Here are some pics along with the whole album.

So we finally got Jeff and Andy out karting today!  It was a beautiful day, the track was nice and sticky, and the kart was working great after Jeff and I replaced the sprocket, chain, drive gear, and associated hardware.  The starter is still not working, but not a big deal after we figured out how to get the starter we borrowed from the shop to work.

Anyway, since Dennis and Andy were only going to be with us for the morning as they had big oyster plans later on, they took most of the morning sessions after I did a couple quick shakedown laps.  Pretty uneventful for the most part.  A couple off-roading excursions, a couple stall outs, a couple spin-outs, but nothing that broke anything… or so I thought.

After Dennis and Andy left, Jeff went out for the first session of the afternoon.  He was getting more comfortable with the kart and the track and his times were dropping.  However, he thought his times should be dropping even more given the increase in confidence he was feeling.  Something was holding him back… but what?

Well, after the session, I walked over to help with the post-run maintenance.  Looking down, I saw just what was slowing him down.  It turns out the battery box and starter box had been turned into an anchor.  I forgot to take a picture of the “anchor”, but here are a couple from after we took the damaged parts off.

As you can see, the battery now has a nice slit in it (where all the battery acid leaked out and the negative terminal was ground away.)  Also, the battery box has been ground down pretty well on the bottom.

Oh well!  I think one of our morning off-track excursions broke one of the battery box brackets which then caused another bolt to vibrate loose… which turned the battery box into said anchor.

That’s racing!  Hopefully we can figure out how to fix this without spending an arm and a leg.

I got the trailer registered last week so it’s legal now.  For those who don’t know, I bought a trailer from harbor freight primarily for the kart.  It’s amazing what you can get from China for $230.  True, it’s not the highest quality piece of equipment I’ve ever seen, but it will suit our purposes just fine.

Anyway, I did take some video of Eric going around with the new camcorder and Scott Speed was there driving around (he’s really smooth) and we didn’t break anything so it was a pretty good day overall.  (We did replace the brake pads, but that’s more of a normal wear item.)

Anyway, here are some of Dennis’ pics.

Eric’s friend (and all-things-with-four-wheels extraordinaire), Craig, was home for the weekend and brought his Horstman sprint kart with him. Lucky for us, he also was able to squeeze our kart, our gear, and ourselves into his friend’s extra-cab Tacoma for a day at the track.

It was great having Craig around to show us the ropes as newbies into the world of karting. He had the right tools, parts, accessories, know-how, and even gourmet jam to go with our peanut butter and potato bread lunch. In particular, it was good to get his perspective when we lost the drive gear. Then, he was really helpful when we evaluated our spark plug. Finally, it was nice of him to help us replace our badly worn sprocket and chain. Of course, how do I repay him but by snapping his throttle cable?! Oh well, we got it fixed by using a “spare” part from our kart. No worries. In any case, good times. good times.

More pictures here.