jjw makes several good points. First you need to educate yourself as to what you are getting in to. Karting can be either recreational, recreational/competitive or full blown competition in ALL classes. All of the local tracks (IMI and Bandi) support all three types of racers. The CSC does a real good job for the 2nd and 3rd categories while still allowing the recreational racer an avenue to put their karts on the track and log laps, but don’t be afraid to pull off the track or get completely out of the way when the faster karts are about to lap you – some people found this out the hard way last year at Steamboat and affected the race outcome when they shouldn’t have – this is not to be a slam towards the driver but rather help for less experienced racers.
Angie does an OUTSTANDING job with The Colorado Karter (pickup all past issues if you can) and this forum. With that said, I do recommend ekartingnews.com for national news and a broader scope of kart racing. There are debates on their daily on the very issue that you brought up. The $ that Rich spoke about is closer to reality. I spent close to $35,000 last year getting 3 karts ready to race including spare motors, tires, hubs, seats, mychron, trailer, tires, entry fees, subscriptions, travel, hotel, fuel, more spare parts, repairs, mechanic, kart stands, tools, jets, front drivers, rear drivers, throttle cables….the list goes on. The more you break, the more you pay and don’t count on not breaking – everybody does…it’s racing.
If I was going to do it all over again I would buy a used chassis – no more than 2 years old and have the chassis scaled prior to buying it. I would buy a NEW motor (rotax in your case) but not necessarily locally and have a spare used motor just in case I needed it. I recommend a couple of websites to purchase new rotax motors. First and foremost is speedquestkarting.com – Nick Weil out of Florida did an awesome job for me last year when I needed spare parts, knows a ton about the motors and will shoot straight. I also recommend Andy Seesman at FullThrottleKarting.com – Andy is probably the foremost expert when it comes to rotax motors in the US. His company is being recognized nationally for their support to rotax and he will shoot straight.
In terms of chassis for the Denver area – go with DFM (supported by Bandimere), CRG (supported indirectly by shockwave karting), Birel (easy to find parts for, I believe the Baily’s are supporting in Denver and nationally one of the largest market share karts in the us) and finally GP (I don’t know about local support anymore, but you will see plenty of them at the track). Outside of those chassis I wouldn’t recommend, but I’m sure that others will have opinions.
Motors – buy rotax and be done with it. They DO NOT have to be sealed to run TAG, common misnomer.