School me on Transponders

There are basically 3 options, I think. The main 2 are the AMB wired and wireless ones. Advantage of the wired one is that you never have to charge it, but if you have more than 1 car, that's kind of a pain. The wireless one requires a charge before the race (1 charge is usually good for about 4-5 days on mine) but you have to remember to take it off the charger and zip-tie it to the car.

AMB has been pimping a lease model on their new ones too. That's kind of the third option.

I got mine (a wireless yellow one like Lemons rents) on eBay for $200 about 4 years ago from some kid who was basically dumping it after 2 or 3 kart races. That was a steal, but you can find steals like that on eBay if you troll for it.

I wish the Lemons store sold them, we could have bought 5-6 over the years with what we've paid in rental fees.

Course, we dont have to charge them, remember to bring them, etc.

The wired ones work fine if you wire them correctly. Common mistakes with hardwired transponders are, in order: bad ground connection, bad power connection, power connected to a circuit that isn't always hot when ignition is on, transponder activated by a dash switch that driver forgets.

Last weekend at NHMS, a team with a hardwired transponder had maddening intermittent loss-of-signal problems. Turned out they'd wired it into a circuit that was hot at all times with ignition on, except when the high-beam headlights were on. Since the team had a system that involved the driver flashing high-beams to indicate to the spotters that all was well, this caused problems. Wire the thing to a circuit coming out of the ignition switch, so that if the ignition system is hot, the transponder is on.

You can always ask Roland Hahn about specific transponders by emailing him. Lemons doesn't make anything on transponder rentals (in fact, they are a tremendous pain in the ass), so there's no incentive to steer you to a rental unit.

We borrowed one for a race, the wired style, and since the battery is already in the trunk, wired it directly to the battery, positive and ground. It worked fine, though we did discuss the " all power must be off when the kill switch is turned off " rule. The driver that brought it is an scca/nasa guy, and looked at us like we were talking about kicking babies when we started talking about running a wire to the kill switch and taking off his connector.

Good to know.

So... that would mean this auction with a buy it now for $43 is not only a good deal, but would actually work for Lemons?  Granted you need to get a FLEX subscription, but if you plan to run 3 races, then the cost of this auction + FLEX for 1 year is still a savings.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MYLAPS-FLEX-Kar … 3a9a27076d

Am I following what you said correctly?

That whole FLEX 1/2/5 year setup appears to be new or at least newer than the last time I looked at the MyLaps products.  Never seen or heard of it before.  It looks to me like you buy the thing and then via a computer register/renew it.  It probably has an internal clock or something that activates it.  Whether it's worth it to pay the $150 rent/$100 ($43 plus $61 subscription) price per year, I suppose depends on how many Lemons races you are going to do.  I think I paid $150 to own mine outright.  I bet you anything that if you buy that $43 transponder, MyLaps will hit you with a 40 or 50 buck  "transfer" fee

Interestingly, just last week I responded to a survey request from MyLaps.  I normally don't respond to that sort of stuff but I felt compelled to let them know that I placed them juuust below strippers on the money-grubbing hierarchy.

If you're thinking about running in the other series also, they require the 260 model.

We bought our 3 years ago.  A little banged up and goes to 3 flashes.  This lasts for a little more than 3 days.  This is how we got it, and 3 years later works exactly the same.

The tranx260s normally go in the high $200s, low to mid $300s used.

i think it would be cool if all of the folks writing telemetry apps for smartphones would somehow implement a scoring feature, and also some companion software.  have it connect via wifi to some sort of base station at the start/finish, so folks could use an old phone as the transponder

We bought the amb-x260-dp for $200 even from a go cart guy. In our car I put in a littitle 6 place fused distribution panel that comes straight off the kill switch and  put things like the camera, transponder, and our gauges to come on when the switch was hot. It's essentially wire directly  to the battery through the switch. Nothing else on its circuit. Mounted it on a metal support with lock washers and lock nuts. Ran the wires so we can fix anything that breaks on the car without having to mess with the transponder. Has not failed in 3 yrs. It's got 3 0r 4 different colors over spray on it. All I do is make sure the green light comes on before day 1.

Here's some more info on the subscription stuff for those listed on eBay

https://www.mylaps.com/en/products/kart … ptions/612