I'm at school because I can't bring the kart down to the welding lab and possibly try out some modified porting while I'm at it. I'm lucky we have a flow bench in the mechanical engineering building that I can reserve time on.

Its great to hear from people who are following this thread, kinda gets lonely

 

any more progress to share?
you definitely have my full attention!

 

I'm not dead yet!

Unfortunately, school has kind of slowed down my progress, but there's still things that I've been getting done slowly.

First, I'm mid way though a dual radiator conversion. The radiators are off of a YFZ 450 quad and will fit right behind the side pods but in front of the tires. This is mostly in part to the radiator not getting enough flow behind the engine with the fan, but it also should allow me to take advantage of the water cooling of the turbo.

I've made a plenum in CAD that I'll try to make out of billet aluminum instead of the fiberglass that I was thinking of before. It should be a bolt on (I hope), so if I can get that made I'll be good.

The cylinder head has come in handy for both the header mock up and the porting. I've kind of ported #4, and let me tell you these heads are an absolute beast without the right tools. The exhaust port is too small to fit a dremel sanding wheel in there, so I've been deciding whether or not I'll get a couple of rolls and finish it off or just leave it as it is.

School's out in early May, so expect more progress by then!

Cal

 

Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen anymore. I don't have enough time to make the airbox and tune the carbs and would rather keep it stock and ride the **** out of it this summer before I have to sell to make rent for next year. If anyone wants to pick this up, I can send the CAD models of the airbox, the nearly finished headers, and anything else that I have so that you can turbo your bike. Shoot me a PM if you want to talk.

This kind of sucks that another turbo 600 build bit the dust, but I weighed the pros and cons and would rather get some seat time than spend time troubleshooting because I probably wouldn't be able to use the extra 50 hp anyways.

BTW, for anyone interested, the stock clutch starts to slip at 156 hp. That would probably be the limit for the stock engine

Cal

 

Damn! I was curious to see this finish, but alas.

 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I felt that I needed to provide at least a little closure to this project. Here are some current/finished pictures of the kart and a video of it running the quarter. I'm pretty positive that it would have run much faster than an 11.88 @108 if the tires were soft and warm, but on cold hard tires that's about as good as I can expect



Video -