^^^Agreed. I say...

The treadwear limit is good where its at but tire size should be limited to a certain amount wider than the car comes with stock.

Gas should be limited to un-leaded fuel only, no limit on octane rating.

Turbo size and/or power levels should be limited somehow, maybe again limited by a certain percentage over stock, but I have no ideas on how to effectively police turbo size or power output on all makes and models of street class vehicles.

 

If it's a street car is shoudl have a cat. Street cars have cats.

With 109 octane available there's no need to run leaded fuel for most of us. In terms of keeping running costs down that's the number 1 way to do it. Race gas adds hundreds of dollars to the weekend.

PS- we get plenty of 100+ days out here, for those of you who haven't raced in New England humidity.

 

There are plenty of places where there are no SMOG laws required to get registration so I still say no cats.

I believe when the statement was made about cost by Nik he wasn't referring to operating costs, but more of the build costs for the car. You can limit to 91 or 93 octane and someone can put a lot of money into making a lot of power on pump gas. If you limit what they can do to the motor, then it levels the playing field a lot more.

 

One easy way out here would be to adopt the SCCA's Solo II Street Modified rules for RTA Street Class, except to restrict the tire choice to the current RTA tread rating limit. There are already lots of cars built to that rule set and I would venture to say that many of them are interested in getting into time trialing.

 

I can understand about adding some rules, but try not to go to excessive. The broad but defined rules are what attracted us to running there.

Also something to keep in mind with trying to establish turbo sizing limits is enforcing it. Some cars are easier then others to check the turbo inlet.

Fuel would be one way, but not because of cost. I'm sure 109 unleaded cost more then 110 leaded, considering 100 cost the same as 110. But policing fuel is going to be difficult also.

Tires would be one way, limit width to a certain mm over stock/optional stock. Tech would just have to have a list of stock/optional stock sizes, then can do a quick visual on the car.

Personally I think the rules are perfect how they are. If people don't bring enough car, that is their own problem. After all this isn't driving Miss Daisy, it's racing.

My 2cents,
Ivan

 

We've thought about testing for fuel, and keeping it to "pump gas" only... but finding an "easy" way to test the fuel of the top 3-5 cars in each division (that would be what, maybe 15 cars per event).... That is the trick. I've done some searching around the net, but havent found anything yet. Does anyone know of a test kit that can be used to determine the octane rating of a fuel? I'm not aware of one.....

I totally understand that reasons why owners would want or need to run on 100 octane fuel... We're just exploring options at this point...

Cats: We're thinking of making the presence of at least one cat mandatory... Just go out and by a high flow cat from CatCo or Magnaflow or CarSound.. 2.5" or 3.0" diameter.... It wouldnt have to be the OEM cat.. just a cat of some kind.

Registration: We WILL be enforcing proof of registration for Street Class vehicles at all of our events in 2008. I guarantee it... :-)

Tires: We have it pretty much nailed down as to the size of tires that will be allowed. It wont be based on the OEM tire size. We will simply limit the max tire size in each of the three Divisions (FWD, AWD, RWD)

Engine upgrades: We are thinking of limiting power upgrades to one major power upgrade... for example: You can do an engine swap, but you cannot do an engine swap and a turbo. Or you can do a turbo, but you cannot do a combined turbo & supercharger.. stuff like that. This isnt so much of a problem for you guys in AWD.. but for the FWD guys.. when Honda tuners like to put K24 engines into old Civics and then run Turbos on them, making in excess of 350whp EASILY.... A K series swap by itself is just fine (200+whp) in a tiny little Civic.

 

Here is a company that makes octane testers. I'm not sure how it handles leaded fuel, but you can check with them.
http://www.shatox.com/index.html

 

FS or Trade - 3" RNR Cat-Delete Pipe...

 

I guess what I am saying is that yes, street cars 'should' have cats... but you wont find many on the evo's where I live....

