Hello everyone - Dan from Turn1 ProSports here. I run the karting ProShop at BeaveRun. We’ve had some success participating in the RacePA forums and some of those guys suggested checking in with everyone here.
If you haven’t been out lately, our shop is open in what used to be the old classroom building. We have everything from Kid Karts for the 5 year olds to Shifters for the 5 year olds at heart. We do sales and service and also get people on track through Test Drives, Private Instruction and Group Events. Our shop has quickly grown to one of the three largest Birel/Monza dealers in North America and we have close to 50 karts in inventory now.
We’ve also taken over the rental kart program and have seriosuly upgraded the equipment - 6 brand new karts and so far 6 totally rehabbed karts from the bare frame up. We can host some pretty nice sized events and parties now without wondering if we have enough karts to last the day. LOL
Looking forward to digging around in the forums here and hopefully meeting up with some folks.
Hi Dan! Even the beaverun rental karts are a good bit faster than anything you can go ride at some family fun center. If you’ve never driven the karts up there I definitely recommend trying them out sometime.
Wow! Thanks for the welcome guys. Sure, we can do a PittSpeed kart event. How about a full race format - practice, qual, heat feature? We can do as many as thirty drivers in a three hour slot with that. Also get full timing and scoring, posted to MyLaps too, so bragging rights are well documented. Along with the shameful times too but it isn’t like anyone would ever ride someone in the forums for being slow… LOL
Do you guys do any other get togethers anywhere - car shows or races, etc?
Dan,
When did you guys take over the karting up there? I went for an event last year where we got to spend some time auto crossing at the VDA, do some karting, and go on the north track. It was probably last August or September. The karting was probably my favorite part. The only problem was that not all of the karts seemed to be equal. My kart was pretty quick but the other guys I was with couldn’t keep up, and I know for a fact that it wasn’t my driving ability cause I had a few spin-outs.
We took it over as of the beginning of this year and the inconsistency issue was the biggest thing on our list to work on.
We added six brand new karts/engines and tore the other eleven down to the bare frames. we’ve built up six so far with two more on the stands right now so we’ll have 14 available soon. We have them pretty consistent although on any given day one may have better tires than the next as the biggest variable. We’ve made some changes in configuration too - all harder rental tires on the rears (always the same size with matching wheels) and all race tires on the fronts (always the same size tires and wheels). The karts now respond to turn-in a lot better but the backs are still free enough that they do rotate rather than bind up and kill momentum as they did sometimes previously.
The set-up is working it seems - we had two guys running 41 second laps last Wednesday during the weekly Rental Kart Racing tournament. That is as fast of laps as I’ve ever seen these karts turn. We also have enough spares now that if a kart goes down, we just put the person right in to a waiting kart.
We’ve added a bunch of other ace karts too - we now have Kid Karts, Cadets, Yamahas, TAGs and Shifters available to rent. Good fun.
Awesome. I definitely have to make it back out there. I had ton of fun last time and once I was way out in front I started carrying more speed through the turns and was having fun sliding through each turn. I’ll have to try and get some guys from work to come out some afternoon.
