nuvz - To answer your questions.

[Steve_Miller]

I was being sarcastic and I didn't show it very well. Sitting here in front of a computer, you type something very easily and it makes perfect sense to yourself but no one else has a clue what your talking about, this seems to be a bad habit of mine. I meant nothing by it other than it was going on so long and not finding out what the answer was. I apologize to any and all I may have offended.

Happy Holidays
Steve

 

[LBrown59]

ive also made go-carts but as most of our land is a huge hill mine was without an engine.
Mith
============
We built several like you're talking about.
We had one that you could steer with the front or the rear or both.
You could steer the front and rear at the same time in the same or opposite directions.
You could spin this thing in circles as you were coasting down a hill.
You could ride down a hill with the cart running at an angle left or right across the road with either the front or rear on the down hill side.
Some carts you steered with your feet
Some had a clothesline rope tied to each side of the front pivot axle so you could steer with your hands or your feet.
One had a steering wheel on an old broom handle for a steering wheel shaft.
We attached a clothesline on the left front axle and another clothesline on the right front axle.
We nailed the other ends of the ropes to the broom handle.
When you turned the steering wheel one way one rope would wind around the broom handle and turn the front wheels that way. Turning the wheel the other way caused the other rope to wind up and turn the front wheels the other way.

Amazingly the cart that would coast the fastest down a hill had steel wheels with no bearings & no tires.
Anybody remember the old push type reel mowers that had steel wheels but no tires on them.
We used the wheels from a couple of these mowers on this cart.
This cart was so fast that somebody who was riding it down a long curvy path lost it in a curve ran off the path and into the hog pen.
Never had any trouble keeping any of the other carts on the path.


That's what my cousin and I had been doing but we got tired of having to pull them up a hill to cost down so we decided to build a motorized go cart.
Just think no more dragging the cart up a hill just to coast it down so you had to drag it back up the hill.

 

[mrcaptainbob]

Great stories! Really enjoyed this thread.
Flattening a roller skate and nailing it to a 2x4.......kid's today won't use one unless it's a $180 Razor. With electric motor!
Yeah, we had to 'make-do' with what we had available. I wonder if it's new people's fault, or ours for having improved the standard of living for them....Lot's of philosophizing on this one!
My cousins and I would take the last bits of crayons and melt them for 'new' colors on the potbelly stove in Grandma's dining room. Man, would that stink when we forgot, and get yelled at??? Yikes!
All good stuff......

 

[LBrown59]

</font><font color="blueclass=small">( Great stories! Really enjoyed this thread.
Flattening a roller skate and nailing it to a 2x4.......kid's today won't use one unless it's a $180 Razor. With electric motor!
Yeah, we had to 'make-do' with what we had available. I wonder if it's new people's fault, or ours for having improved the standard of living for them....Lot's of philosophizing on this one!
My cousins and I would take the last bits of crayons and melt them for 'new' colors on the potbelly stove in Grandma's dining room. Man, would that stink when we forgot, and get yelled at??? Yikes!
All good stuff...... )</font>

Me and this same cousin built a 6 x 6 club house out of old scrap lumber. We called it a shanty. It was only about 5 feet or so high not tall enough for us to stand up in.

One day we decided we wanted it up on stilts so we nailed some 2x4s together and made 4 post.

Next thing I knew there it was sitting about 6 feet off the ground so we made a rope ladder and hung it in front of the door so we could climb up and get in.

I still can't figure out how we got the post under it or how we were able to lift that thing up 6 feet in the air.

There was no cross bracing or purloins on the post and the ends of the post weren't buried in the ground.
It's a wonder that thing sit there on 4 3x3.5 post without collapsing empty yet at times we had 3 or four kids in it.
I don't recall it being wobbly or shaky.

