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  1. 22 points
    Guys, we had a Board meeting last night and discussed this at length. Conclusions and changes: 1) We've only had three cars climb others in the history of the club. 2) This is being addressed now because more and more, we are seeing larger tires and rims stuffed under cars and are sticking out more than ever. We are trying to address that before it becomes an issue. 3) The video and interpretation should not have been posted because it had not been discussed yet by the Board. We are going to use the last five races of 2018 to try different things, see how this goes in tech, and potentially alter how the rule is interpreted. Using a 10 and 2 measurement, we might catch a lot of cars out that really don't pose a problem, including in some case stock wheel/tire setups on certain cars. that is not the goal. To help, we have moved the measurement points to 11 and 1 and let's see what this turns into. It is not set in stone and we can change how we implement and test this.
  2. 13 points
    TAC also agreed that the 944 S2 should be a platform swap. I believe the Porsche 944 and the BMW e30 should be playing in the same sandbox and be platformed swapped.
  3. 12 points
    *Secret footage of Mike after the profits from Indy*
  4. 10 points
    Be Excellent to Each OtherAnd finally, one last lesson from our old friends William “Bill” S. Preston Esq. and Theodore “Ted” Logan: Just be nice to each other. Remember, most us play with cars to escape from the day-to-day grind, so don’t forget that this is supposed to be fun.
  5. 10 points
    Members elect Board Members and the CEO to run the organization. The Board is making decisions with the information from the By Laws. The By Laws can be found on the website under the Board of Directors tab to see how the organization is ran. We listen to our members. I think Jerry and I do a pretty good job at being transparent as well. We made changes last night based on feedback from members.
  6. 10 points
    It's a rule. It's safety. Shut your mouths and fix your damn cars. Geez. You guys really suck to be associated with sometimes. He'll, my tires stick out now and I'm goin to 2 inch wider wheels.... Suck it up grandma.
  7. 10 points
    As the guy that serviced and re-certified all of Lifeline's systems/bottles in North America for about a decade, every bottle that came in for re-cert was completely disassembled, cleaned, refilled and re-pressurized before getting a specially punched re-cert label. Now, I didn't get into the gaseous FE36/Novec/Halon/etc systems (too expensive to upfit so we dropped the line), but AFFF does start to break down after about 24mo. When you dump a system that is really old (like 3-4+ years), AFFF kind of "coagulates" into a waxy substance. Some of this could get past the dip tube and clog lines/nozzles which is why it has to be changed out. Lifeline' "lifes" all of their bottles at 10years. I don't know if that is due to FIA regulations or not, but I fielded some pretty colorful calls when telling customers that their 11 year old bottle is trash (even if it looked practically new). We've been running a 2.25L lifeline club system since day one. Its now lifed out and we'll be replacing it with a 4.0L mech Lifeline system (same as mentioned above) before our next race. Personally, I would only use Lifeline (or their branded products) or SpA. Lifeline puts a little extra into their brackets and hardware so I prefer them. That's my "semi-biased" opinion. I would also only use AFFF at our level. I'm not a big fan of the gas based systems for a few different reasons (no re-ignition layer/protection, driver has to be cognizant of inhalation, and much more expensive). Side note, if you have a Lifeline system that needs service quickly, you can express ship the bottle to the service facility if you depressurize/empty it. AFFF is biodegradable/environmentally friendly so you can expel the mechanical systems by simply pulling the handle (out of the car, of course). Electrical systems can be depressurized as well, but its a bit more involved (I can explain via pm if anyone needs that info).
  8. 9 points
    -VOTE FOR JER- I can't say enough about how much I appreciate having a guy who will go beyond his duties on the board to cut through the sea of excuses to find out the answers to the questions we care about. -VOTE FOR JER-
  9. 9 points
    I will take up getting the rest of the info out tomorrow. Can't guarantee anything this close to Thanksgiving. But I will see why we can't get things posted up.
  10. 8 points
    Please continue, your willingness and transparency are why I voted for you!
  11. 8 points
    What if I told you.... Getting your tires sheilded with the fenders is actually a performance improvement....
  12. 7 points
    Having owned both an E30 and a a few 944s, and understanding them both pretty well, I have a hard time seeing how the rules wouldn't be applied the same to both.
  13. 7 points
    So, ChampCar isn’t giving the 944 special treatment, they are just saying that the 944 and 944s2 are different generations/platforms/whateverthewordingis, and so 4.5.6 doesn’t apply, because the base 944 is the highest 944. The specific engine choice is irrelevant because it’s just a regular swap. If we could get more clarity on what defines a generation/platform/whateverthewordingis, that would be beneficial.
  14. 7 points
    And there is your proof it's a good rule.
  15. 7 points
    That's why I was in the minority on being against this rule, simply because we are solving a problem we don't have. Tire size limits most cars to where they are presently. For the cars that actually have wider tires available physics for the most part takes care of not getting any wider simply due to diminishing returns. As far as cost, my cost for a weekend went down this year when I went up a size and two aspect ratios wider in spite of them being more expensive because I can now make an entire weekend or more on one set of tires. I realize I picked my car, so save your bandwidth replying that. And I am not complaining, I had my say, I was in the minority and we went another direction which I will now support and make my car legal (or course). Plus, there were some good points made as far as supporting this new rule, although I didn't agree I get the reasoning. That's they way life works, you don't always get your way so you move on when you don't.
  16. 7 points
    Absolutely not!!! Anything that puts me at risk of having to drive the same car as @Wyatt is unacceptable. I am still recovering from the last time that happened.
