Karting 101

scottIN

Must be nice to live somewhere it's not 30* out...NCMP doesn't open until April 15th.

I'm too lazy for a shifter.

scottIN

Rentals are $20 for the first 10 minutes and a dollar a minute afterwards. I always laugh when I see people go up and buy an hour and then say they want to do it with no breaks. After about 10 minutes they come back in and ask if they can break it up into sessions. If you can last more than an hour in a kart in one day, you're either a) young or b) Chuck Norris.

So about the most you're going to spend is $50 or $60. They also have a bar though, so, y'know, double that.

scottIN

Depends on how fast you want to go. They'll start to go off after about 15-20 miles. If you're racing a the national level, you change every race-although some sanctioning bodies limit the number of tires per weekend to keep the cost down. Since I just race club races, I usually get 200+ miles out of them and run them down to the cords before I get new ones. Times do drop off, but the .1 or .2 I lose from old tires is nothing compared to what I lose in driving mistakes. If you're racing at the national level and don't make driving mistakes, that .1 or .2 is worth it.

It's not been as fruitful in the last few years since the sanctioning bodies started limiting tires, but we used to go dumpster diving for tires after the national races. You could find tires that had 12 laps on them that the big teams just tossed out. Perfect (and free) for club racing or practice.

Tires run about $190 / set.

It does feel sooooo good to run the first time on a new set of tires though. There's so much grip that if you're set up a little tight, they'll turn so hard it's actually painful.

ChrisSlicks

I did an endurance race at the indoor place here in Boston. The longest I could go was 30 minutes, after that my arms/shoulders were on fire (and my back was too with the heat of the engine radiating through the seat). In these bigger, faster carts it has to be even worse.

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Hotchkis ARB | Stillen CAI | Art Pipes | Berk CBE | Stillen AP Racing Brakes | AE Performance Oil Cooler | BC Racing ER Coilovers | Doran Control Arms

shaun66

What spec tires do you run? We run MG yellows and only get race out of a set.

scottIN

Bridgesotne YKCs. They tried Bs last year & they were only good for a day & so they went back to Cs. Dismore is pretty good about trying to keep costs down for everyone. He'd rather have 250 racers on Cs than 150 on Bs.

Oh yeah. You're on a shifter. I think they can still run Bs, but most don't. Most go with Cs. First time I ever ran Bs I thought it was a crazy stupid amount of grip.

shaun66

Used to run YKCs, prefer any bridgestone to what we run now, makes it more of a drivers race with a less grippy tire

scottIN

So how did you run this weekend?