Update:
I ended up straightening out my bent spindle and replaced the 2 broken Tie Rod Heim joints I'd broke a month ago.
In my race 2 weeks ago: I spun out in my heat race and had to start the main in last place but I managed to work my way up and finished the main in second place about 10ft behind the leader.
This weekends race was rained out.
Over the last few weeks I got quite a bit of work done:
I Installed a used oval/laydown seat I scored for $20 at a racekart swap meet awhile back:
It was too narrow for me but I found out these Fiberglass race seats could be heated and re-shaped. To do this I laid the seat on Its side, wheeled my floor jack in (with a 4x4 in-between each side) and then used my wife's hair dryer to heat the seats whole left side while pumping the jack wider and wider. After expanding it to the right width, I just left the jack in place till the seat cooled and voila... the seat fits great now!
Most oval racers use this style of laydown seat to lower the center of gravity. Up till now I'd been using my old karts Sprint kart type seat. (its much more upright) I'm hoping this seat will improve my karts handling.
I also made some side-body panel protectors out of 2" x 1/8" Aluminum that turned out pretty cool. I was gonna mount these with countersunk Allen screws but decided to go with regular old hex bolts. I figure they might kinda discourage guys from sliding into my left side in the turns, kinda like those big-ol spikes the old Roman Chariots used.. I used some nice flat button-head Allens on the other side.
My old tach had stopped working awhile back and a buddy turned me on to a Digatron DT-32 that was missing its mounting brackets, so I rigged up this rubber mounted/quick-release bracket and got that all installed:
(looks like I coulda done a nicer trim job on those heater hoses)
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I also figured out someone had mounted my karts Nose-section 2" too far to the left. I got that moved over and now its right side will actually help protect my RF better if (when) I clip the wall again. My new paint seems to be holding up pretty well but I ended up with several chipped areas after last race.
One of my kart racing buddies finally got around to scaling my kart. He found I needed to move my seat forward an inch or so to get the front/rear weight bias correct. And also that i probably wasn't running enough stagger in my tire setup for the small tight track I race. We looked through my spares and came up with a better combination I'm hoping will help me get through the corners better. He also found I needed to set my rear-track width narrower to 39" but said all my other adjustments looked pretty close. I found out my karts total weight (with me in it) was 405lbs. which is considered very heavy.
I've also just started treating my old hard race slicks with some products from a company called TrackTac. After using their tire cleaner, I then used (6 coats) of their tire softener product (called CK1) over a period of 2 days and brought my Durometer readings down about 20 points to a much softer reading of between 40 and 60. I then used one of their products made to improve grip called Black Sand. My old tires feel soft and sticky like their gonna hookup a lot better but the races were rained out today so I cant report on that.
A month or so back I picked up 2 off-road fun karts for $100. I did a bunch of repairs on these and ended up turning them at a good profit. So I've ordered a new/mounted set of Hoosier treaded racekart tires. I'm hopping these will really help me hook up better when my tracks all muddy like its been the last several races. They should be here for next race so we'll see how they do.
th-th-that's all folks
