A few questions on a Gopher kart with a Clinton A400

[Ron-Wood]

My dad picked up a Gopher kart about 10 years ago ( he raced them as a teen in the late 50's), got it on eBay from someone who had it in a museum. It has a pretty clean looking Clinton A400 Panther engine that was supposed to be running at the time. It was removed for shipping and I finally had the time to try to get it back together and running for him. Initially it had no spark but I found this forum and thanks to another thread I found out about the Stens module, installed it and had spark ! The carb was leaking so I ordered a gasket kit for it, while looking on Amazon I found a replacement carb ( Chinese of course) for $11 so got that as well. It does start and runs sort of ok now, however the original linkage doesn't really work with the new carb. Hopefully resealing the original carb will cure it's issues. When using that motor in a kart do you usually use the original linkage with the spring/fan actuator or rig up something directly to the carb ?
He'd like to go with a McCulloch motor but since he's 80 and I don't think he'll fit in it to drive it I'll probably try to get the existing motor running as good as possible and hopefully he'll be happy with that.

[Terry Sullivan]

I could bore you to tears discussing Clinton throttle linkage problems, but I'll try to make this short.
The original float type carb is not really good for racing, as it will usually stall/hesitate in hard corners.
If dad is just putting around, it will be fine when used with the spring/fan linkage.
There are probably 4 'gaskets' that need to be replaced:
- Large bowl gasket/o-ring (a couple different sizes based on the bowl diameter)
- Red fiber washer between the high speed needle assembly and the bowl
- Another red fiber washer between the bowl and the high speed jet
- Tiny o-ring that seals the bowl drain button
If you are missing any of those, I probably have them if you tell me the diameter of the bowl.
Start with 1 1/2 turns open on high and low speed needles.

If old dad wants to be sporty, the Chinese carb (probably a tillotson knockoff?) would be the way to go.
Then you run into a couple problems:
- You need to drill a 'pulse hole' in the manifold to run the carb's internal pump
- Not much space for the linkage or needle adjustment

You sound very capable, but if you are tired of fooling with it, you can send the original carb to me and I'll see if I can get it going.

If dad wants to be REALLY sporty, a McCulloch would be much faster.
I have Clintons and Macs and I really enjoy running the Clintons with a bunch of guys on this forum at TBO.
I'll be 71 next week (God willing and if the creek don't rise).

terry

[ted johnson]

Terry is the Clinton guru! If your pop wants to be a bit sporty, but not "McCulloch" sporty. find a nice 580 RIGHT HAND West Bend with a diaphragm carb, put it on the other side of the Gopher, carb facing forward, Swap sides on the rear wheels so the sprocket's on the right wheel and hook up the much shorter throttle cable to the carb. You'd have to install a gas tank, but seat back tanks show up on eBay all the time. The 580 would be far easier to tune than a Mac, it'd be far more reliable, and safer, as it wouldn't be as fast. It would, however, be faster than the Clinton. Ted

[Ron-Wood]

Thanks guys for the replies and advice.
The POS China carb I bought was a copy of the original Clinton carb, wasn't expecting much for the price. We'll see how the carb rebuild goes today.
I'll keep my eyes open for a good westbend, thanks for the set up info.
I'm not sure he'll ever drive the kart but it will make him happy to see it up and running
Thanks again !

[ted johnson]

Check your emails, Ron. Ted