Road Race Karts
More Road racing photos from Surfers Paradise
Some of the karts used for Road Racing.
Many of them home built specials or heavily modified sprint karts
BOB BARNES 250 YAMAHA MALLALA 1970
LAY DOWN 250 YAMAHA 1969 CALDER
JOHN DELFABBRO 250 YAMAHA BOB WILLIAMS SPECIAL
BRIAN HOWARD 250 YAMAHA 1971
Bob Morris 250cc Yamaha
Bob Morris 250cc Yamaha
Alf Costa's 200 Super in WA
West Australian Laydown Kart
Another Laydown from WA
Dragon Laydown
"Yellow Submarine"
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Beautiful Manx engined laydown from Tassie owned and built by David Gray in Hobart. Front is a 70/80’s Bug and back end is custom.
Peter Ward
Peter Ward's laydown with external drive
Peter Ward's laydown
Road racing at Surfers Paradise
Mike Smith has sent photos and info of some of his road race karts "This is the ANS Hellcat that the ANS guys and myself took to NZ for the 1975 NZ Grand prix that was won by Arch Hill . We ran this in the support races with all kinds of non gearbox karts mainly Mac 100 cc and it was extremely competitive , no front brakes ,but long distance fuel tank. We also ran this at the Australian Road race Championships at Surfers Paradise circuit in 1976 . It was driven at that meeting by Norm Hellings from Adelaide . Basically the engine performance suffered by only having the 5 speed gearbox fitted and if we could have obtained the 6 speed factory option I believe it would have been a real winner . We did not have a lot of spare time to fully develop this unit at the time .The front fairing is the full fairing that ANS supplied at the time."
"This pic show the Zip Silverstone With the first attempt to show some front fairing designed to give a little more cover at the front . You will notice that the bottom of this fairing is not attached with a bottom section as per the normal fairing made by ANS at the time . A small windscreen was added to this fairing for looks , but surprising it also worked very well with wind deflection . This was also our first attempt with rear aero foil and whilst it was mounted very low the effect was extremely good ,so much so that we kept this basic design for this kart for its racing life. "
"This is the new Zip that was purchased to replace the original Silverstone destroyed at the 1976 Australian Grand Prix at Surfers. The front fairing is the original one supplied by ZIP and we made a dramatic change to the design and fitting of the rear aero foil incorporating the rear mounted radiator assembly , not sure if this design really worked . The Zip suffered badly from poor braking performance having been supplied with the ZIP designed and manufactured callipers and master cylinders . I have read on the forum about the problems of making this system work correctly and to be honest we lost two major events due to the loss of full brakes . From memory I think we fitted the ANS calliper and master cylinder system after a short time .The first meeting for this unit was an enduro of about two hours .We fitted the two supplied fuel tanks to the unit , but suffered from fuel starvation about 30 minutes into the event . We also modified the power plant considerably at this time using a C model Barrel and head reversed on the crank case so the carbies were facing forward and exhaust exciting at the rear , a real benefit to allow for easier exhaust pipes and mufflers fitting . The very large 38 MM Mikuni carbies were also fitted at this time giving a lot more performance "
"This is the third version on the old ZIP Silverstone and was the configuration that we took to NZ in 1976 except in a black colour scheme. The design and water cooled power plant really put the Kiwis in a spin and was the start of some outstanding home built units that only the Kiwis seem to be able to do The aero dynamics of this design was extremely good and produced good front down force . the rear aero foil was unchanged except for the fitting of side winglets which were not stable enough at the time due to excessive flexing at hi speed. This unit was destroyed at the 1976 Australian Road race championships . Unfortunately no known pictures of the damaged unit seem to be available"
"This is the last super kart that I drove and owned taken at my last drive ever at McNamara Park Mt Gambier. Running a Honda Elsinore a far cry from the 250 TZ . Eric Macaulay at this time decided that he had spent too much money on supporting the sport deciding to concentrate on his die casting business. To my knowledge the new Zip was sold off to Bruce Benson of HKS and run once or twice before disappearing . It must be in a shed some where just rusting away . What a find that would be . I concentrated on family matters and all the sports that go with it . This unit was produced by ANS from their Adelaide workshops and featured the new front fairing made by them . This fairing was very attractive and worked very well and plans were well advanced to modify further to give full cover to the front wheels as the front on the original ZIP . to my knowledge this did not proceed past the drawing board , but Arch Hill would be probably be able to answer this question."
Arch Hill has provided some photos of the ANS road race karts from the mid 70s
The ANS Hellcat was was probably Australia's top road race kart. A few members would love to find one somewhere!
