Karting - My Experience Part Two

Most karts' engines are two-strokes and so was mine. It's a carbureted unit with lots of "flat-spot" in the lower rpms. Flat-spot is, feeling no surge in power when the throttle is pressed fully down, suddenly. To be more technical, when the throttle opening is too high for the rpm at the particular instant, the engine will be supplied with a richer mixture, which it can't burn effectively resulting in a loss of power.

At the start of the race the instructor asked me to press the throttle and I duly smashed it onto the floor. But there was no sudden rush of power, which I didn't expect and the engine was making a noise that made it clear it was feeding on a low dose of air (I know the sound of an engine not being fed with the correct air-fuel mixture reasonably well because I used to drive a TVS 50 and in the moped I used to just try different throttle openings at different speeds and note the noise). But once the kart got going, the engine felt healthy.

Being so close to your back, the engine noise was quite a thing--very different experience. The brakes, yes, an interesting feature. They act only on the rear wheels! This was not too much a problem when I braked the kart in a straightline (as I did a few times when I was getting to grips with the kart), but braking in the midst of a corner would slide the back-end around. It was fun. But not fast.

Links of interest:

> KARTING - MY EXPERIENCE PART ONE

> KARTING AND RACING CAREER

> KARTING

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