so, while i'm slowly getting more work done on my project bike, i found an old vertical shaft lawnmower engine in my shed. 4 ish hp. just an old pull start engine.
but i want to do somthing with it, i was thinking go kart, or pocket bike engine swap, or somthing else stupid like that, for most applications i could think of i would need some kind of
90 degree gear turn thingy to make it useful, not sure where to buy thoes, or even what they would be called.

anyway i figured that if one project was cool, then two projects would be awesome,
and i'm hoping that somebody on this board might have some hints or ideas, useful or otherwise, let me know.

C'mon Mak, i'm sure you've got fifteen different lawnmower powered things around your place in texas, most of them probably fast and wicked and built out of what ever crazy bs you had floating around your garage.

With a vertical shaft engine you are very limited. Some designs are not capable of running horizontaly due to lubrication problems and the governer that operates on cooling air-flow. In addition they are not designed to accomodate offset radial loads on the shaft such as a belt and pulley arrangement. To turn the drive through 90deg` you will need a bevel-gearbox......not uncommon things to find in industry but very expensive to buy new for a project like this. If you are really keen on about building a cart get a nice engine from a breaker....say a 250 twin from a trashed bike. It will come with a clutch, gearbox, exhausts maybe even electric start.....dont forget the coils and loom. Biggest advantage though is the horizontal O/P shaft.

http://www.tandler.co.uk/sbg/sbg.htm
http://www.neeterdrive.co.uk/

yeah, alot of the looking around i've been doing has pretty much said that vertical shaft is not worth the time/effort/money to convert it. i'd hate to throw the engine away, but i'm hard pressed to find any good way to use it. i'll hold onto it in case i find a bevel gearbox or somthing similar around here.

Find your local rotary parts dealer.

I deal rotary and was literally looking at the stuff you need about 3 hours ago in our catalog.