KARTING – WHY YOU’LL WANT A THUNDERKART

THUNDER STORM

Want To Go Motor Racing In Something That Won’t Cost You A Fortune, Doesn’t Need Much Maintenance Yet Is Fast Enough To Take Your Breath Away? Bring On The Thunderkart. Jonathan Crouch Tries It.


Until the Thunderkart arrived, the karting equation was very simple. Get involved and you went for something slow and low maintenance or fast and full of hassle.


An over-simplification of course, but that’s what it boiled down to. The relatively slow but low maintenance slot was filled by the Pro Kart, a twin-engined machine driven by a couple of generator derived Honda 160cc engines. This is the closest karting has ever got to producing something that you can wheel out, wipe off and race, then shut away again without a second thought.
Sure it needed maintenance, but the level required wasn’t on the same planet as that for a two-stroke engine – the next performance step up. For these, you were looking at a £100-£200 engine rebuild every ten hours or, if you were really serious, after every race. And a load of maintenance hassles in between. If you had plenty of money, liked getting your hands dirty and were mechanically minded, it was fine. If none of those applied, you stayed at the wheel of a Pro Kart or didn’t race at all.
Pro-Karting is the sport’s most popular form of competition but in recent years, the numbers competing have been increasingly falling away for just that reason. One solution introduced in recent years has been the Rotax Max Kart. It was certainly fast enough – said to be up to four seconds a lap quicker than a two-stroke. And it needed a lot less spanner work, with an engine rebuild required only every fifty hours. Yet this was still too frequent by Pro Kart standards. And on top of that, the Rotax was expensive to buy and potentially pricey to maintain.
Such is the background to the emergence of the Thunderkart. Makers BIZ in Enfield, Middlesex, set themselves quite a task in the development of this machine. It should be fast enough to represent a real step up from Karting’s Pro Kart entry level. It should handle sharply enough to be instantly chuckable, just like a nimble little two-stroke. Yet it should also be relatively low priced and require infrequent workshop visits. All of which has lead to the development of the Thunderkart Evolution machine I tried.
The ‘Evolution’ part is important. Early Thunderkarts were quite fast and affordable, but were based on the ponderous Pro Kart chassis’. They also suffered from various mechanical maladies, some of them caused by owners who though they could subject these highly tuned machines to corporate-style punishment. BIZ solved the problems anyway and went back to the drawing board with the chassis. At the end of 2000, the Thunderkart Evolution was launched. It had the same 17bhp 390cc engine and the same affordable £2,500 (ex VAT) price. But almost everything else was different.
The main change was a two stroke-based chassis. Strong enough to withstand huge amounts of kerbing punishment, yet taut enough to make owners want to throw the kart from lock to lock – just for the sake of it. Reliability has since been established too – although no kart is going to be maintenance-free. This one is about as close as you’re going to get however, if you’re after neck-snapping performance. An engine rebuild is required once every hundred hours, though some owners unwisely run theirs for over 200 hours: this is not recommended.
Enough of this – what’s it like to drive? Well the answer really depends on what kind of karting experience you’ve had. Professionals used to two-stroke or Rotax Max karts won’t find it as fast of course. Everyone else should be more than impressed. And if you’re karting for the first time, maybe after a spin at your local indoor circuit, it will take your breath away.
Unlike the early versions, this Thunderkart fits the vision its makers first started out with – to create the ultimate low maintenance kart for the non-expert but enthusiastic racer. The 17bhp engine has plenty of low-down grunt: it even pulls with two people on board (yes, there is a two-seater version)! And it’s perfectly balanced. Whoever set this thing up knew what they were doing.
But if you want to buy one, what can you do with it? The answer to that one’s easy. BIZ support a Daytona-run Thunderkart championship based at the Daytona circuit in Milton Keynes, and shortly to move out to other tracks. It’s an Endurance Series – which means that you compete in teams of three people over six hour races. The cost is £225 per race.
At last then, a kart quick enough to tempt us away from our TVs and Playstations, yet easy enough to look after, so as not to need a corporate sponsor and a degree in mechanical engineering.
THUNDERKART - FACTS AT A GLANCE

TO BUY ONE: BIZ Karts - 0208 443 3300

TO RACE ONE: Daytona - 0500 145 155

TO TRY ONE: Buckmore Park, Kent / Daytona Milton Keynes / Palmersport, Bedford and Bruntingthorpe / Shennington, Oxon / Whilton Mill, Midlands / Warden Law / F1 Karting and Pallas Karting, County Galway / JJF Karting, Paphos, Cyprus

March 19th 2001