Introduction to Karting
It s taken a long time to get here, many months apatagonia fleece pullover women'sccelerated through the magic of the internet, but now it s finally time to hit the track in anger, to fight for position, to make some daring passes or at least to try and avoid getting lapped more than once. Learning all about karting was interesting, shopping was a chore, hitting the track to practice was a blast, but it was apatagonia outlet store 063ll about wheel to wheel competition. In this installment of the series we ll take you through our first race day and our first time turning a wheel on fresh rubber, an experience we shall not soon forget. Oh, and we ve given our kart a bit of a make over too. Click on through to see how it looks, and how we managed under our first green flag.
Our kart came with a red set of bodywork mounted, complete with some yellow and green decals that frankly didn t do anything for us. Also included was a set of blue sidepods and a front fairing rather more to our liking, but sadly missing the nose. After a bit (okay, a lot) of looking we finally uncovered a silver nose, a color combo that matches our jazzy blue and silver suit. Swapping sidepods just requires the loosing of a few bolts, but the nose cone just pops right off with a few clamps obviously designed for easy replacement after race day antics.
Next up we needed some new numbers. Before ordering numbers check with your local club to ensure that they don t need to be assigned and also to ensure that some sort of class designator isn t required. Also, be sure to shop around. You can order simple white number plates and individual numbers for a few bucks online, or decal packages that cover your entire kart for multiple hundreds. We went somewhere in between, getting custom number plates with our number on there along with a few Autoblog decals in there to make things look extra professional.
At this point we had three sets of wheels for the kart (the two it came with and a set of rain wheels), plus tons of tires. Having them rolling around patagonia clothing washing instructionsin the trunk was not good for them and rather inconvenient for us, and while there are a number of bags and carrying cases available, with a little ingenuity and a few bucks worth of hardware we made our own from a six foot threaded rod, some washers, wing nuts, and some foam padding. We measured the distance between the inside and outside of the hubs on four stacked wheels, cut the rod into segments, then wound some duct tape around it to prevent the threads from damaging the wheel beapatagonia down hoody reviewrings.
Related GalleryIntroduction to Karting tire carrier assembly
We were up early and on the road before sunrise to get to our local karting grounds, Oakland Valley Race Park, for a Sunday club race. Festivities were scheduled to start at 10:00 and we had plenty to do before then. Checking in we were assigned an AMB transponder to monitor our times through practice, qualifying and race sessions. That keeps things nice and official but must be mounted on the kart, something we hadn t prepared for. There are inexpensive clips that can be attached to the chassis and the transponder will slip right in. Lacking one of those we drilled a hole in the back of our seat and ran a bolt through. Yet another reason to always have spare hardware available.
While we were fiddling with that we had the staff at the track mount a set of MOJO D2 tires onto our rims. As we found during our practice session, the tires our kart came with didn t have much left in the way of grip. They were all multiple years old and, to make matters worse, they were the older spec MOJO D1 tires. Those were the spec tire for the Rotax series until 2008, when the D2 came along. The D2 is generally considered to be a far superior tire in terms of ultimate grip, copatagonia newnsistency and longevity.
Mind you, a brand new set of tires is not necessarilcheap sports patagonia venturay a good idea for a newbie. High grip makes it harder to feel what the kart is doing and, as we d find, it s considerably more exhausting. If possible, ask around the pits about buying a set of used but not quite dead tires. You ll save money and won t be wasting rubber you don t have the skills to match yet. What s our excuse? Well, we didn t see anyone looking to pass off their tires, and we wanted to experience fresh rubber. Nobody said we always have to follow our own advice, right?
While our tires were being mounted we went about getting the kart ready to race, moving down to one of the enclosed pit areas at the track with power and air. Getting the battery mounted is the first chore. The internals of the thing aren t particularly fond opatagonia outlet store 061f getting bounced around on a trailer, and at $90+ a pop it s worth a little extra care. So, we always remove it at the end of the day, charge it on the bench at home, then throw it back in again on the track. After that we checked for loose bolts, adjusted the brake and gas pedals back to give a little more room, mounted up our freshlpatagonia outlet store 06y shod wheels, then hit the track for the practice sessions.
Immediately after hitting the track we noticed our magnetic timing system was on the fritz. It was triggering every few seconds and spitting up random lap times. We later tried moving it and re connecting it but sadly never got it working, one theory being that it was perhaps being compromised by the track s transponder system, which hadn t been activated on our earlier practice days. Nevertheless we were able to get times from the track, and in the first session we ran a :37.2, about a second faster than last time. We d like to claim it was increased skill and focus since our last practice session, but obviously the tires were to blame for our new speed.
After the last practice session we were weighed in for the first time. If you remember from the first article the Rotax classes are divided by age and by weight, and to this point we had no idea where we fell. As it turns out, with no added ballast, we weighed in at 369 lbs. combined with the kart, just four pounds over minimum weight. Perfect.
The first turn in practice on the new rubber was a little horrifying. Cold kart tires offer such poor grip that you ll often see racers on their out lap doing their best Takumi Fujiwara impressions, tail sliding way out in every turn whether they mean to or not. New tires, though, offer virtually zero grip. We very nearly exited the pit lane only to slide opatagonia everlong review blueff the track on the other side, but managed to keep it on the black stuff and, within a lap, the mold release compound was gone, the tires were warm, and our world was rocked.
Whereas before we could detect some handling issues inpatagonia everlong review kimber the chassis primarily an oversteer coming out of the turns when gently applying the power with the new rubber the only problem was the driver. We simply couldn t predictably get the kart to lose traction except when viciously applying the throttle at the apex in turns. Even then it would only step out a bit. The rest of the time the kart just went the direction we pointed and we got yanked along with it, head and helmet coming along a few seconds later.
Unfortunately one of the TAG runners suffered mechanical problems at the end of the first race, so we were down to three. We moved up a grid spot and this time got a much better start when the flag dropped, so good we had a thought that we might be able to swoop inside one of the competitors and possibly dice for position. Those thoughts were quickly quashed when we got a little too happy with the left pedal on cold tires, looping the kart at the end of the straight and backing it onto the grass. We quickly got going again but it was a lonely race after that.
After the first race we were tired, but felt okay. This one we were obviously running low on energy to start and the additional five laps at the end mapatagonia guide jacket quiltingde it particularly tough. Toward the end of the race we felt that we had to go slower around some turns because our arms and hands were getting weak. The kart, tires and brakes held up fine; we were well and truly spent when the checkered flag flew.
At the weipatagonia guide jacket 511gh in station we realized it wasn t just strength that we were losing. We came in three pounds lipatagonia outlet store 060ghter than after the first race despite having more fuel left in the tank. It was a cool day but we were drenched with sweat and, frankly, exhausted. We packed up and headed home.
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