Howdy,
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Rob Foley wrote:
> 1) Check your self interest at the door. Especially if you do not have an
> understanding of the development and history of how the rulebook has been
> written. Consider the overall implications that would happen with changing
> preparation allowances over a category wide basis like Stock or Street
> Prepared. Never ever have there been specific allowances written for an
> individual stock or street prepared car to overcome some type of handicap.
> If someone want to volunteer to rewrite the rulebook to class cars based on
> all the unknown performance potentials of all those "but its just an itsy
> bitsy change/replacement for <insert reason>" Don't forget to include a
> mechanism to make the competition adjustments that would certainly be
> necesary to make "on the fly".
Lacking the history you have in the sport, I'm curious why specific
allowances are such a big deal. Is there a reason that we can't just have
a list of car types and allowances in addition to the general stock rules?
So far every objection I've heard to something like letting C5's run 17"
wheels or Neon's run different motor mounts or Porche's run cam chain
tensioners has had the words "But they we'd have to allow it across the
board" somewhere in there. Why is that? Why _not_ have a specific
allowance list? The only concern I could come up with is that it means
the competitor has to check another section for rules but IMHO the
current rules are already complex enough that adding another section to
help the competitor wouldn't hurt.
How much the list affected the current classing structure could be
controlled by what you add to the list and considering what performance
potential, if any, it would have at that time. Start small, say with cam
chain tensioners for porche's and wire-tied hoses on an RX-7TT and force
people to justify the addition of a mod and also show what will happen
competitively.
> What seems so logical an allowance for one car could be a hell
> of a competition advantage for another.
Sure, I can see that. I don't particularly think that there should be a
blanket "make motor mounts whatever you want" or "use subframe connectors"
or "18" wheels can be 17" wheels" across stock just to fix specific
instance problems (things like changing cam chain tensioners and other
mods that have no performance advantage i do thing should be allowed
across the board). It seems like it comes up so often just in the short
time I've been involved that I'm surprised someone hasn't addressed it
with a specific allowances list for particular car models.
> 3) I am not complaining but, for the most part, it is a thankless job. No
> malicious intent or not, but think how nice it is to read something like
> the above.....;-P I took the position to give something back to an
> activity that I have had an absolute blast doing for the past 14 years. I
> also knew warm fuzzies would be few and far between. In the past year I
> have burned 5 of my 19 allowed vacation days on SEB business. Not to
> mention hours of conference calls, correspondance reading and response
> writing, and attendance at Divisional functions where my presence was
> expected.
I don't have much sympathy for anyone that has 19 days of vacation... :-)
Seriously, I know that I certainly appreciate the time that the various
higher ups in the SOLO world put in. I'd like to help out as well, but it
doesn't seem like many people want to listen to what a newcomer has to
say. In any event, I hope you realize that a request or suggestion to
change something doesn't mean I don't appreciate the work that went before
or the effort you're making now.
Mark
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