David and the Frankenstein go cart

Why in the world would David buy a little trailer to be pulled behind a lawn tractor from a yard sale?  It was a homemade thing with a wooden deck over the frame of an old riding mower.  We didn't have a riding mower to pull it with, all we had were some old hand-me-down push mowers that I barely kept running.  Soon I found out this was the start of a go cart project David wanted me to help him build.   Once we tore the deck off, we found it had four wheels, a frame, and the front wheels could be steered- sort of.  A rather sparse set of parts to begin a go cart with but David was excited and I was dragged into the project with reservations that this may never work.  First we found the frame too short to comfortably fit anyone but a small child so we hack sawed it in two and added some angle iron pieces to stretch it out a bit.  A small steering wheel from the junk yard and some welding from Grandpa Schotts got the front wheels to steer adequately.  An engine from an old snow blower was somehow mounted on the back end of the frame perched rather high above the rear wheels.  A small plastic chair was attached just ahead of the engine and a brake pedal and throttle pedal were rigged up out of scrap parts.  It seemed we had the makings of a go cart.  We had left the v-belt drive unit that connected the engine to the snow blower auger, and connected it as best we could to the rear wheels.  The good thing was the engine ran great, the bad thing is the v-belt system worked terrible.  The pulley size from the engine to the wheels was all wrong and every time David tried to make it go it would only make the belt squeal and smoke.  For some strange reason lost to me now it was decided Sandy should try to test drive it instead of David.  I remember it did move somewhat and when she got near the grape vines behind Cam's house she turned the wheel and proceeded to slide off the little seat right onto the ground.  I heard about a sore butt for it seemed years after that incident.  A seat belt was the next item added to the go cart.  Eventually we decided that the go cart was a failure and it just sat behind the small shed.  It had taken so long to build that David got a drivers license during the process and he could then drive a car so what was the use in a go cart?  Then when I found out the reason David wanted the go cart was so he could drive it around while pulling one of my old push mowers and thus mow the lawn without all the work of pushing the mower I didn't feel too bad not feeding into his laziness by finishing the go cart.  And so the go cart sat there and did nothing but attract young Daniel's attention.  He kept telling me we needed to get the go cart working and I kept telling him he was right,  knowing that I had no plans to get it working.   One day after much prompting from Daniel,  I decided I would do a nice thing for the go cart and bought a $30 centrifugal clutch for it to replace the non working v-belt system.  Got it all installed and guess what?  That previously good running snow blower engine would not stay running no matter how many times I cleaned out the carburetor.  So it got pushed back out of the way and I would pass by it occasionally and grumble about wasting $30 on it.  But Daniel kept after me about it and one day when I had too much to do to think about a stupid go cart I told him I would work on it one more time for 2 hours max and if it didn't run I would not work on ever it again.  I was sure it would not run while I cleaned that carburetor the next Saturday morning and was thinking about all the other stuff I needed to get done as soon as the two hours I promised Daniel was up and I could shove this go cart out of the way, hopefully for good.  To my amazement the engine started right up and ran fine.  The centrifugal clutch worked fine.  The go cart actually worked.  But now I stood back in fear of this Frankenstein, it was about the most dangerous thing on wheels you ever saw.  The frame was too narrow  and the engine mounted too high for a good center of gravity, if you turned the wheel too sharp the whole go cart would tip up on two wheels and almost roll over.   And of course there was no roll cage.   The engine was too big and it made the cart go too fast.  There were no guards for the moving clutch and chain and all those mechanisms were just a few inches behind the driver head while sitting in the little plastic seat.  But we made that go cart ourselves out of spare junk, and it was a blast to drive.  To my surprise the go cart interested David again for the first time in years.  He liked it so much he even invited a couple friends over and they all took turns driving it around.  We had it around here for a few years, it would run, it would break down, I would fix it, it would run again, it would break down, I would fix it... over and over.  Eventually the novelty wore off, everyone who wanted to ride it got to ride it and it started to get neglected.  Then one day I needed to borrow the carburetor for a lawn mower engine.  I was going to just borrow it for a while then put it back on.  Something happened, I lost some of the parts, no one complained and so again it sat behind the small shed.  David went off to college, Daniel started driving a car and one day in a fit of neatness I decided to take all my engines and junk to Todd Hinkle the neighbor who had a whole yard full of this stuff.  The go cart went away that day with all the other junk.  Not sure what happened to it from there, maybe it was put on display as the worst go cart ever made.  Probably not, that would have given it too much fame, it probably got turned into scrap metal and came back as a metal toilet seat in a state park outhouse.