I just started driving a water-cooled kart for the first time, and I noticed something interesting at my track. The guys there don’t seem to use thermostats in their setups. Today, I ran with about half my radiator covered in tape to help regulate the temperature in part because my kart builder didn’t install it…
How common is it for people to ditch the thermostat on these setups? Are there pros/cons I should know about if I go without one?
I find thermostats to be pretty useful in temp regulation but you can certainly get away without one if you are in an area where there aren’t too many temperature extremes.
I’m in Colorado. I did a track day today and it was a 9c (58f)…
I ended up tossing the thermostat I installed when I realized the one I bought didn’t even seem to be doing what it was supposed to. A lot of people are also worried about them failing and cooking the engine.
What I do now is run a Hot Head Cube, which after a small learning curve of how to get the best results has been really awesome for those cold days at the track (and even all but the very warmest days). It can only be good for the engine to go out 20-30 degrees hotter than it would otherwise, and it for sure the kart drives much more crisply in the early laps than it had before I used it.
Normally i would say no thermostat, you have the curtain on the rad to regulate the temperature.
If younsist of using one then at least go for a3way model, the two way model is really bad for keeping a consistent temperature in really cold conditions.
How do you circulate coolant while using the hothead?
The hot head is installed inline like a thermostat and water just passes through if the hothead is off. When it’s plugged in (in the paddock) the water is warmed and is slightly circulated by it’s own power. But by far the best result comes from letting it run for a few minutes on it’s own and then firing the engine up on the stand, with the Hot Heat still plugged in, for a brief period to fully circulate all of the coolant. If it’s high 40’s to low 50’s outside, I can get the engine itself to around 100 without too much effort. At that point it’s responsive and I can just concentrate on warming tires on track without even thinking about the engine.
I’d say say no thermostat and use a curtain instead.
Less vital stuff to fail, I’d just program my unipro to blink with different lights when temp was rising over target temp or under a certain temp so I could adjust curtain appropriately
I use a thermostat on a kz, been using it for 2 years and never had any issues with it, literally took the temperature worry out of my head, i don’t even bother looking at the temperature anymore, 1 steady lap to get the engine up to temp, the thermostat i use maintains temperature between 45-50 degrees celsius