Hey folks,
Well, this roller-rocker thing has me thinking about an issue that may
be unique to the class I run in but, hey, I'm new at this so what do I
know? I'm one of the few guys out there running an air-cooled
supervee. First a little (potentially inaccurate) history. My car,
built in 74, was fitted with a 1600 cc engine. The SCCA later updated
that to 1700. A few years later in the series, the water-cooled rabbit
engine replaced the weezer bringing a ton more horsepower. A lot of
the air-cooled cars were updated to water-cooled but still proved
uncompetitive against the newer purpose built chassis. So now, back to
the present day. My conversations with the engine builders tells me
that in order to achieve the HP reported in the original air-cooled
engine, I basically have to build a grenade. Since my car is always
lumped in with the Atlantics, Indy cars and F1's, every pony counts. My
question is: since a lot of these cars (not my car) were converted to
water-cooled engine late in their pro careers, would it be vintage
anathema for me to convert it now. I know where I can find an original,
supplied by Carl Haas conversion kit so originality, non period issues
are, well, not the issue.
Just wanted to see what everybody's opinion is on this.
Robert McCurdy
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