Neither age, nor number of welds matter…unless it becomes a reliability issue. Is it fast?

Depends on how hard it was raced. Yours sounds like it’s been through the ringer and it might be time for a new one, but if it’s still fast, keep it.

gary, I had a problem with my first used kart years ago (top kart) 30mm mains, 32mm crossrails  as I had the floor tray tabs breaking often. I also had a small crack on the outer rail near the motor area. I had the crack fixed as I first drilled 2 very small holes on each end of the crack, then prepped the crack by slightly beveling along the crack ,then welded the area ground it smooth and then made a small gusset 1″ -1.5″ long x 3/4″wide and contoured it to the frame and welded it to the tube overlapping the crack and I never had any issues with it again.

my 2006 “krt” chassis I bought new and have countless laps on it and it has never broken anywhere and is still fast.

check out the new display chassis featured in the business/ retail section from ok1 and praga .

I had a 2012 Tonykart that I raced for half of this year.  It was definitely wore out.  We switched to a new 2014 in the middle of the year and were instantly much faster.   The old one was also unresponsive to small changes and constantly had understeer at the exit of the corner.

The previous owner had raced quite a bit on it, mostly TAG.  I would imagine that had more to do with it than the year of the kart.

On the new kart, we had to remount the exhaust as the middle of the frame was actually “drooping” even without the driver in it on the old kart.  The other visible thing you could notice was if both karts were on the ground and you tapped the front bumper with your foot the old one would bounce off the ground and the new one would barely move.   The seat brackets would also constantly break and we’d have to re-weld them back on.

I would also imagine every kart is different as to how long it stays competitive.