Can someone please explain what’s going on here ? 
Why Is ‘Paul’ so angry?
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Not angry, just surprised that no one know anything about karting in the USA
Why did OTK fire the defending World Champion?
Why would you use an oil recommended by a low-volume engine manufacturer instead of a JASO FD certified oil, tested by the Japanese standards organization against a standard defined by Yamaha as adequate for a 500cc Grand Prix engine? What specifications does Wladoil meet?
If Tillotson is owned by IAME, why is Tillotson selling their 225cc four-cycle engine? I thought Tillotson was owned by Borg-Warner in Toledo.
One thing I realized once I moved from Europe is that karting is many things, to many people.
The scene in Europe is one small part of Karting in the scheme of things. There’s a lot of hype for the stepping stone stuff and that’s cool, people get excited about it and that’s good for them.
If we’re throwing shade, Euro karting went to shit when FSA went watercooled and has nothing to brag about now 
1- no performance and suspicion of cheating in portimao for the world final (otk mechanics also fired 2 of them)
2- i don’t recommend nothing, it’s just an iame oil that iame made it mandatory in more or less every iame championship
3- iame don’t do 4 strokes
4- we are in 2021 not 1985…
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If he was cheating, why wasn’t he caught in technical inspection?
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You might be interested to know that Wladoil lie about JASO FD certification. Here’s the whole list of JASO oils: http://www.jalos.or.jp/onfile/pdf/2T_EV_LIST.pdf - no Wladoil on it. Here’s Wladoil’s site where they claim JASO FD for their Sinthetic 2t: https://wladoil.com/en/portfolio-item/motore-2-tempi/
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IAME may not build four-strokes, but Tillotson does: T4 Series - Tillotson
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Yeah, it looks like they’re an Irish company now.
This mentality is ridiculous. If you’re going to make a claim, the burden is on you to back it up. Prove that IAME owns Wladoil, KR, or Tillotson. Just saying “everyone knows that” isn’t proof.
Great, I’ve gone to every USPKS and SKUSA event I can make it to for the last 3 years. That doesn’t mean I know jack unless I can prove it or back it up with evidence. If I say something, and someone else says something contrary or just outright that I’m wrong, I’ll have a discussion with them to understand how and why we have different answers/opinions/solutions. It’s useful for one to be open to the idea that they could be wrong.
If I remember properly, aren’t you the guy that was saying OTK makes their karts at 10° of caster at the steering yoke, with “end of” as your assurance behind it, and then I measured the OTK chassis sitting in my apartment and got a steering yoke angle of 18°?
And also the guy saying that the new Le Vanto tires didn’t have any drop off until we actually looked at lap times from an event and saw there was definitely a drop off and tire degradation?
If you make a claim, back it up. And stop talking down to everyone else as if because you might know something someone else doesn’t, that makes you better than them. That’s how I’ve interpreted a lot of what you’ve been saying.
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I thought they were Irish until recently when I looked up their recently and it said Ohio, US.
For sure Tillotson carbs were made in Tralee (Ireland) for a long time, maybe they still are?
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My new X30 carburetor says “Tillotson Tralee Ireland” on it.
They were founded in Toledo, Ohio and owned by BorgWarner until at least 1979.
I would be hopping mad if they’d moved back, having paid import duties and international shipping on something that could’ve gone UPS Ground and arrived the next day!
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From a quick dig on Wikipedia, Tillotson was formed in Toledo, Ohio and merged with the Wheeler-Schebler Carburetor Company in 1971, who is owned by Borg-Warner. There’s not a lot of information on the history of Tillotson, strangely, but my KA carburetors both say Tillotson Tralee Ireland just like Charles says. Their website lists Ireland as the address for the company as well.
Anyway, none of this debate ever answered my original question which sparked this debate 
When folks ask on here what’s the best oil for X30, nobody replies ‘Wladoil’ - I’m still curious as to why. Is it inferior? Or is it that it’s difficult to get hold of?
