One week to go before our next race weekend and I had a seat repair to make (amongst other things) after the visiting scrutineers went to town on the kart last month. To be fair, most of the comments were valid: the seat was looking a little thin and I hadn’t noticed that the brake disc protector was almost down to the metal fixing bracket. I’m still certain that there is no requirement to have your seat fitted no lower than the underside of the chassis (and I’ll fight that battle if and when the time comes) but it was time to fix the seat.
I’d never used a fibreglass repair kit before. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it either but needs must. I got a unwelcome surprise when I removed the seat and on the chassis seat tabs snapped of in my hand. The week before a race weekend is no time to be needing a weld. I looked at tab for a few minutes wondering “WTF?!?” My plans were derailed and the week ahead instantly became a busy one. This is why the most competent mechanics are stripping their kart after each race. But not me, huh?
I’d have to deal with the chassis later. With the appropriate precautions, the fibreglass repair was ok. I probably didn’t apply quite enough of the adhesive based on the glass shards sticking out here and there but it was good enough.With family chauffeuring duties, it was all I could do on Saturday. Sunday was pretty busy too; there would be no time to get the chassis fixed and prepare the kart for Llandow next weekend. I was going to have to revert to the old chassis. Things were going ok until I realised that we hadn’t used the larger seat in the old chassis and the gap between the seat mount bars was about 20mm narrower. This was another first for me: how the hell do you open that up without damaging the chassis. A quick phone call to my trusted advisor addressed that although I think we’re still 5mm or so shy. I decided to postpone the seat fitting and focused on getting the rest of the kart sorted.
With the kart barely fitting in the half of our garage that we cleared to squeeze it into back on Day 1, I work on the kart out on the drive. That’s great in the daylight but dusk brings a few challenges (I had the kart I was stripping on the drive and the kart I was building in the garage) and had to call it a day at 9pm. There is still a lot of work to do and, worst case scenario, we’ll have to miss the practice Saturday if I am not able to complete the rebuild. The moral of the story is: prepare your kart more than one week ahead. Or get an outside light fitted in your drive!
These working comditions would be best described as sub-optimal!
Costs since last post: Fibre glass repair kit: £16, fresh bolts £20 (including expensive bumper bolts!)
Total spent this year: £4,199