You have to love Colin Furze. He understands the zeitgeist. In today’s entertainment world, acting zanier than Guy Fieri on diet pills and 4 Four Lokos is essential to getting noticed. Colin touches the lens with the end of his nose while yelling, because that’s how you climb the greasy pole of online notoriety. Unlike most other YouTube channels with wacky wildmen zoo creature in your face tattooed love boys, Colin also gets stuff done.

This go kart project is a perfect example. Lots of people like to tinker. They’ve got drills and wrenches and some spending money. But they draw the line at welding. If you’ve ever welded, you’d know how easy it would be to skip 90 percent of the drilling and bolts and just fillet the bejeezus out of all the joins. If you don’t have a welder, and have never welded, it can seem mighty mysterious. Colin’s cart is a lot of work, but anyone with a little mettle and a little metal could manage it.

Colin’s full of personality, no doubt, but I couldn’t help but notice that he seems more than a little handy in the first place. If you know anything about construction, for instance, and watch home and garden TV, you quickly realize that the hosts are chosen for telegenic, not practical reasons. More or less, no one outside of This Old House has any idea what they’re doing. The best of them are ham and eggers, as we used to call second-rate tradesmen. I sensed that Colin’s tinkering skills were backstopped by more than knowing how to defrag a hard drive or write HTML. Sure enough, he’s a plumber.

Plumbers know how the world works. When they’re done, the bowl has to be empty, or they don’t get paid.

Part 1 of the go kart extravaganza.