For me as an airplane engineer I do what the manual says, day in day out. That philosophy transfers across to everything I do outside of work also 
Here it’s easy, the team (local track) and dealer (1.5 h away) always have it. Just curious if there’s a better oil to use for practice
In the US, we just have the Elf oil as spec for all the series right now. It’s supposed to be better than the red line we used before, and the Xeramic oil we ran for a year ended up being terrible. I don’t think anyone has been using Wladoil out here, I’d never even heard of it until these discussions.
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Richard: in general, outside of the USA, many federations respect the cik-fia regulations, which has a list of approved oils.
for example: https://www.fiakarting.com/sites/default/files/2019-12/lubrifiant2020.pdf
Out of these, in Europe Iame recommends Wladoil, Elf and Lexoil, at 5% ratio. (Please review your X30 manual for the country you are in.)
Wladoil and Lexoil are not imported in the USA. Even the Elf HTX 909 was not imported into the USA until 2020. These are very high quality products, very expensive and with a very limited market size for even a giant like Elf to bother with. (After all, how many racing two strokes spinning at 16,000 rpms are left in the country?) .
As you may know, our efforts to standardize the oil in the Usa with Elf have finally been successful, with both Skusa and Uspks adopting the same rules for 2021 at a national level, which is great news! First, it is the best oil available in the Usa for our engines. Second, it simplifies the life of the whole driver/tuner/teams. If there were a problem, you can pretty much exclude oil quality/quantity. As you may know, we have been selling x30s all over the world for more than 15 years, and all our importers promptly advise us of technical difficulties. Unfortunately, very often they are caused by different oil brands used by different organizations. Really nobody wants the good name of their products damaged by lubricants that have not been thoroughly tested in all kinds of conditions for sufficient time, no matter how well they may perform on other engines.
As you say, airplane engineers do what the manual says, and for a reason. Iame has been making karting engines since 1968, maybe they should know by now which oil works best for their engines?
I hope to have explained the situation clearly,
Felix
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Thanks Felix, expertly explained. We don’t have a manual for this country specifically, however engines sold here are Euro spec imported directly from Italy, so I refer to European (UK as it goes since it’s written in my mother tongue) manual.
Wladoil is readily available here both fuel mix oil and gear oil, I’ll continue to use it.
Rgds
Yeah, a mechanic once filled my tank with Rotax 2% mix by mistake, my engine lasted 4 laps)
Sorry but I disagree, mistakes happen worldwide - to err is human. When you’re running a mixed Rotax/IAME practice session it can happen. I just learned to be more watchful.
And you’re bang out of order with your ‘shity teams’ comment
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And apparently the attitude of the guys in Europe is pretty 
. This is what people are talking about with your aggressiveness being out of hand. A mechanic made a mistake, it happens to everyone. You need to relax on the insults of where people are from and the quality of their racing programs.
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I’m going to respond just to this, so do I understand from this any team mechanic across Europe makes a mistake they report it to you do they? You must be very important. Perhaps brush up on your grammar a bit.
Mistakes by mechanics happen. They happen in aircraft maintenance also, so you’re telling me kart mechanics are more disciplined than aircraft mechanics? Of course not. Mechanics make mistakes, humans make mistakes, period. Those mistakes have little to do with race - ruling out willful negligence (yes it does happen also) they’re inevitably caused by one or more of the dirty dozen (google it). Nobody is perfect, I myself have made mistakes with spanners and I’m European, I hold one of the hardest to obtain aircraft maintenance licenses in the world.
And just for the record, I manage both European and Filipino mechs who both earn the same, I have to investigate each and every mistake made by any one of those mechanics. Most mistakes come from the lazy ass Europeans who bitch when they have to go outside when it’s anything more than +25 out, I can send a Filipino out to work in a confined ECS bay where it might be 60 deg C and he won’t complain.
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