Step 2.

Heres the brand new spanking Subarus minus their top tanks. They`ll never be this shiny again and please remember, DO NOT run them as they dont have any oil in them!

Step 3

The first thing to do with your Subarus is fit your old Honda engine mounts to them. Both mine and Arrans old Honda mounts worked fine so remember not to let your engine mounts go when you sell you Hondas!

Step 4

When I put my Subarus on my chassis it was clear that I had to move my seat forwards slightly as the Subaru engines are wider than the Hondas. We also had this problem on Arrans 7-Kart and in both cases found we just had to move the seats forwards just 1 inch to accomodate the engines. This is quite straight forward but does mean taking your seat off and drilling new holes in it. This `fortunately` also has the effect of rebalancing your kart as both Subaru engines are 4 kgs heavier than the Hondas.

Step 5

When I first fitted my Subarus I fitted them with the centre tank system and Mikuni fuel pumps. A word of warning here as your existing fuel covers will not fit the Subarus exactly. The rear fixing bolt will not line up with the hole in the Subarus. This is not a problem with the heavy duty strong engine covers, however the thin type, like pictured above, if not modified to fit all three studs to the Subarus, will vibrtate too much and eventually crack into two peices and fall off!! Believe me as it DID happen! Its a good job Nick at Stretton didnt see me whizzing around the track with both engine covers gaffer taped together!

I also found that the Mikuni type fuel pumps are not suited very well to the Suabrus, as SRT/APS dont take the pump feed from the crank like the Hondas do, but rather taker it from the inlet of the carburettor which is much more weaker and hence isnt quite enough to fully feed your Mikuni pumps at full revs. I suffered fuel starvation at high revs so I got rid of the centre tank system and fitted the top tanks, so did Arran and we havent had any fuel supply issues. If you insist on using your existing centre tank system then get rid of your Mikuni type pumps and buy the type which SRT/APS use.

Step 6

Ok, so you now have your Subarus fitted to you kart. You now have to fit the correct size sprockets which are 64 for the 20t clutch. I recommend buying the cheap POWERDRIVE clutches off APS/SRT for £25 each as they are great value for mone and havent let me down so far. Also I found that on both mine and Arrans kart, you will need shorter chains as your existing ones will be too long for the smaller sprockets and I dont believe in splitting chains as I have had two chains snap on me since 1993 and both times they were linked chains. So buy the smallest chain size you can, I use the the CZ chains from SRT and bought the smallest size I could, 100 links.

Step 7

It took me around 7 hours on and off to convert my Wright R2, however, it only took myslef and Arran around 4 hours to convert his 7-Kart, which included fitting a new brake system and a new seat! I reccomend sticking no-more than 450ml of oil in your engines. I use Castrol GTX Magnatec in mine and I change my oil every 2 hours.

 

Racing the Subarus

When you first run your spanking new Subarus remember they will be tight so I reccomend you have them ticking over gently on you kart for 30mins or so first, then gently rev the engines every 15 mins or so. I believe the more care taken in running your engines in the better your engines will perform. I don`t believe its a coincidence that I spent many hours gently nursing my engines and slowly running them in before I raced them at Stretton and the fact that they are winning races this year!

Follow the above and I am sure you will have no problems fitting and racing your Subarus with your Pro-Kart chassis. If you want any help fitting them then I`m available to come down Stretton and help you!