Very rarely will you see these shifter karts on ovals. In fact, maybe never. But they really shine on road course kart tracks where they can use those gears and horsepower to accelerate and decelerate quickly in turns. A special thing about these is that they are one of the more demanding types of karting. You have to worry about cornering, and shifting at the same time, so this is usually the class for more professional type races, as well as Formula Car racers for practice in the offseason.

The chassis design of shifter karts are almost always a straight railed chassis that is designed that way so they can handle left and right hand turns. They have bodywork that consists of two side “pods” and a small low-profile front nose in most cases but as with most karting and even with shifter karts, people can set these up however they want and with whatever bodies they want depending on the rules of where they are racing. If the engine for the shifter is water cooled, it will have a radiator to the left of the kart’s seat to get as much air as possible to cool that water down and keep the kart engine cool. Usually the shifter is on the steering wheel on the right, kind of like a lever that you shift through. The clutch can be in certain areas, and some only use a clutch to go from stop to moving, but hardly at all throughout a race, using “powershifting”.

Sport Memorabilia is big business nowadays. There are millions of people who make their living buying and selling items such as baseball cards, game-worn jerseys, bats, hockey sticks, autographed baseballs, hats, and so on. There are both collectibles made by companies and then items used in the actual event called Game-Used Memorabilia. If it has to do with sports, someone is probably collecting it and trying to make money off of it. Some people do this on the internet by setting up their own web page, posting items for bidding on eBay, or posting advertisements on sites such as Craigslist in the hopes of shipping their memorabilia to customers all over the world. Some have simply opened up store front shops where customers can walk in, look at, and bid on or outright purchase some sport memorabilia.

The sport memorabilia industry as a whole is a debated one. It has lead to many hateful and corrupted collectors who have lost the spirit of sportsmanship and what collecting is really about. Many professional collectors will use children at games to try and sucker the players into signing as many bats or balls as possible, the old sympathy card method. It is pathetic, but a player now knows if a 45 year old man wants three bats and two balls signed, he is probably trying to make money and that is not what it is all about. People will wait as long as hours after games to get a glance at a player and maybe an autograph just to turn around the next day and flip it on the open market to make a quick buck.

The MLB is trying to authenticate things like a game worn jersey and other items as to stop all the fakes that are being produced. The same is true for autographs, many are fake, and regulating them is tough but they are currently finding new ways to make autographs official. It is business practices like this that has made it hard for kids to collect like they used to and just for the enjoyment of the sport. Now it has become corrupted, as most things, by the pursuit of money.