well ok…. Carb got me intrigued… how many of those you got floating around?
Honestly.... not sure. At least 2 completely finished one atomizer and one standard pumper setup, and probably 15 or so in various stages of completion and some intended to be built differently for R&D.
I never really sold any of the crazy stuff I machined... it was the building of the components that really intrigued me more than the actual racing... but its been over 20 years since most if this stuff was put into storage and here's the skinny on that...
I haven't really looked at any of this stuff since the year the BZ1 block came out... I think that was late 1998 or early 1999... that was the last year I actively built and ran open modified mostly due to the birth of my daughter...
I did run 2 races in the year 2000 but it was in a borrowed kart with a stock flat head engine I built for the guy who loaned me the kart... the year after I quit the talking heads got together and started talking BS about how I couldn't really drive that I just won races because I machined parts others didn't have in their open modifieds.... the consensus was that had I ran any of the stock classes I'd have never won a race...
So when the next "money race" came along in stock medium I borrowed a buddies speedster chassis with one of my 100% legal stock class engines and took the 4 wheels and tires he said I'd need and threw everything into the back of an S-10 and rolled into the pits...
Won the first heat, second heat, and the main taking the money.... of course the engine was protested and they took it into the tech shed for the teardown and I told em no sir... if they want to tear it down pull a table out into the pits and let everyone watch, and they acquiesced to my request and the tech guy "BJ" tore it down in plain view of anyone wanting to watch and I even told everyone what cam it was along with answering some other questions... all said and done 100% tear down and it was deemed 100% legal... I chucked everything in a box and headed home with the money.
Sure enough a week or two goes by and the talking heads are still flapping their lips... this time it was "yeah... that was stock medium... good thing he wasn't in stock lite or he'd have got half tracked if not lapped out their with us".... so what too do?
I waited for the next money race which was... you guessed it stock light... now I was a might thick so I was right at 16 pounds over minimum which was either 305 or 315 I forget... with me walking naked at I think 220 at the time we stripped everything possible but still came up heavy... I came in second from starting last in the first heat, One of Bama Johnson's boys took the first heat race... I wasn't really any threat to pass him but I was a solid #2... second heat race Bama's driver chucked a rod so I won that one, and then won the main taking the money with my chain jumping the back sprocket constantly.... we got a little carried away with the lightening program and one of my friends pulled the stop collar off the axle which allowed it too flex and the chain would jump and get between the chain stays and the sprocket in the turns then jump back on in the straight... lol
They didn't bother protesting me that time so I figured my point was made and honor defended sufficiently and loaded up and headed home...
I haven't sat a kart since that day, and all my custom machined stuff went into boxes in the shop attic along with the two best open modifieds I ever built... my daughter just graduated college with her degree in aerospace engineering so now time and funding are available again and I've been dragging out all the old stuff and the reminiscence if it all is probably going to have me building some OHV stuff after first of the year and seeing whether or not I'm too old too throw the tiller on the red clay anymore...
Suppose they'd let me run purple plate?
BTW... this isn't me tooting my horn or bragging about what an awesome driver I was... this was a small local track and insignificant in the big picture of kart racing... I'm 100% positive on one of the more serious tracks and in any stock class I'd have had my arse handed too me easily by most of the field... in open modified I ran some of the faster more serious tracks and won some and lost some, but generally speaking I was at worst competitive in the race or I grenaded an open motor trying something or other that ended up in hindsight being pretty stupid... lol.
I built and machined a lot of stuff that worked great, but I built a lot more that was a flat out complete and total disaster.... that's what kept my interest... ADHD is a funny thing. Lol.