NO! NO! NO!
What in the world is this proposed rule all about. I have so many issues with this that it is hard to even figure out all that is wrong with it.
First of all, it appears that there are very few people, other than Chuck and Weston, that seem to have major concerns with this. Unfortunately, Chuck is the National Director so we have a rule proposal to deal with.
In 2009, my car was dyno'd 6 or 8 times (I also ran in GTS1 which is a dyno class (power to weight ratio) and I was accused of cheating by one of the other competitors so I was on the dyno after just about every session). The only change I made to my car, during that week, was to adjust the fuel/air setting on the computer due to altitude and I did during the test day so I made no changes from the start of competition. My car showed anywhere from 118 to 132 hp on various pulls on the same dyno at the same event. I was not the only car to have significant variations on that dyno. It tells me that dyno's are NOT consistent even at the same event. Remember that the SAE adjustments are calculations meant to "adjust" for altitude and weather variables. Who knows how accurate they are. Most people that know more than me do not believe that they are accurate to within a few hp. Everyone that I have talked to says that using the same brand of dyno at sea level and then going to Miller will NOT produce comparable readings of HP. The dyno guy at Buttonwillow even advised me against having him dyno my car prior to the 2009 Nationals for the mandatory GTS dyno sheet in favor of having it done at Miller because of the difference in the results that would be seen. He gave up money because he believed that it would be unfair to me to dyno my car on his dyno. If that is the case, dyno's can not be used for our cars and class because they are not consistent enough. Another example of the problem was at Buttonwillow a week ago. The "official" scales seemed to be weighing 20 to 25 pounds light. I have never been too light with my car but was found to be 9 pounds under weight after Saturday qualifying. I had not gone to the scales before qualifying to verify my weight because I have never had a problem. Others had similar, unexpected results. We all "adjusted" our weight to the "official" scales and had no more problems during the weekend but clearly the "official" scales were off. Adjusting to weight is easy enough but detuning a 944 because of a dyno is a much bigger problem and one that becomes expensive. It would mean paying for dyno time at the start of an event to make sure that the "official" dyno matched a benchmark dyno that a competitor may have had done prior to the event and then, if one is close, having to worry that the dyno might change over the course of the weekend. If one dyno's at an event and passes, do we "seal" the engine and call it legal for the weekend without repeated dyno testing?
The rule proposes 142 hp because of Dave Dirk's engine at Nationals on a dyno that has proven inconsistencies. Why is his motor now considered to be the "bench mark" for legal 944 engines? Making a rule as significant as this one without adequate data and research is a bad rule.
Who can say what a legal 944 engine can produce and why should any of us care anyway? Build a legal engine and go race it.
Engine builders tell me that one can take two identical engines and they will produce different hp with no discernible reason. Even Porsche found appreciable differences in their production engines. I have been told that 6 to 8 hp would not be unusual for identical, new engines in our 944's. Porsche would dyno a number of production engines and pick the best ones for their 944 production race cars.
The idea that someone should take a junk yard engine and put it into a race car and expect it to be competitive, hp wise, with a fresh engine is absurd. Joe Paluch rebuilt his engine and suddenly gained speed. An old engine is a tired engine and everyone knows it so what is the big deal. The notion that was advanced about "pro built engines" somehow being wrong just shows how ridiculous this issue has gotten. The issue is not who builds an engine but, rather, is the engine legal.
An earlier post commented about an engine at Thunderhill that showed 145 hp. I was not called out by name, to protect the innocent, I guess. That was my engine and it showed 147 or 148 after changing the fuel from race gas to pump gas (at the suggestion of the dyno guy) and adjusting the fuel/air setting on the computer. What was the brand of dyno? I don't know and didn't care. I dyno'd the car because of problems I was having. The motor was built by Steve Russakov and was, I was told, absolutely legal. Steve has been building 944 Spec engines for many years and has never had one found to be illegal. That result was on a different dyno and a different altitude than Miller, the only other place I had a dyno done until this year.
There has been discussion about an earlier rule change that outlawed chips and headers and that, somehow, saved the class. REALLY? What it did was fragment the class in So. Cal. to a point that we are just starting to see it rebuilt in car counts. The reality, as has now been revealed, is that the rule change was driven by one series director that had heard rumors. Joe has confirmed that NO evidence exists to demonstrate that, if fact, there was a problem with performance and yet parts that had been legal for years were made illegal overnight based on rumor not fact. I believe that is what is being proposed here, again. We should not risk fragmenting the 944-Spec class because someone "thinks" there is a problem but has NO PROOF of a problem and a few guys, in positions of influence, don't like to lose to those they consider to be inferior drivers who must be "cheating".
We have very specific rules about what can and can not be done to an engine. Things like how the open intake and exhaust are done can influence how much power an engine can produce. If an engine is legal, the power it makes is the power it makes. If someone believes it is illegal, NASA has plenty of rules that can be used to address the problem and they should be used with no need to make a new rule to address a problem that doesn't exist. If, in the future, a problem is found with the technical rules on engine building that can be shown to be a performance problem, address them specifically but don't smash an ant with a 10 pound hammer! If an engine is found to be illegal, impose whatever penalties the rules provide for. What more do we want? Making someone an "outlier" (whatever that is, is it polite for cheater?), even discussing that we have "cheaters" in our class, when there is no proof of such, is simply outrageous.
There does not seem to be any suggestion that there are cheaters in Nor Cal, So Cal, Arizona or in the Midwest regions. We do not need a repeat of the debacle of the chips and headers with this proposed rule to solve a problem that most believe does not exist. Don't let this fragment 944-Spec because a few "think" there is a problem but who have NO PROOF that there is. Watch, listen, research and wait to see if there is a problem that the current rules don't address before creating a new, unfounded rule. Use the existing NASA rules.
IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT. NO NEW RULES.
Big Dog
