Continued
I often mention that the first time I tried kart roadracing was at Watkins Glen in the mid '80s, in my
old Coyote Bullet sprinter. I hung an adapted Crossle 32F Formula Ford nose on the thing (the nose weighed a ton. I had surprisingly good straightline speed, though). There were over 90 karts lined up
for the start. Those were the days when you could take your sprint kart off the local sprint track,
perhaps hang a fairing and nose on the thing. You changed to "highway" gears and/or added belt drive. That was it. And then you went longtrack racing. It was heady stuff once a year for the locals, and much looked forward to as well. I'm sure it hooked many sprinters into enduro racing, too. The next few karts remind me of that, with some important improvements.
TaG, Stock Honda and CIK Shifter are all of this short-track make-up. Adapted from the regular sprinter, for the most part, add just double rear disk brakes, or a single rear brake with front wheel brakes as well. This is for safety reasons; double brake redundancy in case of brake failure, at upwards of a sustained 100mph, is a beautiful thing. With sit-up seats and minimal, homologated bodywork, these karts are pure speed and brute handling. Capable of very high cornering speeds and impressive straightaway speeds, you'll probably invest $3000-$5000 on a good kart.
TaG stands for Touch and Go, a self-starting feature that I wish was extended to every kart, with
on-board starter and battery. These karts use a centrifugal clutch, has but one forward speed and utilizes a water-cooled engine. Top speeds are around 100mph.
Stock Honda and CIK Shifter both use similar powerplants to the TaG, but have 6-speed gearboxes. They have startling acceleration, both simply differing in the type of powerplant used for forward propulsion. The sound of the karts accelerating through the gears is darned near F1 in effect. Fields at the local level are growing in the East, are pretty big in the West, and somewhere in between elsewhere. It is expected that this is the area for major expansion in the future.
CIK karts (traditional sprint karts with wide tracks and situp seats) also appear on long tracks with Yamaha or Leopard engines with clutches, with Rotax engines/2-speed transmissions, and with any number of other permutations, including Briggs engines.
The karts we have discussed are typically WKA roadrace classes, as run in the Eastern part of the country. They provide the basis for other series' as well. The IKF has similar, but different classes
in their Western U.S. sphere of influence; again going from slow to very fast classes. Many areas
still have some of the traditional enduro karts running, but for the most part, the newer CIK classes
are dominating the scene, harking back to karting of old. Proving once again that all that is old,
is new again.
<<prev |
