Long time between drinks....

Its been a while since I've posted on here....here is something I've created over the past fifteen odd months....MCK or otherwise known as MCKINNON COMPETITION KART.
Karting to me is the purest form of 4-wheel racing. I started racing karts just on 35 years ago and have never not owned a kart in that time. A few years ago, whilst coping with the financial constraints of  a young family, mortgage and being the soul bread winner, the reality set in that racing cars was beyond my financial reach....so I got serious about karting once again.
My son, who just turned 9, has been racing for just on two years and loves it just as much as I do. My 6yo daughter comes away racing with us and is quite handy on the spanners, she isn't old enough to race but has been doing a lot of practice and absolutely loves it too.

I need to clean things up in here a little and edit the address etc as I've moved shop since I've been on here last...you could say I've been busy.

mckinnon.racing

https://mckinnon.racing/

New South Wales Time Attack 2015

This was our first event for 2015, after losing our motor at World Time Attack last year, we had to wait for the new engine hardware to make its way from the U.S. to get back on track. The new motor is 600cc smaller, being a 2.5L. The power comes in a very different way to the old motor. Saturday we went out with some old medium compound tyres and low boost just to get a feel for things and try a few adjustments with sway bars and brake bias. The second session it was getting hard to get gears, the clutch wasn't fully disengaging. Its a huge job to get to the clutch on this car, we decided to call it a day and go home sitting in third. On the way home a mate of mine called I explained the situation, he said he'd be happy to give me a hand to get it sorted. We met at the shop at 6pm, starting at the back, we pulled the rear end out, the gearbox, torque tube and bell housing. we found a cracked finger on the clutch fork to be the problem. I straightened it up and tig welded it up. A few slices of pizza and we put it all back together and back on the trailer. With five hours sleep, it was time to get up and do the three hour mission back to the track. With very limited testing we were pretty happy to take out NSW Time Attack 2015. It was close, we only did it by 0.07 of a second. Massive thanks to Llewellyn "Bluey" Cameron for his help doing the clutch fork, without, there is no way we could have turned it around in time to get back to the track. I would also like to thank Tim Weir, Mark "Robbo" Robertson and Phil Armour for their continued support and Patrick Garvan for letting me behind the wheel.

66 Barracuda

One of the projects we have on the go at the moment is this 66 Plymouth Barracuda. We are currently fininshing up the fitment of the new engine and 4 speed box... watch this space

Porsche Headers

One of the jobs I did last week was knock up these 321 Stainless headers for a 3.0L 951 Porsche motor, using Burns Stainless collector and mandrel bends...I really wish 321 was easier to get in Australia, it's so much nicer to weld than any other grade.

Tube Flattener

Its been a while between posts, but I'm back. Here is a little tool I just made for offset flattening the end of tube. I'm restoring a couple of old go karts and need to make a couple of new bars, getting this affect was not proving easy....now I get the same finish every time.

Our first endurance kart race

Julie and I have known each other since 87, we both raced sprint karts, she was a very fast driver back then and STILL is. We entered our first TEKA Endurance round a couple of weeks ago and came away with second in class. We had better pace than where we finished, I had rib problems and we penalised for a driver rest time infringement. If you are thinking about getting into endurance karting, I highly recommend TEKA, they are a very friendly and helpful bunch of people, they made us feel like part of the family right off the bat. All in all we were are very happy with our first result and are very much looking forward to doing the full season in 2014.

Trailer

I have wanted to build a trailer for the shop for a while now. With the Porsche not far off it was time to get on with it. I didn't want to have to remove front splitters and side skirts to get it on and I couldn't afford one of those super heavy and expensive single axle trailers getting around, so I came up with my own design. Build a tilt trailer with long ramps and use a screw jack to operate it. The screw jack can push and pull and hold in any position. It takes less than ten minutes to load the Porsche on and have it strapped down...and you don't have to remove a single thing from the car.