The importance of balancing your go kart racing tires can not be overstated. Most people wouldn’t even consider putting a tire on their car or truck that has not been balanced. Yet some of those same people will mount up a new tire for their racing go kart and not balance it at all. The truth is that it’s of much greater importance to balance your go kart racing tires than any other tires. Even when using today’s fully machined go kart racing wheels, there’s a need for balancing. There are are several styles of go kart racing tire balancers on the market. If you have metric wheels instead of American pattern wheels you will need a metric adapter kit. Every karter should balance all their karting tires before ever putting tires on go kart.
With the purchase of a go kart racing tire balancer anyone can learn to balance tires for their racing go kart. Besides for the balancer you will need a permanent marker, wheel weights, scissors or cutters and some racers tape. Then just follow the instructions below:
1. Attach the wheel to the hub and slide hub on to spindle.
2. Center wheel on spindle and put ends of spindle in to balancer sides.
3. Spin wheel lightly and allow it to stop on it’s own.
4. Mark the wheel at the very top with marker. You have now determined the lightest point of the the wheel.
5. Cut a piece of weight and attach it to wheel using racers tape for now. Try to get weight as close to the hub as possible.
6. Now turn the wheel until weight is at the 3:00 or 9:00 position.
Let go of wheel. If weight falls to 6:00 position then you need to remove some weight. If weight goes to 12:00 position then more weight needs to be added.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until tire is balanced. This has been achieved when weight can be placed at any position and the tire does not move.
8.Then remove racers tape, put weight back in the same place by peeling the paper off the back of wheel weight. Apply a small piece of racers tape over weight to insure it doesn’t move. You have now balanced your first racing go kart wheel.
I’ve been asked several times just how much faster can this possibly make the go kart. The answer is most likely 1-3 tenths of a second per lap. That is not much but racing, of any kind, is a game that consists of maybe hundreds of little things. So even though one tenth of a second isn’t much, if you find 10 things that give you that much more speed then it’s all of a sudden a whole second. And that is a lot at any track!
Racing go kart tire balancers are sold at many kart shops including my own http://smokinjoeracing.com
