Karting??..

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j par

j par

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Karting..
Does anybody do it? Has anybody done it? Any experience or helpful hints?
I'm looking into it...
Can't afford the shifter and the maintenance.. but for obvious reasons would be preferred LOL..
100 two stroke automatic would be fun but still lots of maintenance cost...
Lo6 (9 horsepower Briggs & Stratton class) affordable maintenance and more competitive if I was to do such a thing which I doubt...
Anyways any experience would be greatly appreciated...
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I ran Prokart for a couple of years with a 125 shifter. Had a lot of fun, but a race weekend is quite spendy, even more than road racing motorcycles. Finally just went to doing track days as I could run as long as I wanted.
 
Whatever track you go to, make friends that have been there before. Many of them are willing to help out and give pointers. Is the kart corner balanced? If not it's definetly worth it to do so. I would start getting some of the two piece gear sets now, you'll be playing with them alot. I remember when the Briggs Animal (I guess they still call it that) engine came out, one of the first overhead valve kart engines.
 
I have looked into it and watched some races. The racers said the 100 or 125 single speed karts were not too costly on maintenance. The briggs class didn’t look very exciting.
 
The shifters aren’t bad on maintenance, 125cc dirt bike engines, unless you’re at the top of the class and rebuilding every weekend. Tires are the biggest consumables along with race gas.
 
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Like any other motor sport "Speed costs money. How fast do you wanna go?"
A place to run the little beggars is most important, dirt or asphalt.
KT 100, Briggs Unlimited, Hot Rodded HF Greyhound.
Those Briggs LO6s are sposed to run pretty good.
 
Would love to run one but no place around here to race.
I knew a guy that raced for decades . He would fly to Monaco to race ! Had a heart attack while racing and passed doing what he loved ! Owned a furniture store and was Local Rotax dealer as a side biz....
 
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The local Kart Club track. It's grown some since I were the club VP :lol:. The upper section was added after I took karting off in order to raise a rug rat:lol:.
 
RammerJammer75 said:
I always wanted to try asphalt ovals and a road course, but my Dad was strictly a dirt oval guy, and therefore so was I lol
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We were pretty excited when the owner of the local 3/8 dirt oval invited us up to play on a Saturday night :D.
Everybody was scramblin' around trying to find dirt tires, I adjusted my corner weights a little and ran the asphalt slicks. :D
 
I did a lot of 5hp Briggs stuff in the 90's. All of the R&D I did went out the window when the Briggs Animal was adopted by the AKF. Those made a lot of torque. They sounded like Jr Harleys, in a since. LOUD !
There's a clay quarter mile (yes 1/4 mile!) super speedway close to where I grew up. One could get seriously hurt if you hooked a tire on that track.
 
'63GT said:
I did a lot of 5hp Briggs stuff in the 90's. All of the R&D I did went out the window when the Briggs Animal was adopted by the AKF. Those made a lot of torque. They sounded like Jr Harleys, in a since. LOUD !
There's a clay quarter mile (yes 1/4 mile!) super speedway close to where I grew up. One could get seriously hurt if you hooked a tire on that track.
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Our local track was a 1/4 mile oval, and all we ran were 5hp Briggs. The Animal was taking over when we quit racing.
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This is the only racing photo I can find. Check out that Chrome cover on the Briggs lol
 
Hey, a cage kart !! I had a customer with one that raced in Super Stock. Those Tillitsons carbs were finicky, weren't they ?
 
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We had quite a few Outlaw Karts in the valley at one time.
Now that I think about it, Winged Sprints were the weekly show at the track.
Winged karts, it makes sense.
 
RammerJammer75 said:
Really didn't have many issues with it. Now cold nights it was hell to keep running, but once you got some heat in it, no issue.
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The issue the customer had was setting the fulcrum level with alcohol. He was always messing with it.
I ran one on race gas. it took some doing to get it right, but sure worked good when it was !
 
'63GT said:
The issue the customer had was setting the fulcrum level with alcohol. He was always messing with it.
I ran one on race gas. it took some doing to get it right, but sure worked good when it was !
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I don't remember many issues with it, but we did run alcohol. Used to make me hungry smelling it burn lol
 
Well there's a completely almost unbelievable deal on a couple rotax 125 karts... But they're 2004 and outdated.
All the extra goodies stands and whatnot but again outdated. Can't even get front brake shoes for them which they don't need front brakes but...
The one in the picture and post number one is a 2017 and just the LO206..
I just went and looked at it and it's very nice. And I could put a faster 2-stroke motor on it later if I wanted to....
Kind of where I'm at at the moment...
 
And yes about 35 minute drive there's a very nice circuit track that's very friendly and easygoing.
I like the lo206 for the low maintenance and just getting into stuff....
probably not is accelerating as I would really like that I don't know what I'm doing anyways...
 
RammerJammer75 said:
I don't remember many issues with it, but we did run alcohol. Used to make me hungry smelling it burn lol
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You guys have a lot of Jr racers out there? (.425 plate stuff)
I used to love watching the kids mix it up... a couple of them got hooked up in the back stretch and they come flying out of their karts.. they hopped up on their feet and started sluggin it out ! LOL
 
j par said:
Well there's a completely almost unbelievable deal on a couple rotax 125 karts... But they're 2004 and outdated.
All the extra goodies stands and whatnot but again outdated. Can't even get front brake shoes for them which they don't need front brakes but...
The one in the picture and post number one is a 2017 and just the LO206..
I just went and looked at it and it's very nice. And I could put a faster 2-stroke motor on it later if I wanted to....
Kind of where I'm at at the moment...
Click to expand...
If the deal is pretty good, might be worth it to pick it up for the parts and possible just for seat time on the older kart. My first kart was an '88 model. Talk about outdated. The bottom rails were full of buckshot for weight. It pushed like a snow plow.
 
'63GT said:
The issue the customer had was setting the fulcrum level with alcohol. He was always messing with it.
I ran one on race gas. it took some doing to get it right, but sure worked good when it was !
Click to expand...

A friend had his grand daughter in an asphalt sprint kart, Briggs World Formula, very successful.
The WF he had was one of those "One of a Thousand" motors where everything in it was perfectly machined right out of the box. That motor won 3 Duffys with Red at the wheel. IKF National events. He needed to borrow some fuel one Sunday for that WF, I handed him the Unocal 91 that I used. "I dunno, this motor likes the 89." :lol:
 
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