Building a Drift Kart Sort Of

The insides of the drift tires have ribs to dig into the regular tires to keep these sleeves from spinning on them.

To install them, first pull off the valve stems and let all the air out of the tires. Keep the valve stems out until the sleeves are in place to make installing them easier.

Then tap the sleeves onto the tires with a mallet. A nice heavy dead blow makes it pretty easy.

9 comments

  1. do you think putting the sleeves on the front would introduce enough slip to make it easier to manage? also, dad of the year?

    1. No, it would be really hard to control and you would still have the basic problem of not enough steering angle and too much Ackerman angle and too much front drag.

  2. When you say “a lot of ackerman angle”, what does that mean? More inside wheel scrub or less? I am confused… Cool article!

  3. Thanks for this writeup, I found it to be quite helpful. I am an amateur rally racer and I’m building an electric kart to get accessible seat time between rallies. I am very keen to turn it into a drift kart.

    What you wrote at the end matched up well with my own thoughts on how I might be able to turn this into well tuned a drifting machine. I will be playing around with the steering geometry – hoping that plus the insane torque from the electric motor is able to get the job done.

    Would you be willing to connect briefly on this? You seem incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, I think it would help tons. I’m more than happy to share my results with you! I don’t see a way to send you a message here. Am I missing something or is that the case? If so I will give you a burner email in here. Thanks!

  4. a few years back my son and 10 year old son and i used to play with an old margay sprint kar (mine) and an old Rup racing kart (his). both were terrible on at street drifting, but were AMAZING on grass and dirt with Harbor freight Pred motors. The instant torque and broader power band made throttle modulation sublime and even with drift slicks the Rup was a decent drifter if the speeds were low.

    Funny experience: I noticed that the jacking and Ackerman was great for grass and dirt drifting on kart slicks thanks to the lower surface friction. It allowed for CRAZY angle at high speeds and awesome feints.

    That’s said I have a big diameter rear axle. I flipped the rear wheels and mounted them backwards to narrow the rear track. That alone made the Kart less likely to spin out, even on pavement.

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