I’m new here on the forum so let me introduce myself: Middle aged, engineer, restoring an old french sportscar working with IT quality, helping my 25 yr son get into karting with almost no budget, northern Europe. We’re trying to get an old Birel/Vortex Rok kart which he bought last year run, but this thread is about restoring another, partially complete kart he got a few months ago: A KFS IAME 100cc. It was imported here at some point from France, with little meaning, as nobody are running the KFS karts outside of France. So we started researching what we could do with it 
The bad stuff first:
Chassis has many rust stains
Rear axle completely brown from rust
Chromed parts all stained or rusty
Brake disc rusty
Parts missing: Carb and airbox, exhaust, steering wheel, nassau panel, hoses, cables…
The good stuff:
It has a new set of tyres
Brake and pads looks good
Seat is good
Engine is decent and complete
Original electrics is new
Chain, spark plug included
All bearings are good
So there’s little excuse for getting it out running, and researching a bit about the KFS karts gave us some interesting ideas.
The KFS karts are made by a small french non-profit “EvoKart” located near Tours southwest of Paris. They are spec karts made to be as cheap to run as possible and they’ve been around for more than 20+ years now, it seems - virtually unchanged. The particular 100cc IAME engine on this one is a piston ported engine with shorter stroke than most delivering only about 14 hp (on paper). And the racing seems fun with lots of events taking place all over france, the top one being an endurance series of four races with the season finishing at the go kart track at Le Mans. I think these races used to be four hours with this engine, which is remarkable, I think!
They’ve only recently upgraded from the old 100cc IAME to the new Vortex Rok SV, another a detuned engine, but with water cooling also a more reliable one, but they’ve kept the Tillotson carb on the KFS badged Vortex. But the old chassis we have (and we have no idea how old it is) is still legal to run with the new engine.
So here’s the dream: Assemble a team and run this chassis at Le Mans for 6 hours. We’ve been going there as spectators every year since 2008 for the Le Mans 24hr - it will be appropriate to go there to race as well eventually 
But first we need to restore it and gain some experience with it.
I’ll post some pictures in a follow up post to this one.
It’s great to dream and this is a fun project. If nothing else he will have a kart that we can have som fun in for training. We’re getting the cylinder back from honing today and will then know which piston size to pick up when we’re in France. I’ve had no luck sourcing used parts from 
The leboncoin-platform unfrotunately doesn’t directly support purchases and payment outside of France. But the people from EvoKart has fortunately been helpful so we’re looking forward to visiting them.
