There were the standard rules of racing in the open classes for go-karts ... ain't no rules except don't get dead. The topic is delicate as Lotho knows better than all of us sometimes that happens in racing.
So, a moment of silence before going on with this.
The C-Open class in go-karts was the most powerful so, of course, my ol' Dad has got to go for it. He had been the national champion in the open class in Australia before coming to America and he didn't know anything except going fast. My brothers may say they ended up going faster and well they might have done but that's a bittersweet thing for a racing father to see.
For C-Open, putting one motor on the go-kart wasn't enough, go with two. Having two motors wasn't enough either so modify them in every twisted way you can imagine. Engineers loved go-karts because you could do such demented things to the motors and some brainiac came up with a way to put not one, not two, but three carburetors on one because the thirst of these motors for high-octane, usually explosive fuel was enormous ... but only if they could get enough air to explode, erm, burn it.
The standard way to mount the motor on the go-kart was vertically such is with BM, an Italian motor, or Komet which was made who knows where. McCulloch motors were usually mounted horizontally so the piston was moving along that plane rather than up and down.
The above technical facts are of importance because the driver of the go-kart sits with the motors inches behind his head or, in the cases of my flaming fast sisters, her head. With the driver seated in this proximity the horizontal mounting made for a certain vulnerability.
As to what vulnerability, you may ask, and that was the risk of the motor exploding. Given the insane way they were modified, they often did, and there was a certain consequence to the driver.
However, there could be a major consequence to the driver and fortunately this one came when my ol' Dad was burning hard into a corner and you lean as far physically as possible to use all your weight because these vehicles had a combined kart / driver weight of maybe three hundred pounds or so.
The fortunate aspect of his, erm, configuration that moment was he was leaning hard into a corner to the left ... when the right-side motor let out an immense explosion and shot the connecting rod to the piston and various other bits of metal out of the bottom of the crank case and directly to where my father's shoulder ... would have been.
So he lived to race another day and, as always, blew it off with, well, that's racing although I do confess his language was rather more colorful than that.
Yep, that's racing.
So, a moment of silence before going on with this.
The C-Open class in go-karts was the most powerful so, of course, my ol' Dad has got to go for it. He had been the national champion in the open class in Australia before coming to America and he didn't know anything except going fast. My brothers may say they ended up going faster and well they might have done but that's a bittersweet thing for a racing father to see.
For C-Open, putting one motor on the go-kart wasn't enough, go with two. Having two motors wasn't enough either so modify them in every twisted way you can imagine. Engineers loved go-karts because you could do such demented things to the motors and some brainiac came up with a way to put not one, not two, but three carburetors on one because the thirst of these motors for high-octane, usually explosive fuel was enormous ... but only if they could get enough air to explode, erm, burn it.
The standard way to mount the motor on the go-kart was vertically such is with BM, an Italian motor, or Komet which was made who knows where. McCulloch motors were usually mounted horizontally so the piston was moving along that plane rather than up and down.
The above technical facts are of importance because the driver of the go-kart sits with the motors inches behind his head or, in the cases of my flaming fast sisters, her head. With the driver seated in this proximity the horizontal mounting made for a certain vulnerability.
As to what vulnerability, you may ask, and that was the risk of the motor exploding. Given the insane way they were modified, they often did, and there was a certain consequence to the driver.
However, there could be a major consequence to the driver and fortunately this one came when my ol' Dad was burning hard into a corner and you lean as far physically as possible to use all your weight because these vehicles had a combined kart / driver weight of maybe three hundred pounds or so.
The fortunate aspect of his, erm, configuration that moment was he was leaning hard into a corner to the left ... when the right-side motor let out an immense explosion and shot the connecting rod to the piston and various other bits of metal out of the bottom of the crank case and directly to where my father's shoulder ... would have been.
So he lived to race another day and, as always, blew it off with, well, that's racing although I do confess his language was rather more colorful than that.
Yep, that's racing.
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