First off this is awesome forum, excited I found it. I am personally not a mechanical inclined person, but my son actually is, he has taken Lionel trains apart that didn't work and rebuilt them to get them going. He is 14 so he has been youtubing and watching videos on how to set and fix certain things, and I am his support help him screw stuff in in and remove bolts and parts.
My son has raced at local indoor go kart tracks for years, but just decided to get him into real karting.
We bought a used go-kart, it is a Birel chassis, and LO206 engine go-kart.
He is running the LO206 Road course class at our local track and his kart was good for the first 5-6 weeks, but this past weekend his lap times fell off almost a second as the race went on. This was also the first week we raced in real heat, it was almost 90. (Ran 20.4-20.6 the previous weeks this week was 21.2-21.4 the last 5 laps.) He won 3 of the first 6 races and then this week he couldn't even keep up finished 5 seconds behind.
First noticed an issue 2 weeks ago when the kart came off the track, I was looking at the back tires and I tried to spin the back axle and their was almost a metal grinding sound coming from area of the clutch and the axle didn't spin freely. When the kart is cold you can spin the back axle and it will spin for a while before stopping.
So from my online research I was thinking this is a clutch related issue as the clutch may be experiencing to much friction/heat during the race causing it to seize up a little. But truthfully I have no idea. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. (I know it is a centrifugal clutch, as I said I am not a gear head so I have limited knowledge.) I was just hoping it was something with the clutch and not the engine itself or it's crankshaft.
My son has raced at local indoor go kart tracks for years, but just decided to get him into real karting.
We bought a used go-kart, it is a Birel chassis, and LO206 engine go-kart.
He is running the LO206 Road course class at our local track and his kart was good for the first 5-6 weeks, but this past weekend his lap times fell off almost a second as the race went on. This was also the first week we raced in real heat, it was almost 90. (Ran 20.4-20.6 the previous weeks this week was 21.2-21.4 the last 5 laps.) He won 3 of the first 6 races and then this week he couldn't even keep up finished 5 seconds behind.
First noticed an issue 2 weeks ago when the kart came off the track, I was looking at the back tires and I tried to spin the back axle and their was almost a metal grinding sound coming from area of the clutch and the axle didn't spin freely. When the kart is cold you can spin the back axle and it will spin for a while before stopping.
So from my online research I was thinking this is a clutch related issue as the clutch may be experiencing to much friction/heat during the race causing it to seize up a little. But truthfully I have no idea. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. (I know it is a centrifugal clutch, as I said I am not a gear head so I have limited knowledge.) I was just hoping it was something with the clutch and not the engine itself or it's crankshaft.