Quote:
Originally Posted by Scoobysnacks
Morning all, I'm after some advice please? I'm looking to buy my first kart, I've been racing rental karts for about 2 years now and I'm not too bad, but would like one of my own now, I'm looking at 4 strokes, purely because of keeping running costs down and until recently I'd been sold on getting a Honda twin engine pro kart as I believe the engines are very good and reliable and not to hard too maintain yourself. But as I've looked more into it I've noticed that TKM do a 4 stroke kart also, but I don't know a lot about them.
I'm heading towards 40, so I'm not going for a career in racing, but certainly looking for a lot of fun! I'm going to go for my ARKs licence next year as I believe this will open up more races for me, but when I buy my 1st kart I want to make sure I've got the right one so 3 months down the line I'm not trying to sell it to get another one....
Could anyone give me an idea of the difference between the 2 please? I.e. engine life between rebuilds, which would be quicker etc?
Thanks in advance.
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I've driven both.
The Tkm 4/ is a lot faster than the prokart, however speed isn't everything. Its pros and cons. The rebuild times are pretty much the same on the prokarts and Tkm of you want to stay fairly competitive. The cost to rebuild a Tkm engine is around 350 quid, it's about 200 for a Honda engine but there are 2 of them. The biggest difference is engines is in prokarts you get selected parts engines and standard engines. The selected parts engines are quicker than standards ones but also cost more to buy in the first place.
In terms of costs to buy it depends what you want! You can get a nackered old prokarts for a few hundred quid, or something semi competitive for 2000-2500, the Tkm 4/ is a bit cheaper at 1500 or so. With a Tkm 4/ it is an external starter of course, so you would need help to start it, or build a little trolley for the starter so you can sit in the kart and reach around to the starter to start and then pull it away.
The bottom line is both are great kart, the Tkm is cheeper to buy than the prokarts if you want something semi competative and it is faster than the prokart, the prokart is easier to maintain than the Tkm, you can rebuild the engines easily yourself and if your not worried about being too competative you can get them very cheep.
I suppose you need to look at what runs at your local track. If you just want to do track days, id go for the Tkm, you won't get bored of being overtaken all the time by faster karts, as it's almost the same speed as 2/ karts, but if you want to race then take a look at your local tracks to see what races there.