" I figured that with a center of gravity somewhere around the sternum,"
Well, there's your first mistake. The centre of gravity of the driver may well be around the sternum but the centre of gravity of the kart is much lower.
One reason is that the fulcrum point of the kart is not where the wheel touches the ground but the centre of rotation,(CoR) the middle of the axle.
So a lot of the weight of a kart, possibly most of it if carrying a lot of ballast, is actually below the centre line of the axle.
As a result the turning moment on the kart, the effective mass times the height above the CoR is quite small.
Given too that the axle length can only be modified by about 100 mm, from wheel fully in to fully out and you can see that the lifting effect of track is quite small too. (particularly for a cadet)
It is certainly smaller than the jacking effect of the caster of the front wheels and the weight transfer caused by braking.
That's not to say that it has no effect or that it is impossible to turn a kart over, but that is usually due to other forces being applied.
Fundamentally, if you put a rope around your armpits and get your friends to haul on it while you are sitting in the kart, they aren't going to be able to turn the kart over, in fact I would doubt they will lift a rear wheel at all.
|
|