Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

this go kart has been a lot of fun. I notice there are no products listed on coleman's website and no owners manuals are posted online. So I will try to go into more detail than usual. The manual is 40 pages, and while some of it is fluff it did have some interesting information. I'm not going to leave you in suspense... I have only good things to say about this go kart and it met all my expectations. While I am not going to say it is perfect, I do think that every effort was made to make a good product. There are separate instruction manual and owners manual which are both above average: they are well written in proper english and include toll free numbers for support. I found no reason to find fault with them. Shipping was straightforward. The item came via a box truck, I did have to call and reschedule the appointment which had been made by Amazon without contacting me to find what day worked best. I tipped the driver an extra $20 to put the heavy package in my garage until I was ready to work on it. The manifest said it weighed 400 lbs. It came on a wooden pallet which the driver left the product on. You will have to dispose of the pallet, box, and metal shipping crate on heavy trash day or take it somewhere yourself because its very large and non standard. I intend to use the metal shipping crate (made from angle iron) for a project. The triple wall box, wooden pallet, and metal cage might weight 100 lbs all by itself. The assembly was very easy and straightforward, with a very good instruction manual. My 14 year old daughters assembled most of the go Kart with limited help from me. It didn't take them very long. Then I went back and inspected their work and then tightened all the bolts down. It comes in a big frame made out of angle iron that you have to disassemble. There is a cardboard box over the metal frame. We chose to remove all the bolts along the bottom and then remove the frame by picking it up. Then we rolled the go kart forward over the front and pulled out the bottom half of the metal crate from behind. Those were parts that I helped with. You can see some pictures of this. You'll use a ratchet set to take the metal shipping crate apart. After assembly, I went to the hardware store to buy 10w30 oil to put in the engine. It says that its shipped without any engine oil, and that it takes .61 oil. But when I bought a bottle that had .49 oil it would not fit and started to spill back out of the oil fill. So be careful with that. The oil plug was not obvious, and sits on the side of the engine nearest the driver's seat. There is a picture in the owner's manual but I found it to be difficult to find using the picture. The same place you use to fill it with oil is also where the dipstick is. The go kart started on the first pull. There are a lot of warning stickers. We enjoyed driving the go kart for several days before I posted this review. During this time we learned how to increase the maximum speed using a throttle adjustment, which allowed us to do 180s and spinouts in a damp field which was fun. You can double the speed with a throttle adjustment. We had two punctures which resulted in flat tires, which we patched using a kit similar to this one: Slime 1034-A T-Handle Tire Plug Kit. I would strongly recommend you buy this item at the same time as your go kart, because its cheap and you'll likely need it. Then we had a sidewall puncture, which may have been from a dog biting it. for that reason I'm buying two of these today: Kenda 75105619 Motorcycle Tube - 145/70-6 TR-244A. The tires on the go kart are tubeless, but it can be easier to switch to an inner tube and replace or patch that as needed. The front tires are 145/70-6 sized. The back tires are bigger 16/6-8. One gripe that I have is that you are supposed to be 16 to drive the go kart according to the owners manual. This is not an age warning or complaint: I had 10 kids aged 8 to 16 driving the go kart for hours, and its really no problem to have a younger kid drive it (we do have a rule: if you want to drive it, you have to be prove you can start it). My main issue is that none of the kids aged 15 and up thought that they did not really "fit" in the go kart. Their knees were really bent, and their head stuck out past the top roll cage. In fact, if you look at the second and third product pictures, you can see the helmet is indeed sticking up above the roll cage. I'm here to tell you that kid in those pictures was not very tall. I had a 16 year old who was 6 foot tall and he had to squash himself into the cart. A 14 year old was surprised at how fast it went, he felt the small size probably meant it was underpowered (its not, at least for the 6.5hp version). We always had the go kart with the seat pushed all the way back, we never moved it forward for anyone. This go kart is on the small side! Here's my point: If you have big kids, and by that I mean tall, this go kart may not be right for you. On the other hand, it is very easy for 2 grown people to put the go kart in the back of a pickup truck, even a small pickup truck like a honda ridgeline. You don't need a trailer to move it around. There are 19 rules in the owners manual, here are the ones that really stuck out to me: (Page 5): 1) Never allow anyone under the age of 16 to operate this go kart. It also says this on the front cover of the owners manual. We did allow an 8 year old to drive it and we turned the screw to REDUCE the maximum possible speed when he drove it. 2) Always wear DOT certified motorcycle helmet with other protective stuff. (we did this) 3) Do not use on paved surfaces or it could become "unstable" (at 196cc its probably illegal on any public road) 4) the brush guard surrounding the driver and passenger is not intended to provide rollover protection (um, right...) 5) Do not modify this go kart in any way (I wonder if turning a screw to increase speed is considered to be a "modification"...) Other details: Just like a car, it has to be maintained. They recommend having a first oil change after 5 hours of use, then, each 3 months or 50 hours. Replace spark plug every 6 months or 100 hours. And tightening stuff on a regular basis. How many people will do that? Nobody I know. I know this has been a long review, but this product is on the speedy side, so I wanted to go into more detail.