A little outside the norm for this forum (racing karts)

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GRTfast
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A little outside the norm for this forum (racing karts)

Post by GRTfast »

Back in the early 2000's I raced shifterkarts at a professional level in the SKUSA ProMoto Tour. Just ran across these pictures from the 2002 Austin GP. My dad (now deceased) and I did all the engine development for our package in house. The engines started life as 1999 Honda CR125 motocross engines. We did extensive port reworking, custom expansion chambers, custom combustion chambers, and programmable ignition work to raise and widen the entire power curve significantly. In stock form these engines are around 32 rwhp and 16 ft*lbs of torque. The stock power band is 7000-12000 RPM. Our package made usable power from 7000-13500 RPM and made 44 rwhp at 12000 RPM. Top speed on these sprint tracks was around 100mph, with cornering capabilities at 3+ g's.

This class I was racing in was ultra competitive. The entire field of 25+ karts was within 0.4 seconds on a 45 second lap. My best finish was 5th at the Barrie GP in Canada. We were up against some large teams with much more resources, so I was very satisfied to always be in the top half of the pack.
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Bwh998
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Re: A little outside the norm for this forum (racing karts)

Post by Bwh998 »

Nice rides man. I raced cr125s in the ahscs and some other series back in my younger days. Impressive numbers you're making.
GRTfast
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Re: A little outside the norm for this forum (racing karts)

Post by GRTfast »

I'd like to share something that just happened over the last few days. Way back in the early 90's when I was a teenager, we started racing dirt track karts. There was an unlimited class and my dad ended up building 6-7 500cc two stroke powered dirt karts, of which one was mine. We raced as a points championship class on dirt tracks around Florida, but mainly on the 1/8th mile at Speedway Park in Fruitland Park Fl. The karts were hand made 4130 chromoly chassis, and either yz490 or cr500 engines modified and on methanol. We sold all these karts in the late 90's and I have not seen one since 1998.

It was probably 80-90 hp and weighed 325 lbs with me in it at the time. It was crazy fast, we were hitting 80 mph on the short straights of the 1/8th mile oval. On the 1/5 mile we were into triple digits.

Since then my dad has passed (2017).

The other day an old friend messaged me an ad from facebook for a kart for sale. Turns out it is my old 500 kart!! The guy only lives about an hour away and I am going to buy it Saturday. Here are some pics of me racing it back in the day, along with the way it is now (now is with the black wing), still fairly intact and running. I plan to restore it as much as I can to one of the original configurations and display it in my machine shop (my dad's old shop where we built the karts way back when).
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Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way. -Hitchens
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