Do you ever have bad wrenching days in the garage when it just seems like nothing is going your way? I had a day kinda like that today and I would like to hear your stories if y’all got em. Maybe we can laugh at our frustrations once enough time has passed.
I’m talking about kick in the balls, Murphy’s law days when it seems like everything you try just damages the kart more instead of fixing it. I mean lost 10mm sockets, stripped bolts, broken head studs, air leaks you can’t find, electrical gremlins, snapped off allen keys, the kinda days when you just gotta put the tools down and go for a beer.
Two years ago when I decided to give LO206 a try I bought a new motor and the Odenthal mount. I am more of an XL guy so my seat is big. Well I screwed around for hours trying to get things to line up and nothing would work. Seat was too far right motor was too far left. I was ready to throw in the towel not to mention some other things.
Luckly, I thought my fellow KP members could help. Well, they did, I didn’t read the slip of paper in the Odenthal box that said you need to flip the top plate. DOH!
Last year we were at a race on Sunday. We hadn’t been able to practice on Saturday because I had been working 12,14,16 hour days 7 days a week for over a month. During the warmup I notice the axle was bent so we swapped it before qualifying. 2 other guys on our team helped. We were rushing and didn’t have enough time to get the chain sprocket guards swapped over and I guess we didn’t get the sprocket carrier lined up. My son lost the chain before getting a fast lap in qualifying. After the round we got that back into tent and took care of the chain, sprocket and guards. We also pulled the tires to flip them on the rims. We were trying to stretch our budget and go 3 races on a set… my son started pre-final at the back of pack since he didn’t get a qualifying lap in. He didn’t make it all the way around on the out lap and a tire came off. When I was putting the wheels back on there was too many people in the tent and I couldn’t get to the one wheel and told myself I would go back it in a minute when people moved. Well as I said before I was pretty tired and I guess I forgot. I have never lost a wheel or any major part from a loose bolt. I’m usually pretty careful. Needless to say we didn’t get a lap in the pre-final. Ruined a magnesium rim and a $50 cash penalty for losing a rim.
With a little luck and some good hard driving my son was able to finish the final on the podium but I have never been so embarrassed and frustrated at the race track before.
When I was working on my racing lawnmower I got angry and started going ape shit. i had fabricated the parts that would hold the steering column and they weren’t lining up and then my grinder disk bound up and I could loosen it. Angle grinder was the last straw so I threw half my toolbox and a good chunk of the mower across the driveway.
@mtbikerbob your story reminds me of the first time I tried to mount rain tires on my kart’s wheels. It never occurred to me that the rear rain tires might be a different diameter than dry rear tires and thus too narrow for the standard wheels. My neighbor and I spent like two hours with a compressor trying to get the tire bead to jump onto the wheel. We tried using axle grease. Nothing. Then we tried spraying some kind of aerosol into the tire and lighting it on fire, which did absolute bupkis (always works on TV!). I then drove the half mounted tire to a truck stop and used their higher PSI compressor to try to pump it up to almost 100 PSI. No idea how it didn’t blow up in my face. Eventually, I called Comet Kart Sales and the guy there explained to me that I needed a narrower rear wheel. The diameter of the tire was clearly printed on the sidewall. It just never occurred to me to check this.
No, just crazy busy at work and too stupid to go home. Hoping to have more time to enjoy life this summer. I have booked time off for all the big races.
I have a simple formula I use to determine whether to go back inside or stay in shop:
Temperature of Coffee Remaining / (Time Spent Finding Last Tool * Days to Next Race) = Work Motivation Ratio.
When I start with a hot coffee or keep it in a thermos, the work goes on longer.
If I find my tools nearly immediately, the work goes on longer.
If the next race is tomorrow, work almost always continues.
ah yes.. i remember the first time i did this. Somehow I got the tire to bead after like an hour. Then realized what happened when I noticed the amount of stretch the tire had. Fearing i’d created a bomb, I let the air out of the tire and went inside, completely done with karts for the day.
@jsipplracing hahaha I thought I was the only one! I still don’t understand why they make the rain tires narrower than drys. A guy at my track said it would throw off the kart’s balance if they were as wide as dry rears (make it understeer).
In December 2021 my parents bought me and my twin brother, after years of good marks at school, a third-hand 2013 KF Tony Kart. Karting/racing is our biggest passion. We were super excited about it. First time on track (final days of January '22), we both did a 15 minutes stint, after that the Vortex Rok started to make an horrible sound. We stopped. The problem was the excessive grìearwheels wear. Two weekes later, the engine was repaired from a dad’s friend with 50+ years of experience in kart engines. Couldn’t wait to do laps till i could’t feel my neck anymore. My brother hit the track first, 7 or 8 laps in, the crankshaft bearing exploded. We couldn’t change it on track… I came back to home with 0 laps, even worse than the last (and first) time Luckly the third day was way better than the first two
Luckly the third day was way better than the first two 