Comet Torque-A-Verter [Archive] - DoItYourself.com Community Forums

Biased-Ply

01-27-05, 01:52 PM

You don't have to have a differential, but if your going to do any street driving and tight turns, a differential is very beneficial. Without a differential, one of the tires will skid or scrub when you turn. In a turn, the outside wheel must turn faster than the inside wheel. With a differential, the spider gears inside allow the tires to spin at different speeds during a turn. With a regular live axle, the wheels are only allowed to spin at the same speed, thus causing one tire to skid during a turn. This can be hard on your tires, and will make anything but driving in a straight line difficult. On dirt, grass or mud the problems of a live axle aren't as apparent because instead of your tire being scrubbed on concrete, the dirt or grass allows some give and the tire can scrub on the grass without so much tire wear. Also a live axle provides better traction off-road. With a differential, if one tire loses traction and starts to spin, almost all the driving power from the engine goes to that wheel which means your stuck digging youself into a hole. With a live axle, both rear tires must loss traction instead of just one. It depnds on what your going to do with the kart. For street driving, get a differential. For off-road use where its muddy or very soft use a regular live axle. For all around use on grass,dirt,street etc. I would use a differential. The only time a differential would be bad is in mud or sand, and unless you plan on driving in that often, I'd get a differential. I'm not sure what differential would be good for you. The torque-a-verter will work on any go-kart type differential as far as I know. It just needs to have a place to mount a sprocket and have axles that are wide enough for your kart. Also the axle would have to be the right diameter for your kart. Northern Tool has a standard go-kart differential that might work for you, but you'd have to see if it fits.