Anyone own a go kart track?

I'm just gonna put this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjRp55SUP0c#t=31

In reply to CGLockRacer:

Oh holy hell that looks fun.

Make sure you have some decent food and maybe a track only specialty item.
Even if you start by cooking your own hopped up burgers on a Webber Grill, have a good food option for those that attend.
And you guys are nuts.

Good food is a must. I wouldn't say we are any more nuts than a lot of other small business wannabes. There is risk but I also feel with hard work and good decisions that we will have no problems making it.

Found a "nice" 45k sq ft industrial building a couple of miles from Campus for rent. Trying to get some information about it. Seems possible so far. Rent is cheap and location is great. The building could look better. It has 6" reinforced concrete floors, insulated metal walls, steel columns spaced 25' x 40', and ceiling heights to 24'. Seems possible with some spit polish to make it a solid location.

Looked at a building today. Looks like it could be a winner. What I need now is some contacts at current locations for get load averages for week days. Basically, I need to know if I can run 50 karts an hour, can I expect 15 of those to actually be used (30%) on a Wednesday or what? The business counselor I spoke with today said the best way to get that information is from operational tracks.

Contact Pole Position in South StL County. They may be able to hook you up with some info. They are close enough you could check their operations out. They bring in the dirt track guys on rainy days and spend a lot of time advertising at the events.

The times I've been there have been slow, but they bring in the money. Tournaments and all. With good connections and possibly investors (if needed) you could really have something going. Especially with a younger crowd around.

I just saw this thread now. I could talk for days about owning a kart track and 12 months ago I would have tried to talk you out of it but it seems we have turned a corner (after 10 years in business) and things are looking up. Here are some observations: 1.Every city has a driving culture-if the driving culture of your city is to ignore the rules or if you have a large immigrant population from a country that has a poor driving culture, you will be wrestling with bad drivers constantly. Prepare for that. 2.The track needs to be minimum 30,000 sq.ft 3.Serve food 4.Your reputation is going to be built in the first 6 months-make sure you have the track, karts, staff and waiting area sorted out 5.Have a corporate program (meeting room,group rates, LeMans races) 6.Electric karts can be as fast as gas but they lose charge quickly so going electric means you need 4 times as many karts because for every 1 kart on track, 3 need to be on chargers. Gas karts tend to handle better and are faster but have much higher maintenance plus the emissions. A lot of air movement and running an alcohol mix in gas karts will make the air quality just fine for 99% of the people who will race there. 7.Get a timing system like the Club Speed software-it tracks drivers, awards points, e-mails results, allows you to send drivers newsletters and really help with building a business. And it allows you to put warnings or demerits on a bad drivers account 8.Reward good customers, punish bad customers 9.Maintain the karts well-ensure that they all get similar lap times 10.Top speed IS NOT everything-hard accelerating karts on a twisty but slower track with good passing zones are every bit as fun as tracks with bigger turns and higher speeds. Physics don't lie, the higher the speeds, the harder the impact in an accident. A crash at 30 mph is 4 times as bad as one at 15 mph.

The property we are looking at is right at 40K sq ft and split into a 25k room and a 15k room. On the 30 sq ft track, is that JUST the track? 90% of the 25K will be track. Due to supports, it will likely be a technical track with one good straight away on the back side. We are planning on charging karts at least twice as much as they are moving. Food and other entertainment options (arcade, kiddie track) are in the works. I am already pricing timing software with mobile apps and live updates. This is an area I do not plan to skimp on. Chances are a conference room is going to be difficult. There is office space next door but I am not sure that is viable to bring into the fold. I do plan on making a decent sized party room that could double for smaller corporate events.

What about running E85? That is readily available around here. I still think that electric is the future but that is an outsiders perspective.

I'm not involved in owning or operating a track in any way, however, I do work with our marketing department a lot for a lot of the events that we do for customers for the products that I sell. We're a B2B technology reseller and do a lot of golf events, suites at sport-ball games, and stuff like that. One of the things that we've starting doing to great success recently is renting the conference room at one of the local kart tracks, bringing in customers and some Jimmy Johns or Potbelly lunch, giving a presentation for 45-60 minutes while folks eat, and then let everybody loose for some racing. I don't know the exact cost for that, but it's considered to be "cheap" to do and is somewhere in the 2-3k range. Since it's during business hours, we're not really displacing many (if any) walk-in customers, and it's gotta be pretty lucrative for the track.

It's something that makes it easy for us to get customers to attend since it's something different and anecdotes indicate that it's good advertising for the track -- People get a "freebie" but the track owner still gets paid.

Just a data point for you...

