Steering rods and ends

Hi All,

Just a quick note to check your steering rods and ends as I had a decent off at SMP on the weekend when my right side failed.

I was lucky to have not hit the wall head on at Turn3 or more importantly not have taken any other innocent competitor out, as it was at a decent speed.

I feel it is important to let everyone know and hopefully it can minimise the issue ever happening again.

The steering rods on sprint karts have a inspection hole that is only 4mm from the end of the arm, 4-5mm worth of thread is minimal for strength, the requirement for Superkarting is that this hole is to be 8mm from the rods end and the whole is to be completely consumed by thread of the rod end itself. This insuring you have atleast 10mm of thread length inside the rod shaft itself.

I would recommend everyone check these on there kart and also ensure they are obviously tight, I've never had this happen before but I would say it could only be either 3 things that caused it looking at the pic.
Either the lock nut was not tight OR there simply was not enough thread in the rod itself OR the thread in rod and rod end were previously damaged.
The rod end still screws into the rod but you can see the first 3-4 threads do have some damage.

Anyways, just putting it out there as safety is a big thing for me and we should all be responsible for our own equipment for everyone's sake on track.