TRAMPA's Pro-Kart Go-Kart

How we got here

The fully working prototype Pro-Kart was donated to TRAMPA by Legendary Racing Driver & Race Team Owner, Lotus Car dealership (Part) owner, Ex-Professional Ballroom Dancer, Luxury Apartment property developer & now unfortunately for him TRAMPA's Landlord - The amazing Mr Kevin Riley.

Kevin is a Gem of a person, with stories to rival Giles Brandwith. He loves spending his time at TRAMPA, hanging with the much younger crew & Ted's Dad, Tweedie.

Tweedie is about the same age as Kevin and is a bit of a 'wheeler dealer', Proper Old Skool kind of guy, he loves a joke & is always trying to get a rise out of you with some elaborate stories... On a regular basis, Tweed runs errands for the TRAMPA crew, what this really means is that he fetches the sausages for the BBQ we have on just about every Friday. Well, Kevin is a big fan of the weekly sausage fest... Kev & Tweed' sit in the corner, smashing a couple of sausage sanies while Drum n Bass, or something equally as loud bangs out the workshop sound system. Anyhow, this kind of scenario is where the first steps of a TRAMPA Electric go-kart were born.

Kevin set us a target of making his Pro-Kart out-accelerate & Lap quicker than the Standard Pro-Kart!



Car Park Testing

As you can imagine, the moment the Go-Kart turned up in the warehouse the crew started poking their fingers around it, trying to suss out where to mount components etc. After only a week or so, the Go-kart had the bare minimum to get moving and was fork lifted into the car park for its first testing. Once placed on the floor by Ted, an eager Dave jumped in the driver’s seat with tablet and VESC-TOOL in hand. Once switched on, Dave proceeded to cautiously drive the Kart forward. The crew stood there in the unknown as Dave disappeared around the corner of the building. An electric whine from around the corner was followed by a now much less cautious Dave tearing around the right-hander towards the crew. He turned around by the TRAMPA HQ door and put his foot down to go for another lap, but instead was met with the realisation that maybe he should not have gone so quickly so soon. The Kart wouldn’t move it turned out that the most expensive part of the Kart had blown - The VESC. 

Throughout the winter, the process of workshop tinkering and breaking various parts in the car park carried on, the team was eager to get the kart running at its full potential. One of the main issues with the build from the start was overheating, this was resolved by a huge hand-built heat sink that was bolted onto the VESC 75/300, this seemed to solve the problem. However at this point, there was snow on the ground in the car park, so it was hard to tell!

Understandably, the Go-Kart car park racing didn’t go down well with the other residents in Kevin’s warehouse. It had been going on for months and by this point, it was safe to say the Kart was a bit too powerful for the car park anyway.  After several complaints & a neighboring business erecting a fence, we decided it was time we should take it to an official race track.  



1st Day Track Testing

A few phone calls later and we found ourselves with a full track to ourselves. Elk Motorsport in Newark was more than happy for us to turn up with our kart and try it out on a proper track for the first time. 

After a quick drive up to Newark, we turned up at the track with the kart in the back of Teds van. The owners of the Track Tav & Dave took one look and decided it needed some tender love and care before we used it around their circuit. After all the crew had been messing around with the electrics, no one really paid attention to the actual safety of the hardware. 30 minutes later & our electric kart had a fresh set of tyres, all the nuts and bolts tightened and even the steering set up perfectly by a gismo that had lasers! 

This trip consisted of Dave, Ted, Amon & Ben. Dave volunteered to take it for a spin first “I need to test it to make sure it works” He said. The others stood in the pit lane looking jealous as Dave took the debut lap. Grinning from cheek to cheek Dave pulled back into the pit lane. “Need to turn it up a bit!” he shouted from under his helmet”

We spent a good 4 hours or so taking in turns doing laps around the Track. A tablet slipped in the racing overalls made sure we could track all the data from the VESC, we were making changes to values and cut-offs as we went along, gradually turning things up, though making sure we didn’t blow anything. The main issue we found was the batteries, we couldn’t draw enough amps and were only getting around 10 laps out of each pack. Though by the 5th lap the cells started sagging, which is obviously something we want to try and avoid.

Overall the first trip to a track was awesome, we all left stoked with a list of things to make it better. 

The New Battery Pack

After the first track day, we knew we needed to address the batteries on the kart. The original idea was to attach monster boxes as we use on the boards. Though a new product coming out meant we had some modular cell packs that needed testing.  These were 2s6p packs using Molicel 21700 cells we added a few of them together to make a 16s12p. Attaching this battery to the kart was another matter, just like the motor side, we decided to use sheet metal, bent and welded into a trough type shape to house the battery. We then used some mounting clamps bought online to bolt it to the frame. 



2nd Day Track testing 
After the success of the first Go-kart track trip, a lot of people were looped in on the second visit. TRAMPA Head Designer Frank & the man behind the VESC-Project Benjiman Vedder came over for the week. They all needed a trip to TRAMPA HQ, so pairing the occasion with an Electric Kart testing day seemed fitting. Not only the tech crew, but we also had a couple of customers meet us there with their creations; One being an electric miniature Porsche and the other a hovercraft! Unfortunately, the Hovercraft wasn’t able to lap the track, though we were all impressed by the upgraded toy Porsche (Both using a VESC Speed Controller of course). As well as these guys & the majority of the TRAMPA workforce, we were joined by the kart donator himself, ex-racing driver & TRAMPA Landlord Kevin. As well as Kevin's mate who was a professional formula 3 driver, keen to put his petrol cart up against our electric one. It was set to be a good day! 

Upon arriving Benjamin immediately had his laptop plugged into the VESC to tune it up. With the new batteries installed we were confident that the sagging was going to be better, the real test this time was to see if field weakening would make the kart faster at the top end. You can think of field weakening as an extra gear once you get to top speed, in theory, we would be able to go around 20% faster.   Again Dave had the first go, he came back after a few laps with a grin on his face. Turns out field weakening worked well. Ted jumped in for the second go, he came back after a couple of laps saying the Go-kart had lost power.  A disadvantage of field weakening is the heat created. The extra power sent to the motor had caused it to overheat. After a quick analysis, the temperature cut-off for the motor was increased and we were back in business. 

The next few hours consisted of everyone taking it in turns to take the kart for a spin, after all, a lot of the crew had not had a go on the track yet and of course Ben, Frank & Jeff needed to have a blast too. Although this didn’t mean perfect controlled testing with the same driving style, it meant the kart was put through its paces so we could monitor the cells, and temperature of all the components. We had brought another 2 sets of Lipo batteries along with the new 21700 pack & chargers, so we had plenty of juice to play with. 

The overheating issue carried on to be a problem throughout the day, the more the off-cut was raised the more the temperature rose. Ultimately this meant the kart has either reached its limit of power and speed or it was time to install another motor. 

On that note, this is up to speed on the current progress of TRAMPA's Electric Go Kart. More to follow...