Putting a 900cc Ducati Engine in a Go-Kart Has Predictable Results

If you responded to an American asking if you wanted to see what they called their “900cc Dukarti” you’d probably rightly assume they’d wheel up a 916 or a V2, or perhaps they’re fairly interesting and you consider that they might have bored out an 851 slightly and done some ambitious rounding.

You’re probably not expecting a literal Du-kart-i, though.

But that’s exactly what the guys at the Cars and Cameras YouTube channel wheeled up to a minibike drag race.

Quite literally, it’s a go-kart with what we're told is a 900cc twin-cylinder Ducati engine, which is just a little bit more than the 125cc karts you usually see. Even a 250cc superkart might have trouble keeping up (at least in the straights).

Find all the latest motorcycle news on Visordown.

Driveability, as you might expect, is sub-optimal, though. With no clutch, it’s just push the throttle and go, with no real way to control the power. Combine that with a kart-sized wheelbase and the driving position - which basically has the driver lying down flat with their head and upper back more or less over the rear axle - and you get a result that means wheelies are essentially guaranteed from a standing start. Getting going actually takes the driver a few pumps of the throttle before the front end will actually stay on the ground.

Once the twin-cylinder does get going, though, it (fairly obviously) rips, and provides a soundtrack to surely make this one of the best-sounding karts you can find. Unless someone’s stuck a Norton F1 rotary motor in one, in which case let us know!

Image credit: CarsandCameras/YouTube.