>> Vehicle Eligibility - any front engine, four (or more) seat sedan
>> (meaning 2 or 4 doors and a hard top) with a displacement not
>> exceeding 2.5l turbocharged/supercharged or 4.0l naturally aspirated.*
>>
>>*these displacements are not graven in stone - comments welcome
> Why bother with such a limitation? If you want to appeal to a crowd
> that targets 10s Civics, I think you have a class where most cars have
> excess horsepower anyway -- so why limit displacement?
Because we're allowing turbochargers. Forced induction is a replacement for
displacement.
There has to be a cutoff point somewhere - otherwise, why run a
small-displacement motor? And as the vast majority of these cars are in the 1.8
- 2.2 litre range, we can't hang them out to dry.
So either we pick a point above which you have to be naturally aspirated, or we
allow turbocharged everything and bring the max displacement down.
As I see it, a cutoff point is more inclusive - although it sucks to be slightly
bigger than the cutoff. Too big for the turbo, but not enough real displacement
to make up the power difference. But if you get a weight break for being
non-turbo, maybe that makes up for it.
The problem here is that turbos aren't additive, they're multipliers. 2litres at
2 atmospheres is a 4litre car(on boost, so it's not directly equal). 4l at 2bar
is an _8litre_ car - not fair, lag or no lag! (unless you slap it with a MASSIVE
weight penalty)
The biggest displacement turbo car should ideally be making the same or slightly
more peak power than the biggest displacement N/A car at the same weight.
> Consider turbo-charged M3's.
What's an M3 weigh, and what's its displacement?
> I think a minimum weight is critical
I'm starting to agree - and weight makes a good emergency equalizer. If the
formula starts out seriously broken, you can fix it by adding more weight
mid-season. Ballast is cheap.
> UNLESS, you apply minimum weights. And then, perhaps you could have
> a sliding scale based on displacement and turbo/non-turbo.
That's where this is headed, I think.
DG
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