This is when I start wishing I didn’t live in New England. I can’t imagine not having an off season
100cc would be super cool but very expensive. 4 stroke is still great. As long as it has an engine it’ll be fun on ice
It becomes a whole lot more expensive though 
The off season for Sprint karting is my on season for Dirt Oval fun. 
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Would love to hear more about your experience…So few people try both dirt oval and paved sprint.
Apologies for the long post…
So i’ve been doing the dirt for 5 or 6 seasons. Started out as total play, used a sprint chassis with a yf200 with 6" tires and offset the whole thing. The season after i still used the sprint chassis (an american one with adjustable heim from end) but i built a modified gx390 to run the UAS class. That’s the year i found out how important good tires were, i was using unprepped Burris B33B tires and they just were too hard for that application. A guy i knew from Sprint blew his engine and ended up not racing so he lent me a set of prepped Maxxis tires and boy what a difference, i went from struggling to stay with the pack and spinning occasionally to mixing it up with some of them. This was at the Buddha Kinser (BK) memorial race in Salem, OR which is basically what my whole dirt program is about. That year after getting those tires i was able to race through the C-Main but missed the transfer from the B-main to the A by 1 or 2 positions.
After that year i decided i wanted a purpose built dirt kart and i needed to learn how to prep tires. So i picked up a used Millenium kart for $1000 or so that had the wedge style bodywork i wanted. I strapped the gx390 to that and went racing. That year ('16-17) we also picked up a used kart with a yzf426 on it for my brother to run the UAS also, however it was not up to snuff so we rebuilt almost everything about the kart before taking it racing. Unfortunately that year at the BK during practice my gx390 broke a rocker arm and i was unable to run UAS, i did borrow a 206 and pulled the side panels off and ran in the 206 heavy class and i think got 5th. My brother made the B-main but got distracted watching my race and forgot to get to the grid with his kart (the races move pretty fast).
The next year i gave my Millenium to a buddy to strap one of his KT’s to since he was no longer using them in Sprint. I then picked up another used kart (Buller) which had a Rotax 250 single cylinder snowmobile engine. Did a bunch of work to that and it did pretty decent but a little down on power compared to some of the engine packages. My brother unfortunately was unable to make the BK race that year and so i had the two karts to use, i tested both in practice and even though i was a smidge quicker with mine and the Rotax i decided to race his with the yzf426 as it better racing capability. I did alright but missed out on the A-main once again.
Last year we sold the 426 and my brother inherited my Buller kart in which we installed a crf450 which had the gearbox cut off and ran a jackshaft. I picked up a brand new Roby Kart chassis and installed my Aixro Wankel. That wankel really moved, but still working on a few issues. Running an electronic ignition in preparation to move to EFI eventually, but we had an issue with power draw on the battery that was causing the spark to not be able to keep up with fueling so raw fuel went down the pipe and burned up a muffler or two at the BK event. I strapped (hurriedly) on the ol’ Rotax 250 and went out for my last heat and the spark plug popped out, it was just loose. Got that sorted for the C-main but wasn’t able to transfer to the B, the competition just keeps getting stronger every year.
This year we’re all running the same packages, though i still have some issues to sort with the wankel. Might go back to the stock ignition, also have a charging system in the works to keep voltage up in the battery. So far though i’ve been down racing once with my Wife and Son, my wife and i shared her Trackmagic KT kart and were fast but had a multitude of issues which took us out of the races. My son had his first race back in a dirt kart after a few years and ran 206 light finishing 5th with a bent side panel after an incident. Now we just picked him up a kart of his own that should be a little better and I have to get it together for a race in about 2 weeks. Also gotta get mine ready and fix the Wife’s, never enough time in the day.
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Very cool. Thanks for sharing that.
Gage, It’s more expensive for you because who you have to race with. Once you’re away from them, you won’t have as many broken parts. lol
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I actually have something I’m hoping to put on YouTube soon vaguely revolving around the topic of the offseason, but this year my friend and I are planning on making a YouTube channel for karting information to help people starting out, so we’ll be putting a lot of time into that setup in the coming months.
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What channel Is this going to be on?
Keep us posted. Do you have a content/topic plan for it?
Don’t have a name yet, but I’ll keep everyone updated when something actually comes out.
Aa of right now we have a good few months of content planned out to shoot. It should be about a video a week and we’ll see how things go as time goes on.
cant wait to see it!
Have you seen anyone else running a wankel? I have heard they exist but have never seen a wankle kart engine.
Also, the movie Trains, Planes and Automobiles has a wankel joke in it told by Steve Martin which is odd for an obscure engine.
I used to own a Wankel Engine truck. It was a Mazda REPU (Rotary Engine Pick-Up). I ended up selling it to a guy in New Zealand, and he paid to have it shipped from the USA to New Zealand. He still owns it, and still drives in.
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Ha! Very cool. Thanks.
Rotary kart engines, mainly Aixro, but the odd Saetta are not that rare in UK/ Europe.
Many consider them the ‘ultimate’ kart engine ,small, light, powerful but expensive.
http://www.karting1.co.uk/wankel-kart…
That link doesn’t seem to work. Sorry. Just google Aixro XR 50 for more info.
Damn! Now I wanna drive one of those
Sweet REPU! I’ve kept and tracked a rotary in my life for about the past decade. Goofy things but can work well.
When I was young there was an outdoor kart rental place called Malibu Grand Prix that you’d run bigger karts on a timed track (1 at a time). I seem to remember being told their karts had rotary motors but never had much more info on it.
I remember Malibu Grand Prix in CA, mainly. They had formula car bodies and looked really cool. Double seaters, too. We had similar looking ones at Action Park in NJ (now deceased due to really bad and dangerous rides. We called it “Traction Park”.)
…it was open, for all of one month in the Summer of 1985, before mounting injuries saw it shut down by the New Jersey Carnival Amusement Ride Safety Advisory Board
God I loved (and hated) the 80s. That was Peak Idiocy.
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