We went racing, Bono

Sir, this is a Wendy’s! (Ben did this to you).

Sorry I haven’t been responding much, I had a fever. (Not Covid)
Any idea what the #98 kart is doing at 11:08 in heat 1?

Unfortunately that was a please pass me without ramming me off the track, point by, not a finger wag. Would be quite embarrassing to finger wag someone only to get immediately passed.

I did have one finger wag though in the last heat, where a kart used me as their brakes for both turns 1 and 2, than turned into me in t3. I caught up to him, got alongside him for t2, and proceeded to not turn my kart until he was out of room, a satisfying victory.
This was one of if not the only times I retaliated, as I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt

I think me being tall, plus an extra 2 inches with the insert, and a rib protector that’s too small, really leveraged my ribs into the seat. I may have slightly bruised a rib on my right side

Hehe. I’ll look at the footage and get back to you. Re finger wag… that was my pal Ben!

I put up the rest of your footage and it seems we missed some due to battery etc. But, still a good amount of stuff to review. I’ll make some more edits for shorts. I thought you drove very well!

I had similar editing of my thoughts re a certain driver who moved me off apex. I have to remember that most of the time it’s a mistake, as opposed to deliberate fuckery. I’m all good with being raced, hard, but I don’t like cheap shots.

I had 3 finger wag incidents. I was sort of embarrassed after the fact as I tend to gesticulate my displeasure in no uncertain terms.

I think maybe wrong heat or timestamp since he’s ahead of you here at 11:08 and nothing seems amiss. However at 10:55 you vocalize something but I am not seeing an incident.

Look at the kart ahead of me closely, he points at the apex or something

Maybe he was acknowledging a pit signal? But yeah, nothing to see ahead or on apex of 4.

He points at the apex from the exit of t3 and once he hits the apex he “aggressively” points down at it

Maybe he was trying to help make sure that you hit your apexes?

@E13
Check this out… this is my short session after refuel…

After a 43.4 outlap I put down all 43.2x with the exception of a couple laps where there’s traffic to get around. In one case, the bump drafting lets me get below 43. Otherwise, pretty darn consistent. I find it funny that the two laps at beginning are 1/1000 apart.

May not have been fast, but was predictable. Kart 3 wasn’t super good, but at least we weren’t getting walked into/out of 1. I think we made back 5 places with it.

Imagine if we could do enduros monthly? We’d git gud pretty quick, I think.

I thought this little interaction in h2 was decently smart driving. I coulda passed him, obviously, but it seemed to make more sense to push him along and keep the train rolling. He eventually has me take lead. He challenges back in Part 2 when we get some traffic again. It looks to me like we had similar overall pace but his top end was a bit slower (we can sympathize🤪).

I like the pushing through the traffic, using the kart ahead to effectively run interference. A pretty efficient way to find a hole through…

Endurance racing is the bomb. So much time to get stuff done, so many laps to try to make it work. The variability of the karts may be a feature rather than a bug from an experiential perspective. I do love trying to make a slow kart work or feeling like a superhero when you get a good one!

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I think Chris works pretty hard to equalize the karts as much as possible. Even has a dyno I believe.

He’s got some work to do end of season, then. :crazy_face:

If he has a Dyno then … :joy:

@KartingIsLife

So how does that work? You dyno the kart and it tells you what the power band looks like, right? And then you compare that to a “good” one?

What do you actually do to a Honda industrial engine to bring it back to “good”?

Is it carb? Or cylinder? Or what?

Assuming you started with a fleet that was close to baseline.

Start with a visual… see if the head gasket has popped. Pull crankcase breather off and see if there’s excess crankcase pressure (leaky rings). Check valve clearance. Pull the plug and make a quick assessment on carb/jetting. Throw a scope down the plug hole to see if anything is obviously messed up.

Next maybe move to a compression test (spinning motor externally). On our 460’s we expect to see 230-240psi at >1200 RPM+. I’ll note RAD too since we might test initially at 92%, but then during the season RAD could be above 100. I don’t really have a compensation formula based on air density, but if it’s pumping 200psi in summer that’s close enough.

Swap head with a known good one (if you suspect valve leakage, (tends to be more apparent on a leak down vs compression test) or a fresh block with good rings if you suspect rings.

After that you can go down the rabbit hole, or throw the motor in the trash pile :laughing:

I should note these are things I strive to do, but don’t always get to do it. Our saving grace is that even the weaker engines will spin the wheels all the way down the back straight :joy:

This season I’m swapping the built 460’s for “stock” 420 snow blower engines.

The 460’s are a pain to start (we broke over 50 recoils and injured staff!) they have a compression release, but it’s still not enough. Plus winterizing them effectively is more fab than I think it’s worth. So I’m moving to a unit where those kinds of problems are already solved.

I ended up putting a 17mm restrictor on the 460’s to slow the rate at which they exploded, so it’s not like we’ll have a drop in power.

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Thanks James! This is interesting. I kind of get the impression that mostly these just get run into the ground by most rental facilities.

Hmmm maybe this has some value to me on the grid…

Look for blowthrough schmutz here-ish? Basically wherever a gasket separates a block piece?

That looks like a KLX pit bike engine, but yeah often the gaskets pop on the exhaust side and you’ll see carbon on the fins between the head and block eventually. It would be number 4 on that diagram.

If the leak is big enough you’ll be able to hear it too.

Yeah most rental places have a hard time keeping up on parity. One day of work on a kart can be undone in half a lap. Some rental places have a separate fleet for league racing which is held to a higher standard.

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Would it be safe to say that if you have an imperfect seal from a gasket and you see leakage that you will have less capacity for compression and thus less top end?

Or am i misunderstanding compression?

So like when a dragster blows its engine up, the top of the block pops off like a cork from a champagne bottle?

Yeah you’ll have less capacity for compression as well as ingested air leaning the mixture and lastly some of the boom getting out of the leak.

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