Recently, the widow of famed kart builder, Harvey Aschenbrenner gave me the
bulk of his fabrication tools. Harvey passed away this summer from lung
cancer.
My brother had met Harvey in 2005 at a vintage kart race. Harvey had written
his auto-biography about his life in racing. In addition to having designed
and built the world champion Banchi FKE karts of the late 60's (that were
clocked at 148 mph), he went on to run the racing dept. for Mercury Marine
snowmobiles, and also built a Kawasaki sports racer prototype.
Harvey had a vision in his latter days of creating a swoopy looking commuter
car for his wife Cathy, based on what he'd learned from his earlier racing
efforts. The car was to be powered by a 600cc or 750cc 4cyl Suzuki engine.
He had the bulk of the chassis done when he decided to make it a 2 seat car,
and to fabricate a GTP style coupe body on it. He widened the chassis, and
kept working even as he was failing from the ravages of his cancer. Cathy
found him in his shop one day, holding his cane, with tears in his eyes, as
he announced to her "Cathy, I won't be able to finish your car for you. I
won't have enough time.".
The reality is that he was really getting into something totally impractical
for the street, and certainly impractical for his wife to drive. The car is
way to low, and way to wide for the street. Also, his skills were eroding,
and many of the welds are not acceptable.
SO, what to do with it? It's not something I'm interested in tackling. I've
got an entire lifetime's worth of projects in the queue. Some expensive
front suspension components, alloy wheels & tires, triple master cylinder
setup, rack & pinion, race seats, steering column and wheel, and numerous
other things go with it. Also, I believe I can come up with 2 of the 4
cylinder Suzuki engines should someone want to endeavor to complete the
original design.
If I were going to tackle it, I'd narrow it down some, take a Mini engine &
transaxle, mounted in the rear, and construct a sports racer style body for
it ala Carl Braun's Landar.
About 8mb of pics of the car as it sits are available at
<http://download.yousendit.com/F38079A8619B697B>
http://download.yousendit.com/F38079A8619B697B
How much? Make me an offer. The money goes to his widow.
If you're just going to cut it up, and sell off the parts on Ebay. don't
bother contacting me. I can do that in an afternoon. I'd like to see first
if there's someone that wants to build a home made autocross car, etc.
Some documentation to Harvey's earlier efforts are listed below.
http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2006/01/25/kawasaki-factory-auto-racing/
http://www.vintagekarts.com/noticeedge.htm
http://hallracing8.tripod.com/id9.html
http://maxtorque.com/
WST
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