Independent Student Project- All Terrain Go Kart

Each year Pingry seniors are required to finish off their last month of school by completing an "Independent Student Project" or ISP. It gives us students the opportunity to explore any areas of interest that we may have, but have not been able to explore. The projects in past years have ranged from writing cook books, to obtaining a pilot's license, so it is really open to us to decide what we truly want to do.

For our ISP Cole Mcollum, and I (Andrew Benito) want to explore our interest in designing and building... anything. We have brainstormed various ideas including: designing and buildling a two story, 140 square foot shed; restoring an old car; and buildling a post and beam barn. Those ideas, however, are not going to work for several reasons, but we have settled on one last one: A two seater, 16 horespower, full suspension go kart. 

We have done an immense amount of research into the project as a whole, so we know exactly what we are going to build, and how we are going to build it. The base design is going to come from plans that we will purchase from a website (in the links section above), but we are going to make several significant modifications and customizations. We have everything in place to complete this project: the design, a complete parts list, all of the tools, a garage (as a workspace), approval from all of the beings that we need approval from, and the serious drive and desire to do this as our final work in our Pingry careers. 

The one obstacle we have not been able to get around is the funding. We have attempted to sell many items to try and aqcuire the money we need, but we have had no success. We've investigated ways to obtain a government grant, but such a thing would take too much time. So, now that the start date of ISP is fast approaching, we are getting rather antsy, and we do not want to see this idea sink like all of our others. Any amount of money that you can donate towards this incredibly important project, will be immensly appreciated. Every cent counts. We are looking to raise about $2000 to pay for all of the parts plus a paint job to protect the metal from rusting. 

Building this go kart will not only satisfy our desires to design and build something, but it will allow us to dip into our interests and learn about engine mechanics, metal fabrication, vehicular electrical engineering, and basic vehicular design.

As a final product we will obviously have the completed go kart, but we are also going to create a timelapse video of the complete buildling process, so you will be able to see us build the whole kart in a matter of 5 minutes. Please consider this opportunity to help fund a very valuable project. Like I said, every cent counts, and being able to complete this venture would mean the world to us. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Andrew and Cole

P.S. Take a minute to look at the incentives. We apoligize that we can't offer more, but we don't have much... hence the fact we sent this out.