rearenginekarts.com

With all the different manufactures during the early years has anyone compiled pictures and descriptions of these karts. It would make a valueable tool in the purchase and restoration of these gems. I for one would purchase a book or help in the production of one. Your thoughts?

Hey Jim-

Not sure there are enough vintage karters out there to make publishing a book viable, not to mention someone to undertake the hours of research and writing the thing.

Generally copies of the '61 Dick Day book and the various Trend publication books from the '59-61 period turn up pretty regularly for not too much money. Magazines like Karting World, Kart, Rod and Custom through the early 60's and Hot Rod in '60 and '61 cover the early gaps. The Tex Smith book covers the late 60's period pretty well and Karting World was still around after the other kart-specific mags went under to fill in the '62-'66 period. 1968 and 69 saw the brief appearance of, but wonderfully written Modern Karting magazine. 1967 seems to be the only year of the vintage era that isn't well-represented in print. All that stuff is out there if you dig and are patient.

Short of that, there have been a lot of "what kind of kart do I have" posts over the years on the various boards, with typically a lot of good responses and information. In this day and age, it easy to just copy the pics and info for your own PC files and over time you'll end up with a pretty good library of info.

Best of luck-
Dean

Or collect your own library of vintage kart magazines........it's fun and another aspect of the sport.

... reminder: you will find most of the vintage books published that are good for reference, on this page:

http://rearenginekarts.com/karting%20books.htm

Also, as mentioned, magazines are excellent also for reference info, you will find many of these mags and books on ebay, try these links to get right to these items:

http://rearenginekarts.com/mags%20books%20guides.htm

http://www.vintagepowersport.com/vka/ht ... books.html (the search tool I put on the VKA site is a newer version, and finds more of the good stuff)


IMO, the books below are the "must have" books for every vintage karter.

"The Complete Book of Karting" -by Dick Day, 1961
"Karting" - by Leroi 'Tex' Smith, 1971
"Karting Handbook" - by Bob Pendergast 1961

Jeff

Hi Jim,
James Bruni was compliling information for a book covering the history of vintage karts. He is the source of the information
on the history of Blackhawk Karts I used to write an article in the VKA news letter. I know he interviewed Marshall about the history of Blackhawk karts and got rare archive photos to use in his book. He did the same with the other makers of
karts from the past. I first of heard of him through Scott Wigginton and Scott passed my info on to him regarding my
Poison Arrow.
Mark