I am new to shifter Karting. Just purchases a brand new equipment and my experience has been with regular 2 Stroke engines setups.
I have tried to drive with 50/50 bias front/rear in the Shifter but I noticed that I was not able to hard stop the Kart even when applying full pressure in the Break pedals. After that I adjusted 40/60 front/rear and my breaking setup looked a regular 2 Stroke Kart, blocking the rear wheels but not fulling blocking the front wheels.
Here are my questions:
what is the best bias % front vs rear ?
when fully pressing the break pedal is it expected to block only front or rear? I was not able to have both front and rear tires fully blocked together at all.
It sounds like your system in general might need some adjustments in terms of how the master cylinder pins are, relative to the bias adjuster.
Bias is very much a personal preference thing. That said, locking the fronts really unstablizes the kart in a way the locking the rears doesn’t, usually tugging of the steering wheel over bumps. So with that said, I’d set the the bias a little to the rear, going by feel rather than visual observation of the bias adjuster itself. If not for locking the wheels you can use it to rotate the kart with the brakes.
I’m with @CrocIndy, I usually want the fronts to lock a bit under hard braking then back off just a tad. I like a lot of front though, whereas some others I know run much more rear. Totally preference and how you want the kart to react. I like lots of nose dive on the brakes, some don’t.
I switched to a shifter chassis at the beginning of last season. First time I’ve had front brakes and I was struggling with them myself. I asked the shop that I bought it from and he said to pull the brake pedal to full, and try to turn the front tire so that it takes some effort to move it and use that as a starting point and adjust for your desired feel from there.
Based on my experience brake bias is only you know what suits you best because every person have their own style and preferences. Like me, i like 80 front. 20 back. It suits me nicely. But this may dont apply to you.
My best advice is go around try any possible bias that suits you best.
To add to this, the chassis can make a difference also. This year I changed to a prototype chassis that utilized some different tubing than my previous chassis (swapped out only the tubes) and the new chassis didn’t seem to take as much front as my old one without locking up. It wasn’t a huge difference, but a difference nonetheless. So it’s a combination of driver preference, how that driver applies and releases the brake, the chassis, and the braking system.