Not allowed by the rules.

Not to mention a steel tubeframe is about the simplest chassis you could make, and the current karts in that form are still way more expensive than they should be. The price of a carbon chassis would be obscene.

Plus, the strength and stiffness that CFRP can obtain, might not exactly be beneficial to a kart chassis. The peculiar nature of how a modern kart chassis works means that it needs to flex in order to perform properly. Think more in line of  a carbon fiber suspension, rather than an ultra-stiff carbon tub chassis.

I think I recall someone making a carbon chassis as an experiment nevertheless. Not good for karting anyway to put that idea into production.

The CIK doesn’t want the ground-effect aero genie out of the bottle in karting. If I were to build a carbon kart frame, it would have a nice big tunnel down the middle and a pair of replaceable wooden rub strips to seal it.

Chuck,

Is steel cheaper than carbon fiber?

Design a tension member, 3 ft long, to support 5,000 lbs.

Go to CarbonFiberTubeShop and price out the carbon fiber tube you’d need.

Go to AircraftSpruce and price out the steel tube you’d need.

You’ll be surprised.

(Both materials come out to around $1/ton/foot in tension!)

Karts frames need to flex to work. Steel flexes, carbon doesn’t. Not to mention the cost involved. Not to mention it’s against all governing body rules.

In a crash, instead of ending up with this:

[img]https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10702037_477972832340109_152351837611693823_n.jpg?oh=b15f48e2e06028109792db95612e8eb0&oe=55406E18&__gda__=1425782147_5236cc740418ee165793939a6a52bfd7[/img]

You would end up with this:

[img]http://fe867b.medialib.glogster.com/media/82/8251e42fe9c733833cd50311a441462a37370ec7f0695e5e6932f1411d176519/kubica-des-1.jpg[/img]