Florida Winter Tour is running the Rok and IAME shifters within the Open Shifter class this year.

IMO, all shifterkarts should run together, and if possible, scored separate to make things exciting at the local/regional level. We see the NESKS is doing well with that, and I think numbers should be good this year at the FWT.

At Orlando Club races we have raced stock moto and Rok together.  They appeared to me to be relatively comparable with slight edge going to one engine or the other based on configuration of track.

Keith,

There is one or two guys that run the Sonic shifter motor in the NESKS. It’s a great motor, especially for small, tight tracks. On the longer tracks, they have no top end, so your typical Maxter or TM is just plain out faster. I had the pleasure to drive one two season’s ago, this motor was really smooth and had power in every gear. With the power valve, virtually no lag.

SIMA has been running the TM K9ES (or any TaG ICC for that matter) since they opened.  It does make for interesting racing.  I hope to join in on the fun this yr.

I can’t speak to any of the others, but I don’t think the K9ES has undergone any changes in the engine dept.  You could verify with IM-USA.  Yeah, it has been homologated by TaG USA since intro, identified by the  “USA” stamp on the cyl.  All I can say is the engine isn’t wildly more powerful than a SM.  In fact, I think it may be ~1 HP down from SM, but the power band is fairly broad, & it delivers that power more smoothly in trade off.

This is the SIMA race series, so it’s strictly at the club level, but has been interesting to watch.  I haven’t personally seem the IAME X30 on the grid yet, but they do sell/support it.

When the TM K9 ES first came out it was marketed as being equal in performance and reliability as a Stock Honda (back when the stock motos didn’t seem to be making the power levels they are now).  Later, the Sonik Sport Shifter engine advertised itself as being comparable with the standard KZ engines like the TMK9B and TMKZ10; same deal with the newer IAME X30 shfiter.

These “TaG KZ” engines aren’t regulated by the CIK like the typical KZ shifter motors are. The performance characteristics between the TaG KZs have the potential to be wildly different amongst each other as a result.

I looked around and found homologation forms for some of these engines. Although they weren’t from/for the CIK. The Vortex Rok homologation sheets I found were homologated by the CSAI, the Italian karting governing body, for their own ROK CUP series. The TMK9ES papers appear to be for TaG USA. I didn’t find anything for the IAME x30 Shifter, nor the Maxter MXE. What’s to stop them from making a spur-of-the-moment changes to their motors, since their not really regulated by any governing body?

I really like the concept of these engines, I like how they (theoretically) offer better reliability and longevity to their KZ brethren. I especially like the fact they have a push-button start feature like TaG.

But I can see the possibility of a real headache arising if you race them against each other, and the competition gets serious.  How to equalize engine packages that can be wildly different from each other, and worse, how to keep on top of things if these manufacturers come out with “updates” to their powerplants? It’s the same problem that has affected the TaG class since it’s inception over a decade ago, and it still comes up as a problem from time to time (see the issue with Rotax, IAME, and the SKUSA Springnationals) to this very day.