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J.I.C.A. Karting
– It's Not That Expensive!
By Richard Brunning. Zip Kart's JICA Expert
There are many misconceptions within karting,
but the one I hear time and again is, ‘JICA is too expensive.’
Rubbish, JICA is just like any other class; it is only as
expensive as you make it. I’m going to detail now roughly
the costs involved in running a JICA kart at British Championship
level.
Due to new regulations, competitors are
only allowed to sign on 1 chassis and 2 engines at each round.
With that in mind, we take a third, dedicated test engine
to use on all Friday sessions to keep the race engines fresh.
Our race engines have a top end rebuild every 2-3 hours, not
every race like some competitors do and the third motor goes
for as long as 6 hours.
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Race engines can be rented for as little as £200
per meeting. A complete new motor is £1050 + VAT which includes
the carburettor and exhaust. To bring that up to fiche costs around
£250. A top end re-build costs as little as £125 but
because the engines are not sealed, if you have the ability, you
can do it yourself for far less!
The carburettor is, like for any racing engine,
very important. The standard carburettor is the Walbro WB32. Out
of the box, these are fine but to get the best performance from
the engine, it is advisable to either buy a prepared one or get
someone to prepare your standard unit. This can be quite costly
but once it is done, you then only have to rebuild the carb with
the standard repair kits which are very inexpensive. There are other
carbs on the market such as the Beroni which can cost in excess
of £300 each but quite honestly, we have used the good old
Walbro for 90% of this season.
We use the Brisk LR10ZS spark plug when it’s
dry and an NGK plug in the wet. The Brisk plugs give a tangible
improvement in power but do need replacing every meeting. Still,
at just over £6.00 a piece, it’s not exactly breaking
the bank!
So, a competitive JICA engine costs from £200
per meeting to hire or £1300 + VAT to buy outright. That’s
right, £1300. That’s it, no special engines, and no
ridiculous five figure ballistic missiles. In timed qualifying at
Larkhall, the top 10 JICA drivers were covered by less than 0.25secs
and the top 4 by just 3 hundredths! This is an incredibly competitive
class.
Although you can only sign on one chassis, you
can of course take two karts to championship meetings. You can ask
to use your alternative kart if you damage the primary chassis beyond
repair.
We generally use just one new set of tyres per
meeting. We will get a base set up with the tyres from the previous
round, bolt on one new set to get a good qualifying set up and then
use that set for the rest of the practice sessions. There is absolutely
no need to throw new tyres at the kart every day, as during the
actual race meeting, you are only on new tyres for qualifying. Most
of the racing is done on worn tyres and by the end of the 2nd final,
you’ve definitely had the best out of them. A great set-up
for worn tyres is worth far more than a good set-up for new tyres.
The Bridgestone YGB is a great tyre that is very consistent and
there’s no problem in running tyres from the previous round
to start your testing off.
Some competitors test nearly every week, go out
to race in France, Italy, Belgium and this ego trip does indeed
cost lots of money, but you don’t need to splash all that
cash to race competitively in JICA. Our driver finished as vice
British Champion this year in his first season in the class. Now
I will admit that 12 year old Oliver Rowland is an exceptional talent,
but it does go to prove that you do not have to spend fortunes to
race at the front.
New race winning equipment – complete kart
and spare engine will cost you less than £4700 + VAT.
Now be honest, how much are you spending?
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