Guy Builds a Crazy Drift Shopping Cart From an Old Scooter, Hilarity Ensues

Do you think that e-scooters should die in a fire, like a former RideApartner? 

What if I told you that, in the right hands, they could cease to be a plague upon your ankles and city streets, and could, instead, go on to fight evil in another dimension?

Okay, I might be overstating my case ever so slightly.

But like other machines, it turns out that e-scooters are a ready source of usable parts to be recycled into something new. Just ask the Garage Avenger, who recycled an e-scooter he found on the Norwegian equivalent of Craigslist into this absolutely mad drift shopping cart. 

Admit it; when you were a kid, you totally loved riding in (and maybe even racing) shopping carts. Or trolleys, if you’re from the Commonwealth. We won’t judge.

But how much more fun would they be if they had more than just human power behind them? And also, if their left rear wheel didn’t keep sticking and locking its brakes every time you tried to round a corner?

Justin, the guy behind the Garage Avenger YouTube channel, thought the same thing. And then he used his DIY skills to make this drift cart in his garage. 

And then, he was kind enough to chat with RideApart about it. Here’s our discussion of his project, with light edits for clarity.

Can you tell us a bit more about the engine you used for this build, and about the project in general?

The engine used was actually a 2400-watt electric scooter. I disassembled this scooter and modified the electronics to remove the speed restriction.

The reason why I used an electric scooter was lack of space. An engine of some sort in the cramped shopping cart wouldn’t have worked.

The design is loosely based on a “crazy cart”. Essentially a 3 wheeled vehicle with caster wheels at the rear that pivot when the handbrake lever is applied. This then allows the caster wheels to swivel in any direction, making it one of the sketchiest vehicles I have ever built.

The drive wheel is a 2400w electric motor that can also swivel 360 degrees. So, when you get the combination right you can turn in, pull the handbrake, and the caster wheels will swivel with the inertia of the cart. You then counter steer and plant your foot on the gas and you’re drifting sideways with no tire screeching.  This took me hours of training to get right and I experienced some heavy crashes and near misses when attempting to do this at its top speed of 65km/h (or about 40.3 mph).

How did the idea to modify a shopping cart like this first come to mind?

I’ve always played in the supermarket with my kids in the shopping cart. Pretending it was a drift car. One day I just thought, why not actually turn it into a drift car?

I however knew if I wanted to actually drift it in a store I kind of couldn’t make it a petrol powered machine leaving skid marks all over the place. I had seen these Razor Crazy Carts and thought… Why not build a big version of this but using the shopping cart as the chassis?

What’s your history with building machines and fabrication?

I have always been creative. I built a couple of lowrider bicycles when I was a teenager. I then lost my creative way when I joined the navy as a submarine mechanic at age 19.

Working with submarines however did teach me some skills in mechanical and electrical engineering, and when I left the navy, I took those skills into my garage projects. The first thing I built after my navy career was a 1920s inspired speedster soapbox car for my daughter. I then built all sorts of things including, A Batmobile for my son. a sofa that chills beer and delivers to you with a voice command, a snow plow for my car that’s made from an old hot water tank, a drill-powered boat made from an old above ground swimming pool, a jet powered snow sled, and a 5-speed pallet go-kart. And the list goes on.

It is kind of my thing, making my ideas into reality. You can find all those projects on my YouTube channel Garage Avenger.

Any future plans for this build, or future powersports-related build plans more generally?

The future plan for this project is unfortunately demolition. I plan to use the parts on another project.

For me, the joy is in the process of building and not so much in the end result. After a few weeks, the project sits and gathers dust whilst I start on a new crazy idea.

Like now, I’m turning a hand truck into a mini drift cart using a majority of parts from the 5-speed pallet go-kart I built a few months ago.

The biggest project, however, will start in a few weeks. I will start 3D printing a half-scale Toyota Yaris World Rally Car, with the plan to build a high-powered chassis to attempt to fulfill the childhood dream of jumping the famous Colin’s Crest in Sweden with my own World Rally Car.