These guys are GETTIN' IT!

[TonyKarter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSJOkiV-S0g

Watch at the 1:00 to 1:15 mark, He's running close to 120 and aerodynamically he is maxed out. Then the two karts pass him like he's sitting still. He grabs their draft, you can hear the rpms climb in their vacuum, and he instantly gains another 10-15 mph. You can see the speed increase.

If you like that then you'll really like what you find at the 1:58 mark. They bump draft and hook up at about 110 and quickly run the speed up over 130 hooked together. Damn!

That is what it is like driving that kart over there. It looks easy, but I guarantee you he is completely drained and running on nothing but terror adrenaline!

Yes, driving one is scary as shit. That's why it's so fun. That kart in my signature over there...in '97 it was one of the fastest werks karts in the world. A factory kart, with a factory driver...not me though. The guy I bought it from would have walked off and left these guys.

How about those trees? They go by pretty fast, huh?

[STL_G8GT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsjokiv-s0g

watch at the 1:00 to 1:15 mark, he's running close to 120 and aerodynamically he is maxed out. Then the two karts pass him like he's sitting still. He grabs their draft, you can hear the rpms climb in their vacuum, and he instantly gains another 10-15 mph. You can see the speed increase.

If you like that then you'll really like what you find at the 1:58 mark. They bump draft and hook up at about 110 and quickly run the speed up over 130 hooked together. Damn!

That is what it is like driving that kart over there. It looks easy, but i guarantee you he is completely drained and running on nothing but terror adrenaline!

yes, driving one is scary as shit. That's why it's so fun. That kart in my signature over there...in '97 it was one of the fastest werks karts in the world. A factory kart, with a factory driver...not me though. The guy i bought it from would have walked off and left these guys.

How about those trees? They go by pretty fast, huh?

awesome!!!!

[LDM]

Just out of curiosity, about how much do those karts cost?

[TonyKarter]

I paid $6,000 for mine at the end of the '97 season. Leroy Wilkerson had just won the International Karting Federation's Road Race Grand Nationals in it at Texas World Speedway in College Station, and then was invited to Mexico to run in the streets of Monterrey in their big invitational street race there. I am told he lapped the field in it, winning there by a large margin. I paid a premium price for it because of its pedigree, three weeks after the race in Mexico. Leroy got a new kart every season, free gratis. He sold them at the end of the season and pocketed the money. It had a gold number plate on it when I bought it. First time to the track they made me take it off. Gold number plates are only for people who have won the IKF's Grand Nationals at least three times. Less than thirty people have ever been awarded a gold number plate. I didn't know, and Leroy didn't tell me!

You can get an entry kart for $2-4K to see if you like it. I've got close to $20K in mine, with all of the assorted equipment and spare parts you are going to need to run a mid-pack program. A new kart, TonyKart which is the top of the line as karts go, with a well prepared "Stock" (wink, wink) Honda CR125 shifter? About $12-14K. You can save about $2K with a lesser brand kart. Unless you have driving skills like Leroy, you aren't going to know the difference. I couldn't. However, the class to run now is the Rotax classes: About $6-8K for the kart/motor.

Everyone should drive a shifter in anger once in their life. I promise you...NOTHING you can do in a G8, even what Daniel does, comes anywhere near the excitement and sheer terror of driving one of these on the edge. My telemetry (AiM MyChron) has downloaded that I have covered 1320 feet from a standing start in 11.6 seconds. A friend of mine that weighs 138 pounds has covered the same distance from a standing start in 10.9 seconds. A Stock Honda Class motor will put you in the mid-13's. Only two people that have driven it besides me have ever asked to drive it again. The rest of the few who have driven it get out of it and want no part of getting back in it again. I'm telling you, the first time you drive one you are not ready for how brutal the power comes on and how scary-quick that makes it...when it climbs into the power band and it kicks you in the back it snaps your neck, your head goes up and if you can't see where you are going for a moment you get scared. Real quick. You see those foam donuts they wear between their shoulders and the bottom of their helmets? They are very stiff foam. They wear them to keep from snapping their necks during the race, from acceleration, but mostly from cornering and stopping G forces, about 3.5 G's on a hard stop. A pro can stop one from 100 in less than two seconds. Tough is the man who can race without one...like Michael Schumacher maybe, and I think he wears one anyway. Both he and Sebastian Vettel both practice in TonyKarts.

How much G-forces? Normally 1.5 to 2 in the turns, but 3 G's can be attained momentarily. Enough to pin the carb float to the side of the float bowl, and thereby rendering it inoperable during high G turns...which happens to be most of them, and it tires the shit out of you real fast, too. (You ever heard of a low G turn in racing?) So we have to run the carbs without float bowls. If the G-forces pinned the float to the side when the needle valve was open it would flood and bog the kart. More critical, if it happened in the closed position it would starve the cylinder for fuel, causing an instantaneous lean-out seizure of the motor. Think what would happen to that guy if his piston welded itself to the cylinder wall and locked up his rear wheels during the turn through those trees. Not good. So, how can a carb work without a float bowl? Just fine. We use a double fuel pump to make it work. One pump sends the gas into the carb. The other pump is set up to evacuate the carb at the same rate. We feed the second pump by locating a pitot tube in the carb bowl. It is secured such that the bottom of the tube is located at exactly the same fuel height that the float bowl otherwise would maintain. That way the same constant fuel height is maintained. The fuel is kept from G-forces sloshing it from side to side in the bowl by using fuel cell foam. Pretty ingenious, huh? When they showed me I sure thought so.

Things happen too fast on a kart to stay up with. You are always behind...and scared! And I like it! You will too. Try it!



Gee, can you tell I was bored...

[TonyKarter]

By the way...Charlie was the New York State Champion in karts back in the day.

[Doug Hilliard]

Good common sense! That's insane and looks like a blast! Thanks for posting; I don't think I could handle the adrenaline rush for that long!

[kevinm0131]

Damn!