ABOUT THE SHOCKWAVE KARTING SYSTEM

 by Doug Welch

The entire line of Shockwave components is designed as a system.  The goal of the System is to allow the tuner to make predictable incremental changes to a racing kart's handling.  From full stiff to full soft, each component compliments the other, making the Shockwave System a very versatile tool.

The core of the system is the axle.  40mm axles are available in six stiffness grades:  hard, medium, soft, very soft, ultra soft, and ridiculously soft.  50mm axles are available in three grades (hard, medium, and soft) and 30mm axles are available in two grades (medium and soft).  These axles are made from the finest seamless tubing for better wall thickness consistency and axial flex characteristics.  They are then ground to size using a centerless grinder.  The result is an axle that is straighter and rounder than any other commercially available axle.

Our hubs are machined from billet 6061-T6 aircraft quality aluminum.  The hubs are designed to control axle flex in the portion of the axle between the bearing and the wheel.  We take great care to machine the wheel mounting face true with the bore of the hub.  We also chamfer the stud-mounting hole so that once the wheel stud is installed; there is no distortion of the wheel-mounting surface.

Our wheels are cast from the finest aircraft aluminum and then heat-treated for hardness and durability.  Using expensive permanent molding techniques, each wheel is cast with the latest computer controlled methods.  Permanent mold casting is the best method for eliminating internal voids due to shrinkage that are commonly found in cheap die cast wheels.  Sand cast wheels suffer from both internal voids and core shift during the molding process that makes balance and quality of the wheel difficult to maintain.  The permanent mold process avoids all of these problems and it is the one we use here at Shockwave.

After examining each wheel for casting imperfections, we use an expensive three-step process for machining our wheels.  Most machined wheels are manufactured in a two-step process.  While they may look like ours, they will not run are true as a Shockwave wheel nor will they produce as consistent results.

This is our guarantee to you: using our wheel, hub, and axle combination together, the wheels will run true within .005 of an inch.  Most wheel, hub and axle combinations will not run true within .010, and many are much worse than that.

The entire line of Shockwave components is designed to be interchangeable with current components.  While it is not necessary to purchase the entire system to receive benefits, in order to receive the full benefits of the quality built into every wheel, hub and axle, the tuner should use the Shockwave Karting components together as a system.