Fitting seat to frame

[Anonymous]

Is is possible for an XL seat to be too large to fit the kart frame?

Trying to replace a medium seat on a used Birel TaG kart with an XL, but the supports (the welded, not bolted ones) don’t seem wide enough to get it in place.

Or do I just wedge it in?

Thanks for your help and advice.

[Garrick Mitchell]

Simple answer: bend the struts.

At least, that was the simple answer for me and y 5-year-old kart. I had the opposite problem, going from an XL seat to a S/M. I slid a long pipe over the ends of the struts to do the main bending, and used a dead-blow hammer to get the ends of the struts more-or-less parallel to the seat. Steel is a wonderful material. 🙂

[Anonymous]

You sometimes need to cut the strut from the frame and re-weld it. If you just shove it in, it may bind the chassie and affect the handling. Frank at Lakewood Manufacturing does a great job welding kart’s. He is across C470 from Action Karting @ Bandimere.

Drew

[Greg Welch]

For an xl you shouldn’t have to do any cutting. If you do make sure you get a good welder to weld it back on and maybe even put in some small support braces. We put a xxxl seat in a kart a couple months back and have had no problems with the kart so far.

[Marc Elliott]

The best way I have found to bend struts is to heat the base of the strut with a heat gun on low, but enough to get the metal slightly warm; then gently bend with a 40 or 50mm axle, bend only a little at a time, and it should bend easily without the risk of breaking the weld.
Marc

[Anonymous]

Seat now fits the frame, but the airbox won’t clear to fit its original mouting bracket.

I am not sure I can move the bracket. Is there an “outside-offset” bracket, i.e., pushes the airbox toward the outside of the frame?

Or should I trim the seat away?

[Garrick Mitchell]

Again, I worked the opposite problem. In my case (Rotax), the bracket that connects the air box to the engine had been bent to move the air box to the right and away from the seat. When I put in a narrower seat, I bent the bracket back to reduce the bends between the air box and carburetor (and between the carb and the engine).

I dunno what engine you’re running, but bending the mounting bracket, fab’ing a new bracket, modifying the air box, or trimming the seat appear to be your initial options.

[Anonymous]

Rotax 125.

I don’t want to make it “illegal” if we want to run in RMax, so I worry about altering the airbox.

[Doug Welch]

Just bend the bracket. It will work. Do not modify either the bracket or airbox if you want to run RMax Challenge.

[Author]

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