  17. 7 points
    Not sure if you are serious and *obtuse* or trolling? You have to be trolling. In case you aren't: Tech doesn't inspect for safety to my standards. Mine are much higher than the minimum required by tech. Tech does also not inspect for build quality, maintenance, etc. If I am spending my hard earned money to race, im going to race. I will not show up hoping to drive. I do not enjoy working on cars in the parking lot of a race track with race noises in the background. If I come to a race and never even unlock the toolbox, I did my job as a builder well. That is the goal. Also, I don't do arrive-and-drive. I just don't do it. I only put drivers in my car who are known and superior in quality, take care of equipment, can afford to fix things if they go wrong, will do the right thing if things go wrong without me having to chase them down, and get along with the team. You knew all that already though.
  18. 7 points
    Step 1 - ultra cheap is to use a pit board Step 2 - see other teams heckling their driver's lap times on the radio telling him/her that the next place is catching them Step 3 - talk to Sampson as above My team, this actually happened: Driver: The car is not running right, it is like it is running out of gas Pit: Is it doing it all the time or just in corners? Driver: Just after left handers, I don't know what is wrong but it seems like it is running out of gas Pit: Keep trouble shooting, is it an RPM problem? Driver: No it is any RPM, it is just like it is running out of gas Pit: Does it happen in slow tight corners or long fast ones? Driver: Every left hander, it is just like it is running out of gas Pit: Is the fuel pump switch on? Driver: ...silence for the next two hours
  19. 7 points
    Maybe it's not unintended. Black helicopters are everywhere.
  20. 7 points
    While you may not be able to do that, at least your purse matches your shoes. S.
  21. 7 points
  22. 7 points
    Short answer: not necessarily… Answer to original post: the system that you propose would never work in ChampCar racing. The way it generates negative pressure is from the siphon effect of the high speed exhaust gasses passing over the tip of the tube inserted in the open collector. If you put the valve into the collector but before the muffler required in Champ racing the back pressure of the muffler would kill the effect and you would just have pressure pushing against the check valve and over time it would probably burn up the valve and then you would be pumping exhaust back into your crankcase… ChampCar rules require that the exhaust exit behind the main roll bar hoop so if you wanted to put the check valve close to the exit where it may be possible to get the siphon effect it would require about 15 feet of hose to get from the engine to the end of the exhaust to the crankcase. Very long answer only for real engine geeks… I have a copy of Bill Jenkins book from back in the 70’s. He may or may not have been the first person to run this system of putting the siphon tube in the collectors but I am pretty sure he was the first person to write about and what it did. He explained that the hoses and check valves were only half of the system, the real key to why it made more power is that it allowed you to back cut the piston rings which then had less tension and created less friction which equals more power. Another benefit of reduced crankcase pressure is that it reduces the pumping losses as air moves around underneath pistons that are moving up and down. Once this effect was known it became a holy grail to reduce crankcase pressure in racing engines. One of the first things you saw were the use of air pumps, they were just Ford smog pumps that were used for air injection into the exhaust on early emission controlled cars. Racers discovered that they were equally good at pulling a vacuum on the crankcase and started using them, aftermarket companies started making their own versions of these pumps and you still see them today. Scavenge sections of dry sump oil pumps of the day were either gear pumps or maybe gerotor, in addition to keeping the oil out of the sump they were able to pull a slight vacuum on the pan so that was good. One of the next steps was to start building huge oil pans, it got so far out of hand that they had to write rules limiting oil pan size. By building huge oil pans and kicking them far out on the passenger side of the block you could keep what oil was still in the pan further away from the crankshaft and allow more room for air to move back and forth between cylinders that had pistons going up and down. This was a good system that is well known and is still used in a lot of race engines today. Modern production engines have really large breather holes in the webs of the block for the same reason of airflow management beneath the pistons. Now something that is not so well known. I know about this stuff because I was involved in the engineering side of a company that ran in high level drag racing back in the 90’s. We started looking at how real racing engines like F1 or Indy were designed, and they didn’t have huge aluminum boxes bolted to the bottom of the engine. What we did was to design a whole new oil recovery system. We installed tubing between the cam bearings and closed off the oil drains in the valley of the block to completely isolate the bottom of the engine from the top. Then we wanted to create the smallest volume possible under the crankshaft and seal up each main web until it acted as if it were 4 V twins that were all sealed up independent. You could do that either with 4 mini oil pans or a one piece main bearing girdle like a real racing engine would have. Of course we still installed the giant pan like everyone else to cover up what was really happening… The next part of this system were very expensive oil pumps more than $15,000 back in the 90’s. They used a spur gear pressure pump which also set up the timing of the scavenge stages which were individual tiny roots blower pumps. One scavenge stage for each pair of cylinders, and a 5th stage to scavenge the valley, these roots blower scavenge pumps could create a tremendous vacuum in the crankcase and allow even lower ring tension and thus more power, and when fully developed it was worth a LOT of power. It got to the point where people were bragging about how low they were able to get their crankcase pressure as much as they were about their cylinder head flow numbers….. I haven’t been involved in that world for a long time but I would be surprised if they were not still running some version of this system. Here is a shot of some development work I was doing back in the late 90’s. Notice the little green parts between the main caps, there was a lot going on inside those to manage oilflow and airflow coming off of the crankshaft.
  23. 6 points
    So, how the he'll do I prep my car if I have no idea what the value is? I would argue that the the swap calculator is the same importance as everything else released... None of us know the value of ANY swapped car at the moment.
  24. 6 points
    I like it Let's get this to a level Racers can understand.............. She didn't get pregnant last time, think I'll save the trojans for another time.
  25. 6 points
    You think that requiring the bottle to be recertified every two years for ~$100 is onerous? There have been a few fires. A racer had 2nd and 3rd degree burns on over 25% of his body because the race car's fire suppression system "did not function". I just can't fathom why there are complaints about safety items the series is implementing to help increase safety. S.