Sorry for lack of information. I live in North Yorks race in Northeast and sadly have a Rotax.
I decided in new year to buy a kart (possible mid life crisis). Briefly owned 100 national about twenty years ago.
When I started researching I nearly didn't bother. It seems to me the state of karting in this country is terrible. How many classes? Then I remembered I didn't want to change the world, I just wanted a bit of fun.
The first bit of advice for newbies is go to local track and see what is raced. In the northeast it's Prokart. Then Rotax, a few Bilands, Swissautos and Vampires and in theory IAME race together, but I've never seen a Leopard there. Both tracks run non MSA race meetings which is good for me because I just want a bit of fun a couple of times a month in the summer. I have no desire to be competitive, just mix it up with mid field / back markers if I can.
I didn't want to spend a fortune at first so the Swissauto was out because it's too new to be second hand at a reasonable price. The Vampire was out because 50 hours rebuild time on a four stroke seems madness. Although the Prokart has the by far the largest grids, are cheaper to buy and probably cheaper to run, in my mind possibly the worst engineering idea I can think of is to put two engines on one kart. It's not big and it's definitely not clever. The Biland was made for something else and therefore has obvious problems. Also for no apparent reason, except bad design, has a cam belt half the size it should be. Having said that I would have bought one if I could have found a good one at a reasonable price, but very few came up while I was looking.
Researching the Parilla Leopard and Rotax (both still raced in America and Australia it appears) it seems the Parilla is the much better engine. Looking at archive material on the internet it seems it was quite popular here a few years ago. If this is true I don,t know where they all went but only three came up for sale while I was looking. In retrospect I should have bought the first one that came up but I had just started looking and didn't realise it was a good buy until later.
Anyway, to cut a very long story just long, I ended up with a badly designed ,badly made, piece of tat, just so I could race mad minded people. Sorry I meant like minded? I have only done two races and a couple of practice days and am doing times that I am reasonably happy with for about10 laps when painful ribs and fatigue slows me down. Hoping to get fitter and faster.
Almost finely. A few thoughts on MSA karting. I know I said I wouldn't but I've got this far and at least this will be helpful to any insomniac karters who are reading this thread.
As I see it grid numbers have been dropping in resent years. When I first started looking at karts I think I found about twelve different classes for senior and about the same for junior.. You would need about half the population to go karting to get large grids. It appears most of these classes where introduced to make racing fairer or more affordable or usually both, but neither seem to be achieved. Rotax seems to be one of the biggest classes and uses sealed engines to keep it fair and costs down but people are paying thousands to get a competitive engine. How did it get this popular? Was it just a quirk that more where bought early on and then others joined because it was the most popular, as I just have? Or was it that the people who make the rules had commercial or financial interests in it? Or some other reason? I,m fairly convinced that removing the seal would make it cheaper and fairer. I do however doubt you would get the current engine sealers to agree.
I have read the ideas behind the KF series. It was suggested that there would be some sort of mad exodus from Rotax Max to KF2 and clubmen would bin their Rotax for KF4 I believe. KF4? It beggars belief that people sat around a table and thought this would happen.
So here is my suggestion, and obviously I may be completely wrong. As the most popular kart appears to be a Rotax at 28bhp, (30+ if you're selling one) promote 28bhp karting. Reintroduce a TAG class for 28 bhp karts, this would include Biland IAME etc. and let them race together. I know we have had a clubman class like this before and it seems not to have worked, but it seems the only way to me whereby it increases grid sizes without asking people to bin what they have and buy something else. I must stop shortly because even I'm getting bored.
As for the Aixro. It seems to me that it's a fantastic piece of engineering, and overcomes most of the problems of current 2 stoke and 4 stroke karts, it's just in the wrong format. Get them to restrict it to 28bhp so we can race with the majority of karts out there and I will probably buy one. In that format we might all be running a rotary kart in ten years time.
I'm a virgin at forums and I think because this has nothing to do with the original post I should start a new thread but I'm not sure so I will post it under the original post. I presume someone will tell me and probably tell me never to post again.
I bet you wish you hadn't asked now Kai.
On the bright side at least I've had a rant without mentioning my real hate of the seatbelt law. Doh
PS Thanks John I never found that and I do apologise to the original post.
Sandra Bullock 07985XXXXX
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Engine Rebuilds by 'GlennGuest23' (28 Jul 2009 @ 15:24)
