CycleKart Club

If you have ever seen a knee-high 1920s Bugatti tearing across a field and wondered what it was, that is a CycleKart. The CycleKart Club forum hosts the closest thing there is to an official free plan library for them, tucked inside a thread called Plans and Drawings. Verdict up front: this is the real deal and it is free, but it is a builder's resource for a serious project, not a printable one-and-done kart plan. Know what you are walking into before you register.

What a CycleKart actually is

A CycleKart is a small vintage-styled race car built to a shared spec so that everyone's kart is roughly evenly matched. The formula is tight and it is what makes the whole scene work: a steel ladder frame built from 1 by 3 inch box tube, a 6.5 HP Honda GX200 engine, a Comet torque converter (the TAV-30 is standard) so there is no clutch to ride, and 17 inch motorcycle wheels pulled from a Honda CT110. Overall length is capped around 98 inches on a 66 inch wheelbase, with a weight limit near 250 pounds. That is not a go-kart with a body draped over it - it is a scale prewar Grand Prix car.

What is in the thread

The thread is a running collection of files members have uploaded since 2012, in a mix of PDF, AutoCAD DWG, JPG and GIF. It splits into two useful halves. The mechanical half gives you the chassis and running gear: frame and axle setout sketches, engine positioning diagrams, and drawings for the Honda CT110 17 inch wire wheel in both DWG and PDF. The styling half gives you the fun part - period body references and blueprints for cars like the Novi, the 1937 Mercedes W125, the MG K3, and Alfa Romeo grand prix machines, the classic shapes CycleKart bodies are modeled on.

• Dimensioned frame and axle setout drawings
• GX200 engine spec sheet and mounting diagrams
• Honda CT110 17 inch front wheel drawing (DWG and PDF)
• Vintage body blueprints: Novi, Mercedes W125, MG K3, Alfa

The free-account catch

Here is the honest friction point. The plans are free, but they are login-gated. The forum tells you flat out to sign in to access attachments, and most of the high-resolution drawings simply will not show until you register. Making a free account is a two-minute job and there is no charge, so this is a minor speed bump rather than a paywall in disguise. Just know that you cannot lurk your way to the files - you have to be a member.

The plans are free. The only toll is a forum account and the sweat of learning to weld and shape a body.

Building one is no small job

This is the part people underestimate. A CycleKart is an advanced build. The chassis means real metal fabrication - cutting, welding and squaring a steel ladder frame - and the body means genuine coachwork, usually a wood or foam buck skinned in aluminum or coroplast and shaped by hand. You are effectively building two projects: a running chassis and a sculpture that has to sit on it. Budget months, not a weekend, and expect the bodywork to eat as many hours as the mechanicals. The payoff is a machine that looks like nothing else at the meet.

How it stacks up against our plans

We will be straight with you: a CycleKart is a different animal from what we sell. Our plans are powered go-karts - direct, purpose-built machines you fab, wire and drive. A CycleKart is a scale vintage racer with all the extra bodywork that implies. If the vintage look is what pulls you, the CycleKart Club thread is exactly where you should be, and we will happily send you there. But if you read all this and what you actually want is a straightforward kart that goes fast without the coachbuilding, that is our lane. The Recluse racing single-seater is the closest match in spirit for someone who wants speed and a clean fabrication project. Same fabrication muscle, none of the woodwork.