Yerf Dog 3206 & 3209 Spindles

Yerf Dog 3206 & 3209 Spindle Reinforcement

Early production models of the Yerf Dog 3203 and 3206 came with a spindle design that was very prone to bending.  There was no abuse required to bend it... just normal driving over rough terrain could do it.  The more weight that was in the kart, the more easily the spindle would bend.  The original spindle was painted black and looks like the one in the picture below.  This particular picture is of our 3206 kart with a bent spindle.  You can see the bottom leg of the spindle bent downward.  This happened with normal driving over some rough terrain... nothing wild.

ORIGINAL SPINDLE DESIGN - BENT

Fortunately, my experience with Yerf Dog Customer Service has been very good all along.  I called about getting some extra spindles and they sent me out another set out promptly.  I knew that the same spindle design would bend, so I decided to make some simple reinforcements to the original design.  I purchased some 1-1/2" X 1/2" X 1/8" steel channel from a local metal supply shop.  I cut 2 pieces that match the lengths of the upper and lower legs of the spindle, drilled holes in the channel for the A-arm ball joint studs, removed the spindle paint in the areas to be welded, and then I welded the reinforcements on.  I then shot them with some black paint.

Originally, I was going to try to come up with a "bolt on" way to reinforce the spindles that required no welding so most people could easily do it with a hacksaw, drill, and basic hand tools..  This is possible with the lower leg, but the upper leg has a gusset down the center that is in the way of trying to drill another hole to bolt the reinforcement in place.  Since I have an old wire feed welder, I just decided to weld it up.  My MIG welder has the capability of running with shielding gas, but I weld so infrequently that I just have the welder loaded with flux core wire.  The "gasless" flux core wire works OK and is strong enough, but the weld appearance is not pretty and there is quite a bit of weld splatter.  I was more interested in function (and strength) so I wasn't concerned about the looks much.  Besides, I knew that Yerf Dog was working on a new spindle design, so I just wanted to come up with something that would work for a while until Yerf Dog released a better spindle design (more on that later).

OLD STOCK SPINDLE VS. REINFORCED SPINDLE

The Stock Spindle shown in the picture above and below is an early design.  That particular spindle did not have the 2 lower reinforcement gussets, so it would be very prone to bending.  I welded the reinforcements all around where they contacted the original spindles.

OLD STOCK SPINDLE VS. REINFORCED SPINDLE

As mentioned earlier, Yerf Dog has been working on a new spindle design and they have released a newer "silver" painted spindle that uses thicker material and has some different geometry.  Yerf Dog is also investigating other design options, so there is already a better spindle available for the 3206 & 3209 - with further refinements possible in the near future.

UPDATE:  Yerf Dog has come up with a entirely new spindle design that is far superior to their original spindles shown in the pictures above.  The new spindle design is complemented with a new upper suspension arm that changes the suspension travel geometry and offers better steering response.   I tried out the new spindles and they worked great, so Yerf Dog has worked to try to fix this problem.  The new spindles were released a long time ago and anyone reading this now should be seeing the newest spindle design on the Yerf Dog 3206 4206 3209 4209 32093 42093 go karts.

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