Just following...

singleslammer wrote: The property we are looking at is right at 40K sq ft and split into a 25k room and a 15k room. On the 30 sq ft track, is that JUST the track? 90% of the 25K will be track. Due to supports, it will likely be a technical track with one good straight away on the back side. We are planning on charging karts at least twice as much as they are moving. Food and other entertainment options (arcade, kiddie track) are in the works. I am already pricing timing software with mobile apps and live updates. This is an area I do not plan to skimp on. Chances are a conference room is going to be difficult. There is office space next door but I am not sure that is viable to bring into the fold. I do plan on making a decent sized party room that could double for smaller corporate events. What about running E85? That is readily available around here. I still think that electric is the future but that is an outsiders perspective.

We have 26,000 sq.ft of track and I have always thought it was too small because inevitably you are limited in track designs. Make no mistake, track design is critical to accident rate, brake wear, tire wear and fuel economy. I guess the fact that we have done it with 26,000 sq.ft means you probably can with 25,000 sq.ft. I have attached a map of our current track and it's a very good one. The poles are 30ft apart in one direction and 25ft apart in the other. We mix our own fuel by getting local pump gas that is 10% ethanol then we mix another 15% of methanol. The Honda engines can handle it no problem but you have to have compatible fuel line. [URL=http://smg.photobucket.com/user/loosecannon/media/newtrack_zps6b325723.jpg.html][/URL]

Thanks loosecannon. That is really helpful. We can probably put pit Lane in the smaller half of the building. This just depends what sort of modifications the building's owner allows.

Loosecannon, do you have a conference room? I am sure that I can rent the office next door for very little money. Need to get in there and check it out.

We have a small conference room that seats about 20. Get a good surveillance system with cameras covering all parts of the track, it will cut down on the lawsuits because video doesn't lie, people do.

I'm sure you will do this, but I didn't see anyone mention it specifically. Use racing karts like the SCCA autocross racing karts or other racing organizations. I like electric karts more because it's more eco friendly than gas karts, plus you do have health concerns with emissions indoors (with gas karts). There are ventilation systems that can pull the emissions out of the building, but that may be too costly when you start up your business, not to mention if they would be effective depending on the size of your building, etc. I would also suggest to market and name the track as racing karts, NOT go karts. I have driven go karts on an outdoor track when I was younger, and it was fun, but there wasn't a big thrill like racing karts would provide. For the waiting area, you can have a number system like the DMV has and have a seating area with magazines so customers are less worn out if people have to wait for 30+ minutes. You could also put arcade style video games if you have enough traffic.

Mr_Clutch42 wrote: I'm sure you will do this, but I didn't see anyone mention it specifically. Use racing karts like the SCCA autocross racing karts or other racing organizations. I like electric karts more because it's more eco friendly than gas karts, plus you do have health concerns with emissions indoors (with gas karts). There are ventilation systems that can pull the emissions out of the building, but that may be too costly when you start up your business, not to mention if they would be effective depending on the size of your building, etc. I would also suggest to market and name the track as racing karts, NOT go karts. I have driven go karts on an outdoor track when I was younger, and it was fun, but there wasn't a big thrill like racing karts would provide. For the waiting area, you can have a number system like the DMV has and have a seating area with magazines so customers are less worn out if people have to wait for 30+ minutes. You could also put arcade style video games if you have enough traffic.

I also race karts with the SCCA and can tell you that that kind of kart chassis would never hold up on an indoor rental kart situation. Rental karts cover 1000 miles a month and one good thump from another kart would ruin them. A membership/timing system like Club Speed allows the track to put up a display that shows who is in the next race on one screen, results from the current race on another and a third display of top times for the day/week/month.

From starting and running my own small business (driving school) for a couple years, here is my advise:

If you deliver a good product (which you will - I believe most small businesses offer excellent products and if they fail the tend to fail elsewhere), then one customer will lead to more customers EXACTLY like the first.

Remember this when it is slow at first and your only customer is asking to break the rules ( in any way - not paying enough or offering 'deals/negotiating', horsing around, bringing spectators in not allowed areas, etc). Just be careful what you agree to, as it will be much harder to reign back in than to just say no in the first place.

Spent last night reviewing other tracks and their websites. Also watched a webinar on business plan development, snooze. Anyway, partner and I are working tonight on the "plan."

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Lots of good stuff in here.

I've often thought a go-kart track would be a lot of fun! but alas I've never gotten past the planning/dreaming stage. Keep up the updates I'm enjoying them!

I'm surprised any of the electric carts still use lead acid batteries. Lithium would allow fast charging, lower weight, longer life, etc...

It might be a cost/safety issue with the Lithium batteries. Does anyone have any information on lithium batteries in this type of environment? Lots of charging and discharging very quickly. We have talked about hotrodding a few karts with bigger motors, higher amp controllers, and 72V+ batteries. I don't know how to really approach that though as I have never played with electric vehicles or lithium (lipo or other versions) before.

Well if you are up for a homebrew setup a Chevy Volt pack splits nicely into I think 98 volt modules. They are water heated or cooled. Overall a nice setup.

Diyelectriccar.com is a good place to ask about specifics.