DIY Kite Cart

Technically, a kite cart is a little strange cross between a large sized parafoil kite and a go cart. It has a wide stance and is low on the ground. The design that we will be preparing here is a simple one that can fulfill a few other purposes. It has no angle cuts or any kind of pipe bends.

First things first, you need to get a seat from somewhere. It might be one from your car or a racing car or an office chair. The one we have used here is a racing car seat because these are light in weight and can be purchased for a price as low as 50USD. The second thing that you will need to worry about is a piping. The simplest way is to find square or round steel tubes with 1X dimension from your surroundings. You can easily get some of these from a construction site. The best thing is that builder now make tubes without any angle cuts, so you need to waste your time on that.As far as cutting is concerned, you need to get yourself a 6ft, a 4ft, a 5ft, a 1ft, and a 3inch long steel tube.

With respect to tires, those need to be the simple 10-inch pneumatic ones with knobby tread. If you look around a bit closely, you can obtain one at a harbour freight sale for as low as 4USD. Next you will need to work on a steering, try to get one that allows optimal steering action. Then there are a few other things like the kite, nuts and bolts. Last thing is the kite, you can pick any by your choice like the one we chose here. It is a 2 meter parafoil style kite with slingshot. It should have some good capability and potential to face wind. You can always begin with the beginners’ kite and then move on to the bigger and stronger ones.

Once you are through with these, you can move on to the first step of the experiment that is fabrication of the system. Take some high grade bolts and cut off their heads. Here in the picture below you can see the resulting body. It is suggested to thread the nut over the bolt during cutting. It does two things, first it protects the bolt threads from any kind of damage and second keeps all things square during the cutting process.

In the below given image, you can see the welded tubes framework with very simple construction that makes welding a very easy and smooth process. Once you are done with the welding process, make it stand straight and check for its sturdiness. One you are done with that, you can start by painting your stand, the last thing will be to fix the seat. You might need to adjust the size of bolts in order to sunk the nuts and bolts well. Below you can see how a kite cart looks like once it is fitted with seat and steering, you will have to steer it with your legs and control it with your arms.