Good afternoon all.
Here is the article I submitted for my local Parish Magazine, unfortunately they edited out the website contacts...Doh! But they did edit my spelling mistakes, so it's not all bad :-) There was also some photo which don't seem to want to transfer over here...but they looked good, even printing them in Colour when they told me they wouldn't due to cost, I guess we are worth it!!!
It’s Hardly Formula 1
High speed, and high adrenaline isn’t what you usually associate with Thorpe le Soken, well apart from when on a school run down Landermere Road, or along the High Street.
However in this rather quaint and lovely village, something stirred, the strange put put put noise of a single cylinder engine was heard, yes we have one of the few but growing number of CycleKarts in GB...what is a CycleKart I hear you ask, well they started in America by a gentleman called Stephenson back in the 1980’s, you base it on a pre 1950’s car, now unlike Formula 1 or infact many formulas of racing our rules are more guidelines and take up one side of A4, well if spaced out quite a bit, and they are cheap and simple to build. All this for less than the cost of an F1 oil change or steering wheel!
They are limited to max wheelbase of 66”, run on Honda CT90 17” wheel or pit bike equiv, no rear suspension, a pair of leaf springs for the front, and usually in the back use a stonking great GX200 6.5hp single cylinder engine...I know 6.5 HP you are wondering how on earth you can have fun with that, well very easily in fact. But if you need the excitement/expense of tinkering with an engine you are allowed to go to stage 1 mods...reaching the dizzy heights of 9.5 - 10 HP! It might be worth noting none of us have actually felt the need to do that yet. It’s worth building one of these, even if just for the experience, fun and new skills you can learn along the way.
Because of the narrowness of the tyres we are grip limited rather than power limited. Top speed, somewhere around 40 - 50 MPH, but...and this is the important bit...you are having too much fun to worry about what speed you are doing, you are hanging on every inch of the way, even the straights can be interesting! Once people have tried them they can’t help smiling.
You choose an inspiration car, something you want to recreate, some produce miniature works of art, some of us, me included produce something that looks right from a distance, in my case about 12 foot away! Mine is based on a Maserati 750 V8, we have no engine management, no anti lock brakes, no this and no that, nor other stuff that's complex and doesn’t add to the fun. When people dare to try these machines, to start with they are all full of suggestions on how to improve them, once they have actually driven one, their smile is big enough to see despite a full face crash helmet, and realise they don’t need any improvements.
So far we CK’s inspired by Austin, Bentley, Bugatti, ERA, MG, Maserati, Morgan, Wollsey, in fact the Wollsey has been made road legal. With also Delarge, Dodge, and Vauxhall soon to be finished.
In building this beast of a machine, thanks should go to Jane for generally putting up with such things as using the dining room table to construct stuff, and adhesive on the patio slabs. Anna and Lee for letting me use their paddock for shake down test runs, Richard for endless suggestions and morale boosting, and helping with the fiberglassing. Xanthus for his endless enthusiasm. And also Mark for welding, and Stretton go kart track for letting us play there.
Any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask, or have a look at the website
http://www.cyclekartsgb.com/index.phpThere is also an international website
https://www.cyclekartclub.com/
