Anyone have tried ckr chassis before? or switched from other brands to CKR chassis? Would like to the feedback bout this brand.
Appreciate it.
Hey Kenny,
(Former) dealer of CKR here with 4-5 years experience with them.
What questions are you curious about in particular?
Overall, Iād say the CKR chassis is a good chassis, but it also depends on the application. Carlo and the Debei organization in Italy are pretty great, mean well, and all that good stuff.
One of the things I loved about the CKR was the build quality. Every part of the karts I sold or worked with was well built. Some can say that they were overbuilt, that they were stiff, etc, but I donāt know if I necessarily agree with that.
If youāre primarily racing at āgreenā race tracks with not a lot of rubber, at club events, or in colder weather areas I think the CKR is an amazing choice. The best way I can describe a new CKR driving on a track is like a new snare drum - just super taught, responsive, and everything feels very āplanted.ā Probably one of the most enjoyable driving sessions Iāve had was with a Blue Shark at a track day in Colorado. The kart stopped on a dime and gave you 9 cents change, hit every apex, and was like a laser the whole day.
However - once rubber starts getting laid down, once it gets hot, the CKR tends to be tricky to tune. The tuning window seems to narrow, and the kart tends to struggle to handle increased grip as well as some soft frame counterparts.
Like many CRG off shoots, the CKR chassis line up is diverse and a little convoluted. You want to be careful about which chassis you choose. For example, they advertise the Stingray as good for 2 and 4 cycle, and we didnāt find this necessarily to be the case. There were a couple models that were rockets in the right conditions however.
The USA importer was tricky to work with, and because of this the chassis got regional traction but not (so far) wide spread adoption. That isnāt again a knock on the CKR chassis; OTK only gained traction as an example here when they fundamentally changed their dealer network approach decades ago.
Depending on where you are in the country a CKR may be a great choice, or may not be. Local support wins more races for more racers across the globe than any particular brand or chassis does.
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Thank you for such detailed explanation. Ill shoot you a dm.
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I know the previous is importer is no longer doing so, and Iām unsure if anyone has taken up the spot as the new importer yet. Not having driven one, Iāve seen them a fair bit as the importer was in my area. The shifter chassis seems to be solid, but single speed stuff was hit or miss.
Yepā¦ thats what ive digging lately that the importer selling the whole company and transition to CRG.
Yeha the shifter kart seems pretty solid with the current result they won the rok italy last week.
I ran a CKR Stingray for a season in 206 a few years ago. It was great once we had an understanding of the setup, but it was sensitive to changes in track conditions until that point. I donāt know what exactly they may have changed in their frame design since then, but from watching them at more recent events, they still seem to be a bit āhit or missā like Ricky said.
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