1. No. Removing the crossmember is not that hard and I would prefer NO NEW RULES, as much as possible. If someone has one now and wants to get an exception in order to race with us, allow an exception to that one person IF it is determined to be NO potential performance advantage.

2. Yes but why only allow 6" that barely fits the larger steel jacks. Why not allow 10" so there is room for error in jack placement and means that we never have to revisit this rule?

3. No. 924's can run with us now and this just creates more questions about competitive advantage between models.

4. No.

Big Dog's opinions

Big Dog wrote:


Since I made the suggestion I'll make a reply. Found the motivation to suggest the adjustment to the existing rule because I just started a build. When I looked at the resulting pad I realized that not only (as Big Dog ?Jim?) suggests there was no margin for error but the 'normal' 'industrial' jack is larger than the existing 4". Some/many/all of the light duty (cheap) jacks or the aluminum jacks folks carry around at the track are smaller and fit under the 4". A trip to Sears/NAPA/Local shop with a tape measure (as well as my own shop) seemed to indicate that IMHO 6" would do the trick. Larger jack pads mostly come on tools that wouldn't fit under a 944; more likely the tow vehicle!

6 inches was based on measurement and an intent to be reasonable and practical. 5" was almost. 5 1/2" fit. 6" appears to allow for some slight misalignment with reasonable care. I have pictures taken with cardboard facsimiles of the 4" and 6" plates on top of a 'typical' jack. A picture is worth a thousand words; but I don't know how to post them to the thread.

Thanks

JB3, thanks for the info.

What you provided makes the case for a larger jack pad. You said that 5.5" was the bare minimum and 6" requires reasonable care. Why not go larger so that there is more room for error. The whole point is to avoid damage to the fragile floor pan in this area and a larger jack pad does not add appreciable weight and improves this fix.

I guess my thinking is that we should have recognized this last year and that there is no reason to only allow something that barely works when it is not a performance issue. I don't feel strongly about this, but it would seem to be better rule making to fix it once and be able to forget it versus having to revisit it later because we see damage from less experienced helpers to the floor pan.

Big Dog
Jim Foxx

Jim it's the Goldilocks engineering principle: Not too small, not too big, JUUUSST right.

And inexperienced helpers Heavens to mergatroid. Never. I train and equip my helpers. My daughter was complaining that in stores the only size mechanics gloves were mens med and lrg. Found if you go online and you can buy mechanics gloves in ladies sizes and pink.