Does anybody remember Lene Lovich? A crazy rock girl of the early 80's whose most famous song was about a "New Toy". In her case the new toy I believe was quite small and vibrated.
This is my new toy. It vibrates too, but is somewhat larger......
We went to one of the local Kart tracks for a play with some visitors and there was a man running around the track in a full competition spec kart. Very different from the hire machines! I had a chat to him about how he ended up at the track and found out some interesting info. Turns out the track is owned by the current Thai champion and there are a group of guys there who run competition karts and go to events together. When I asked about getting a kart he took me out the back and showed me one that was for sale right then because one of the group had just bought the latest gadget and was selling his previous machine.
So I now own a racing machine again. I have a little garage at the track to keep it in and can run around there whenever the track is open. I'm sure there must be something illegal in it because it is to much fun to be legal!
Quite an impressive little track there. Hosts one of the rounds of the Thai championship each year, so not just a silly little hire track like many.
Its a Birel chassis, one of the most common ones used in competition racing.
Motor is a 125cc water cooled two stroke with an output of about 30HP. In these tiny little machines that is enough to light up the back wheels if you step on it too hard, and to propel it up to about 120 km/h. No gears on these things which is lucky because it takes all my concentration just to get it around the track without the back wheels ending up in front of you. Ventilated disk brakes on the rear axle. That close to the ground and wth the motor screaming away next to your right ear, 50kmh feels like about Mach 2!
Whatever it does, it is capable of doing it a lot better than me at this stage. I have a laptimer/transponder on order to see how fast I am going and how I am improving. I ran some laps today with an ex South African champion and learned a lot about the difference between the lines you take in a GoKart compared to my motorbike racing days. Even different to the car. A whole lot of learning to be done on my part before I will be capable of finding out what it can really do, but this sort of learning will be too much fun.
