Keeping The Superkarts Running

What’s it take to keep a bunch of Superkarts running? The Queensland-based Weier Family Racing Superkart team has been posting updates about the trials and tribulations of going racing in the road race divisions.

The following has been re-published from the August newsletter of the Queensland Superkart Club. Club website:  www.qldsuperkart.org


Weier Family Racing have been keeping themselves busy over the break, check out their Facebook page if you
haven’t already HERE.

Normally keeping themselves busy running a 250 Single, the team have taken new members Kyle (Schroeder) and Greg (Hack) under their wing after they’ve experienced some unreliability issues at the last round.

After not finishing a single race last time, Kyle was very motivated to get things sorted out and enjoy driving the kart rather than watching from the sidelines. Big things we tackled with his kart was tidying the wiring and cable routing up, so he didn’t melt the throttle cable on the exhaust again! Moved the ignition box away from under the exhaust. Moved the seat position to better suit Kyle.

Showed him how to shim the brakes properly, remounted the rear wing so it can be removed easily. Exhaust mounting revised. Reset the squish and showed them how to recover a seized barrel with some Acid to clean the alloy off the Nickasil. Checked the wiring loom and changed the jet in the Carby to a richer setting. Repaired a stripped bleed nipple in the rear brake caliper.

It’s been a big learning curve for Kyle and hopefully it’s sorted out the issues and he can enjoy tearing up the track and start improving the chassis handling and lower those lap times.



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Greg is currently leading the championship after 3 rounds but his performance was compromised last time with sub-par brake performance. Initially we looked at new seals and checked the condition of the pistons plus clearances.

Bleeding up the brakes after the new seals were fitted saw them still leaking when heavy pressure was applied. With time running out before Round 4, alternate callipers were investigated but deemed to require too much
fabrication work/mucking around to get right with only 2 weeks until race day.

The pistons had all their anodising worn away from use over the years and some mild surface imperfections. So off to the Lathe and make some new ones. A solid 6 hours on the lathe and 8 new shiny pistons ready to go. Making them 0.06mm bigger than what came out they are sealing up nice after initial bleeding. Time will tell when we hit the track if we’ve solved the issue.

Next up we went to adjust the gearing as he was running out of revs to early down the back straight, upon fitting the 18 tooth 415 profile sprocket to the engine it didn’t wrap around the 428 chain which was very odd given they are both ½” pitch chain just different widths and the sister 18 tooth sprocket fit on Kyle’s kart without
issues. I casually said that’s alright I’ll just make you one and Greg replied ‘you’ll what’. Quickly drawing it up and
3D printing it to check fitment before getting it laser cut and turning to size on the lathe.

Next up was Liam’s Engine rebuild after he grenaded the bottom end in Round 2. Something different putting the TM back together compared to the team’s GAS GAS but this should have Liam back on track ready to roll for round 4!

One last project after many years, the floor on the WFR machine was starting to look a little sad having been patched multiple times. Having dipped their toes earlier in the year regarding the resin infusion process, it was decided to tackle making a new floor. The result came out mint with the carbon layer on top looking fantastic. Once it’s trimmed up the whole floor should weigh around 1.5kg.

It’s been a very busy 3 months and the team are keen to see the results of all their hard work on track and
looking forward to a short break after the next round before gridding up for Round 5 and finish the year strong!

Hope you enjoyed this article and what Weier Family Racing have been up to.



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