 

[Mith]

("We built several like you're talking about.
We had one that you could steer with the front or the rear or both.
You could steer the front and rear at the same time in the same or opposite directions.
You could spin this thing in circles as you were coasting down a hill.
You could ride down a hill with the cart running at an angle left or right across the road with either the front or rear on the down hill side.
Some carts you steered with your feet
Some had a clothesline rope tied to each side of the front pivot axle so you could steer with your hands or your feet.
One had a steering wheel on an old broom handle for a steering wheel shaft.
We attached a clothesline on the left front axle and another clothesline on the right front axle.
We nailed the other ends of the ropes to the broom handle.
When you turned the steering wheel one way one rope would wind around the broom handle and turn the front wheels that way. Turning the wheel the other way caused the other rope to wind up and turn the front wheels the other way.

Amazingly the cart that would coast the fastest down a hill had steel wheels with no bearings & no tires.
Anybody remember the old push type reel mowers that had steel wheels but no tires on them.
We used the wheels from a couple of these mowers on this cart. ")
we too had a couple steered in abnormal ways. for a couple of years running we invited neighbors to also make their own and race them down the garden. i won one of the prizes on a plank of wood nailed to four wheels /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
if i inturpret correctly about the reel mowers and were on the same line i have 3. theyre steel wheels and they dont half clang about on concrete /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
mith

 

[slydog]

Man this thread brings back memories! And it does make you wonder about kids today not realizing what they are missing out on.

My cousin and I only had wood and nails to work with. Our down hill coaster consisted of skate wheels nailed to a chasis made of 2x8's , 2x4's and plywood. The front axle was steered by your feet, or a rope. The linkage, untill we could find enough coke bottles to sell so we could buy a bolt at western auto, consisted of a 16 penny nail which worked so so on the first 3 or 4 runs. But every time you hit a bump, the whole front axle (2x4) buckled under the cart. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Mannnnn was that fun!

Then there was the time we made the great find of about 10 burlap potato sacks from the country store we used to hang out at. We built us a little lean to shack off the side of the tree with burlap walls and carpeted with bags. We were intent on camping out in it. Well, it was a typical muggy, 100 degree, mosquito buzzing Mississippi night. And that burlap that seemed like such a good idea was like sleeping in a bed of fire ant infested fiberglass insulation! It was one of the worst nights I ever endured.

I can smell burlap now, and the memory of that always pops into my head, along with all the "GREAT" experiences I had with my cousin, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Mith]

well Lbrown - i guess you didnt expect the thread to evolve into a dicussion about stuff we did when we were young but keep em coming /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[LBrown59]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( well Lbrown - i guess you didnt expect the thread to evolve into a dicussion about stuff we did when we were young but keep em coming /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif )</font>

No but it's been interesting and fun.

 

[LBrown59]

Man this thread brings back memories! And
1*it does make you wonder about kids today not realizing what they are missing out on.
2*My cousin and I only had wood and nails to work with.
3*Our down hill coaster consisted of skate wheels nailed to a chasis made of 2x8's , 2x4's 4*The front axle was steered by your feet, or a rope.
5*But every time you hit a bump, the whole front axle (2x4) buckled under the cart.

6*all the "GREAT" experiences I had with my cousin, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
slydog
===============
1*Yeah it does.
2*Thats what we used too.
3*We never tried the skate wheels. Guess we had better luck finding old junk things that had wheels on it than we had finding junk skates. LOL
4*We did some of ours like that too.
5*We would take a 2x6 or 8 and drill a hole oc near the front end then lay a 2x4 across it centered up and drill the hole on through the 2x4.
We would bolt or pin the 2x4 to the 2x 8 .
The pivoting 2x4 was both the front axle and the steering.
We nailed another 2x4 across the back for the rear axle.
To attach the wheels we nailed what ever usable steel rods that we could find to the bottom of the 2x4s and slipped the wheels onto the rods.
6*stay tuned.

 

[Mith]

ought to start a new thraed really like 'things we used to do' and not just hijack a thread about a almost related subject /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif