[Charles Kaneb]

How much would you like for it?

[Charles Kaneb]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>If you’d like to sell me a few rims, I’m looking for a pair of front mag wheels with the standard (not CRG) bolt pattern, and maybe a full set of standard-pattern wheels in either aluminum or magnesium. I’ll pay twenty bucks a wheel shipped for generic wheels, a bit more if they’re name-brand.</p>

[Charles Kaneb]

Andrew, do you have an extra ’09 Leopard wiring harness assembly?

[Charles Kaneb]

Fred, would you please send me a couple of pictures of that wiring harness assembly? I need to see if it’ll match my ’09 Leopard.

[Charles Kaneb]

How about a Margay Brava? They’re made in St. Louis, Missouri and the tube cutting and welding is consistent enough that the frames come out of the jigs without the need for further alignment.

[Charles Kaneb]

Yes. The old Leopard won the class championship in TaG Senior at East Lansing this year.

If you spin it to 17000+ it’s a grenade with the pin pulled – no “rebuild” interval.

If you spin it to 15800 I’d expect 25 operating hours out of both the top and bottom ends so long as you don’t seize a piston.

[Charles Kaneb]

1) More rookies! Kevin Haun has concentrated on developing new drivers and getting his racers to drag old karts out to East Lansing Kart Track for them. If they keep the 35% growth rate year-on-year up for a couple more years you’ll have to call the place karttrack.com instead.

 

The old parts gathering dust in the back of kart shops and garages need to be the weekend-saving parts in rookies’ spare part boxes, so make the sale now even if it takes a discount. If a new driver can avoid some frustration early on, he or she can be a more reliable customer in the future and even buy parts to test and tune rather than just the bare minimum needed to replace broken ones!

Other things that help are higher entry fees with lower pit pass costs. If the entry fee is $60 and the pit passes are $25, you’ll get a mixture of parent/child teams, solo drivers, and a few driver/mechanic teams – so not much help is available when things go wrong and not many new drivers are recruited. If the entry fee is $80 and the pit passes are $5 (still above break-even) you’ll still average about $100 per team but you’ll have twice as many people in the pits.

2)  Fewer races with blind-eye race direction. Total one kart because you got punted 3/4 of the way down a braking zone by someone who hadn’t applied the brakes, that’s racin’. Total two that way and you’re probably re-evaluating your commitment to this sport. If we have fewer series then a season-long ban in one series will actually do something.

If it can’t be fixed that way, then put delicate fiberglass-and-foam wings on the karts and use harder tires. I demonstrated that wings do work on sprint karts last fall. With the endplates and a 10 degree angle of attack it was 2 seconds/lap faster than without. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6oL3JA0uA. Break your wing and be slow!

3)  Fewer, better engines. Does your engine fit this description? “The peak engine speed is high enough to force internal component life down below one season. The clutch is too delicate for me to risk putting a raw rookie or even an experienced autocrosser behind the wheel. The force, speed, and small-sprocket size can’t be found on the application chart for the chain – not even past the end of the not-recommended-ever range. There is an electric starter, whose electrics were designed by a mechanical engineer if we’re lucky*, and the ignition system doesn’t reflect anything we’ve learned from smog controls. New parts and new engines cost enough that they’re designed for complete disassembly to replace each little wear item rather than throwing out a mass-produced subassembly.”

The two best engines we have in American karting were both designed for another application and adapted for karting later. The Briggs 206 (LO206 until the first rebuild, Animal afterwards) and the Stock Moto Honda are both reliable and show good engineering of the overall design.  If the volume in American karting doubled in the next five years, would it be enough to justify a third good engine to fit between them?

 

*PRD Fireball starter circuit: The battery is located at the back of the kart. A 10-gauge wire runs up the side of the engine, up to the steering wheel, to a 15A-rated switch, then down back to the starter. A second 10-gauge wire then runs from the engine back to the battery. Out of the 16V my LiPo battery provided, 12V was measured across the starter and the other 4V were just plain lost in the wiring and circuitry!

[Charles Kaneb]

The batteries and motors are here – definitely cost and weight competitive as long as your races are < 15 minutes. They’ll do better if the scenario you choose is “ICA on a tight track” rather than “roadracing shifter”.

The difficult and expensive part is battery management/charging and the motor control system.

[Charles Kaneb]

If your parts are of good enough quality, performance, and price, and you can deliver on time, you’ll amortize your molds faster by being an original-equipment supplier than by selling them by ones and twos. Call Keith at Margay in St. Louis, Missouri.

Off the top of my head:

1) If you’ve got the stones for it, a mechanical rear brake system using a pair of CFRP levers and the clutch cable from a passenger car would be a welcome improvement over the leaky hydraulic systems we use now. Hydraulics’ advantage is in equalization of pressure across multiple points in the system, which isn’t as much of an issue with one brake.

2) CFRP seats that are made-to-measure and last several times as long as ‘glass ones would go for a premium price. Adjustability through steel plates laminated into the carbon would help avoid the drilling of extra holes. That would be a good application if your company is good at short production runs or custom parts.

3) A carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic front bumper that absorbed a LOT of energy in a frontal impact by completely disintegrating would be welcomed by both sanctioning bodies and insurance companies, especially if you were able to get the price well down through mass production.

[Charles Kaneb]

Whatever the local kart shop couldn’t sell this year in your size!

Comet sold me a really nice Azusa suit for double-digits because it was purple. Not Arrow blue, think Barney…

[Charles Kaneb]

It was scheduled to be held on the same day as the Season Championship race at East Lansing Kart Track. If it comes back and ELKT gets enough notice of the date for Kevin to consider scheduling around they could have several entries.

 

Now, for some old-fashioned eKn speculation and debate that’s been missing from the new forum. ELKTers, I suggest the following driver pairings based on the photos from the Graeme Voller send-off event: Ben Varner/Rodrigo LF, Deiondre Smith/Elliott Budzinski, Joe Bath/ Frank Wilson, Channing Watson/Keith Bowerman, Charles Kaneb/Todd Lemp, Bruce Woodrow/Graham Henckel, Tyler Lemp/Joe Budzinski, Tom Collins II/Tom Collins III. Get a couple of big Army-surplus tents, bring cooking equipment and maybe it doesn’t cost a fortune?

[Charles Kaneb]

http://www.revzilla.com/product/joe-rocket-velocity-gloves

Those worked very well when a Volkswagen punted me off my motorcycle on a Texas street a few years ago. Nice abrasion resistance and thermal insulation.

 

 

[Charles Kaneb]

Is it still for sale? I’m in Michigan but am planning to be out by Chicago next weekend.

[Charles Kaneb]

Are any of them still for sale? The Craigslist posting has expired.

 

What engines are on them?

[Charles Kaneb]

CL post has expired – is the Intrepid/TM still for sale?

[Charles Kaneb]

Is it still for sale? Where is it?

[Charles Kaneb]

I used the radiator from a 1998 Honda Civic until it got banned for impeding the vision of drivers behind me. If your local track will let you use it, Autozone sells it for about $60. Some brands are American-made. It sits on two rubber bushings and you’ll have to fabricate a mount of foam, wood, or Lexan and fiberglass to accomodate it.

[Charles Kaneb]

If the advantage of magnesium wheels over aluminum wheels is that magnesium (150 W/m*K) conducts heat about 3/4 as well as aluminum (200 W/m*K), then would anyone be interested in cast iron (55 W/m*K) wheels?

[Charles Kaneb]

A flathead screwdriver helps. If it’s so cold that the plastic’s brittle, then what are you going to run in the radiator, and what’ll you do for tires?

[Charles Kaneb]

TaG karts typically weigh 175-190 lbs, so with race weights for TaG Senior between 350 and 375 lbs, and racing gear around 15 lbs, that calls for a driver weight between 145 and 185 lbs. If you get a Rotax, Rotax International race weight is 365 lbs. Talk to the race director and see if they’ll let you race as an over-age Junior – you’re a lot closer to the Junior weights (320-340). If not, take a look at the race weights and choose an engine that has one of the lighter values. The good news is that the less powerful engines (EasyKart, PRD, Leopard) are usually cheaper. If you’re brutal on equipment the Rotax Evo warranty might be worth it.

I’d suggest looking at the results of the last season at the tracks you intend to race at to help choose a chassis brand. Most of them are good these days, including CRGs, Tonys, Birels, Intrepids from Italy, Arrows from Australia, and Margays from St. Louis, Missouri.

If you intend to run a shifter later, you’ll want a chassis available with front brakes. You’ll also want to look around for a spindle/hub/front brake combo for your kart in the eKn classifieds.

Renting a Briggs 206 or Clone kart for your first kart weekend before you buy your own will allow you to get used to the race weekend and get through your first race starts in traffic without having to worry about a kart that’s doing its best impersonation of a cruise missile.

[Charles Kaneb]

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

[Charles Kaneb]

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.

 

 

[Charles Kaneb]

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.

 

[Charles Kaneb]

What: 2007 Margay Brava, Maxter MX-L ICA, Chrysler Cirrus airbox, old Kawasaki snowmobile radiator, some interesting home-fabricated parts.

Where: East Lansing Kart Track, Point Pelee Kart Centre (if I can come up with a good way to get past Customs and Border Protection – they are convinced I am coming over to set up as a carpenter or mechanic whenever I bring over tools), local autocrosses.

Why: Spec racing can go and jump in a lake – it gets rid of all of the fun of the winters in the garage. My engine package cost less than $1,000 and is faster than the TaGs when it’s not saddled with 180+ lbs of Detroit muscle behind the wheel. It cost $330 for Stoney Creek to rebuild it this winter after ten hours of use this year. If East Lansing will let me do it, I’m going to run Ayrton-style (with no plastics) at least once. Kevin Haun at East Lansing has made karting affordable for Michiganders by accident – the curbs are so ferocious and the track so grippy and tight that there’s no sense having an expensive chassis or engine.

[Charles Kaneb]

Glen,

 

What state/province is the kart in? How long since the last rebuild on the RVX?

 

-CPK

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