You say your current engine that you bought from RPM 6 months ago was 5.4bhp on RPMs scales? If that was only 6 months ago, given that it is used for Cadet Racing, I wouldn't expect there to be much more than 10 hours use on the engine by now? Is that a silly assumption? I've heard on the grapevine that an engine will loosen and settle at around the 10 hour mark and would produce its best dyno reading at that point.
So with that in mind, why don't you take your engine to Richard and have him dyno it, and you can compare the readings.
We had a pair of engines that were E Specs, and not of a Selected Part nature. Richard worked his magic on them; when we dropped them off before working on them they read at 6.3bhp on his dyno, and once he'd finished with them they read 6.8bhp and that difference made us competative at our local circuit.
I competed in the British 24 hour this year in a kart that had Selected Parts engines, and the difference was noticable, but of course, to get that little bit extra power, the '£ per bhp' ratio flies up the more power you want!
What I am trying to say is: you need a level and fair comparison. So if you get dyno'ing your engine and the engine you're thinking of buying at uFo on the same day, with the same conditions you'll have a fair test that you can made a good sound judgement on. Then its simply a case of weighing up the costs and benefits. If the difference is 0.1bhp, then thats a serious amount of money for a little increase, but if its over 0.2/0.3bhp, and your son is challenging at the front of the pack, but is just missing out, maybe that could be the difference...
My experience is purely from Senior Prokarting but hopefully my insight as a driver having used a few different sets of engines could help, if only a little.
Would be interesting to know what course of action you take... keep us informed! :)
Rhauri
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