I've got a Cusco on mine. It has bolts through the mounting rings to the crossbar. I believe, even under these tortured interpretations of the rules, that mine is legal. I interpret this rule as saying that a welded connection from the mounting rings to the cross bar is illegal. Is my observation correct Dave?

 

Yours sounds like it will be legal to me as well. This new ruling has got to be overthrown though. It really seems like the SEB messed this one up big time. I can understand wanting to clean up some of the more "creative" lower "braces" but why do they need to mess with the upper ones? Has anyone written a letter yet?

 

Jason might be right, but if you read through most of the thread, even the hinged strut bars are illegal. The single axis test says that if you unbolt one side, you should be able to move the bar freely in all directions including front to back. Your Cusco bar is able to pivot on a vertical axis, but not horizontal (front to back) or anything in between. From my understanding, the intention of the rule is to maintain the shock/strut towers at a fixed distance from each other without additional stiffness to the body or frame. You would need a ball or hem joint at both ends to make the bar legal under the new revision.

However, Jason is 100% right, SEB dug a pretty big hole on this one. Write your letters!

This especially sucks since I have my reservoirs attached to my welded "illegal" bar.

Dave

 

The new clarification is pretty bad, I think it pretty much makes all strut bars illegal because honestly any strut bar is going to provide rigidity on more than one axis. I know what they were trying to do but this was a pretty crappy fix...........

 

I concur. What f'n strut bar is availalbe that would fit their description? I thought the point of these rules was to make the class fair and cost effective for all participants. Now with this rule we'd have to custom design and build a strut bar that I am SURE would exceed the measly cost of a Cusco or any other readily available strut bar. This determination is NOT within the "spririt of the rules".

Where do we send out letters? I'm pissed.

 

seb@scca.com for all of your angry letter writing needs

 

Congrat's to Tom Kenna for winning STU at the SD National Tour co-driving Rick Jung's 2003 Evo VIII. Did I say 2003? Must be that wing.

Rick, you were in 6th going in to day 2 and only .5 out of 1st. What happened?

M3's placed very well for being the car "not to have"!

Tom Berry in BSP had unbelieveable times. Well ahead of ASP.

Navid in SM co-driving a customers STI.

El Toro Pro is up next weekend.

Dave

 

Just stopping in to say hey to all my fellow autocrossers! I just picked up my 06 Rally Red MR back in August and have gotten 3 events in so far. Everything's still stock and it just blows my mind how well the Evo handles an autocross course. I've been racing a 2000 Eclipse GT since I bought it new and it really has been a night and day difference with the Evo. Thanks for all the good info you guys and girls have thrown together in this thread and hopefully I can contribute some useful info back.

Hope to see some of you at an event one day. I'm racing with the Oklahoma Region but trying to get to some other events when time and money allows. I'm running in STU with plans to prep the car for that class.

Minh

 

Welcome! If you want to cruise on down the DFW area for event, check out:

http://autocross.com/texasregion/ (Don Herring pays a local Mitsu contengency)
or
http://www.autocross.com/er/

Hope to see you down here sometime as STU usually fields about 10 local competitors. Of those, 6 of us went to Nationals last year with two in the trophies.

 

Yes, Evos did great at the SD Tour!

Berry, Tage, and Grice (griceiv) took the trophy spots in BSP.

Ol' Jbrennen came out of retirement and earned a solid 2nd in SM to Navid in a STi.

My codriver smoked the pack in my Evo on Sunday in STU! (He won SM in my ESP car at the AZ Tour in '04 over nat'l winning Richardson's supercharged SM M3). So 2 Evos, 2 STis, and 2 M3s finished in the STU trophies.

I was in the hunt Sat .2 sec off my codriver, but I had issues Sunday. Car was too loose after 1st run so made changes to the set-up. I got a sound DSQ on my 2nd run even with a quiet Busher Maganaflow muffler. Took a 10min mechanical to find and mount a turndown, a standard 3" slip fit worked since the inner muffler tube protrudes out some. Hanger wire and hose clamps and it was fixed. Found out it wasn't engine noise, but from popping the rev limiter longer than my codriver at the db meter. Third run was the car last out, coned the first slalom, but was slow anyway.

Getting ready for ProSolo this weekend, more suspension and exhaust changes, new map, maybe more aero - hope to do better and concentrate on just driving, but competition is stiff this year!

 

seb@scca.org

As has been said earlier, everyone should write a letter on this. It's possible to make a legal upper strut bar using spherical bushings at both ends, but I don't think this is really what we want.

Also, assuming this rule gets re-clarified/changed to what the previous interpretation was, I'll be writing asking for allowances to change triangulated upper strut bars (like ours) with aftermarket strut bars using the same mounting points.

And a big congrats to Tom Kenna for an awesome drive on Sunday at the SD NT!

Jason Uyeda

 

Welcome over Jason. How is running on street tires in STU compare with your BSP S2k on R's?

Dave

 

Hey Jason,

Good finish on your 4th too. Didn't take you too long to get dialed in! Max is a little concerned about you at the Pro. Your car looks fast now.

Also like you said "Tom is Tom", glad to see him in a competive ride.

About the bars, someone mentioned that the SEB? members there last weekend said the rule was meant to apply just to the lower bars, other wise I could have protested to move up to 3rd .


Dave- Check your email.

Rick

 

I hate street tires Nothing against the Evo or even the Neovas, but it's just a lot different. The S2000 was one of the best all around autox cars I've ever driven. Could've used more power though

Street tires probably wouldn't be as bad if we weren't so front tire limited. However it's nice to be lazy, wake up late and just drive the car to events... I'll probably throw some race tires on the car just for fun at some events, I suspect the car will be as fast if not faster than the S2k based on how it's working now.

Thanks, I changed everything before the tour, and it was certainly nice that it was working a lot better... Just trying to catch up to your car. I'm looking forward to the Pro as they are always among my favorite events. Plus hopefully I'll be a little less busy.

On the STBs... I heard something similar about the "clarification" really being in regards to the lower braces. As always it's not as simple as we'd like as there are so many different car types. Some cars even come with rigid lower braces stock. IMHO any brace using the same (or maybe fewer) mounting points as stock should be legal. And we need to find a way to allow all the common aftermarket upper braces and some of the lower braces as well (unless we're all really ok with the takeaway). To me, the lower braces are tricky as there are lots of different suspension types that need to be taken into consideration, so I'd separate the two (upper and lower) as I expect the lower brace rule will continue to be volatile going forwards.

_J_

 

Nice job to all you guys at the tour. I'll be looking forward to the results from the Pro coming up. It must be nice living on the left coast... we still have snow out here and my car hasn't been driven in about 3 months. You guys are dialing in already and I'm just starting to throw this pile of parts at my car now!

Corey #89 STU