rearenginekarts.com

does anybody have a pic of an early parilla kart
thanks k-mo

Hi Kyle-
To my knowledge Parilla only built kart motors. The earliest Parilla kart motor was the V-11, a rotary valved fan cooled motor that early Italian chassis builders like Birel and Tecno used on their early rear engine karts. Pretty soon someone figured out that the fan cooling zapped HP, so the fan and shrouds were removed and the engine was placed out in the slipstream (viola the first air cooled kart motor and the driving force in the development of sidewinder chassis'). I believe one of the first, if not the first, kart specific rotary valve air cooled motors was the Parilla BA-13. The first sidewinder chassis was the Tecno Kaimano, a truly revolutionary design that forever changed karting. Bear in mind that the first Kaimano chassis came out in '63 or '64(?) and won (more like dominated...All top 12 positions) the next 3 world championships. If you are interested, there is a brochure of the early rear-engine Tecno kart posted on the Archives site.

Just a heads up, but this forum deals exclusively with rear engine American motors and the natives can get a bit restless discussing them darn furrin motors although a majority of members probably own one or two. Don't get upset if someone steps in a says to knock it off.

Dan

I believe the English had sidewinders from the start. They ran air cooled bike motors & hung them out in the air for cooling. I know some of my 1960 mags have pictures of them.

Yep the English had all sorts of crazy motor set ups. BSA Bantam, the Spanish Bultaco & Montessa, the English Villiers, the German Engray etc. I believe they were the first ones to run shifter karts using motorcycle based engines (what they call Class IV in the UK. Pretty cool karts as they have gas, brake AND clutch pedals). That said, I still believe that the Parilla BA-13 was the first mass produced kart specific rotary valved air-cooled motor although the American Standun XM series may have actually been the first kart specific air cooled motor (piston ported?).

It is interesting to see the parallel development of chassis' and motors here in the states and overseas. You can see the divergence simply based on the engines available at the time.