I think there is a fine line between time trials & time attack.... modification rules being one of those... I was under the impression that Time Attacks are more open, showcasing the tuner, not as much of the driver, as say in SCCA/NASA time trials.

anyhoot, I'll comply to any rules, money premitting

n

 

I agree that the rules need to be as open as possible because its just more fun that way, but I think as it stands right now, the classes are too close together. You can build your car to the street class rules and be competitive in all 3 classes just by switching tires with the way the rules are currently written and it shouldn't be like that. We did exactly that with my 350Z this year and we have two 1st places in Street RWD, a 2nd place in Modified RWD, and a 2nd Place in Unlimited RWD from last year with a car that was built to meet the street class rules. And for those who have seen my 350Z, that thing should never be considered a street class car by definition, but neither should a lot of the cars that it was competing against. From Redline's standpoint, as a business, the street class is your money maker. Those are the people who are lured in by your advertising and get hooked like crack heads so you want to make it as inviting as possible by making the average HPDE driver feel like he has a chance at winning. You do that by limiting the speed of the street class cars and bringing them down to a more commonly attainable level. The more drivers that sign up, the more money in Redline's pocket and the bigger the sport gets for all of us.

 

I've been involved with a lot of rules related stuff in the SCCA, so I'll throw in my $0.02.

The ruleset should revolve around three things:

1) Power
2) Weight
3) Grip

Bottom line, you can't cheat the laws of physics.

Power - Use displacement limits, not limits on specific mods. Use multipliers for power adders.

Weight - Set a minimum weight, OR simply a power-to-weight ratio, using the info in the "power" item above.

Grip - Use the same size tires for a class, or simply use a spec tire. There are advantages/disadvantages to each, and I would favor just a size/DOT treadwear rating.

If you were to add these into the basic rules in place now, things would work out well.

You'll still have to deal with some specifics, like what your street class is and why it's called "street". As you can see, people don't even agree that a street car should have cats. You'll simply have to make the call. Registration and a single hi-flo cats should reasonable to me.

Also, read the SCCA Street Modified and X Prepared rules closely. There's a lot to be gleaned from there, but a lot of BS you'll see that you never want to reproduce those same mistakes.

As an example, here's the X Prepared limits, page 181:

Here's a link

I don't suggest these #s are appropriate, but just give an idea of what types of things need to be addressed.

For instance, in the street class since you don't allow stripped interiors and other significant weigh reducers, it'll be more about making big power. That's fine and resembles what people do to their street cars. For the unlimited class, it'll be more about hitting minimum weights - or the power/weight formula as close as possible.

Rules like these, IMO, do not thwart creativity and focus on what's most important - physics. Like I said, nobody can cheat physics.

 

The only real problem with trying to go off of NASA or SCCA rules is that those sanctioning bodies have a ton of different classes, Redline has only 3. While I agree with you saying that the rules should revolve around power, weight, and grip, its hard to really come up with a fair set of rules when you only have 3 classes.

Power: How would you police this? The only way I can think of is to limit specific mods that are allowed. There is no way to accurately measure output. Even if Redline had a mobile dyno at all events whats stopping someone from hitting a button on their boost controller that changes the boost from 11psi to 30psi after they get off the dyno? The only thing I can think of is to limit the potential for power instead of trying to limit actual power output.

Weight: This would be easy to police by having a set of scales that every car goes on when they get tech inspected, but how do you come up with a minimum weight in a class that includes everything from CRXs to Dodge Magnums if someone wants? You could come up with a rule that says something like the car can be no less than 100 lbs. lighter than stock advertised curb weight or something but it would be much easier to just limit the potential for weigh savings by requiring full interior or only the spare tire, tools, and trunk mat may be removed or something.

Grip: This is the easy one in my opinion and I like the idea of limiting tire size to 20mm over what that year make and model came with from the factory as well as keeping the 140 treadwear minimum.

Like mentioned before, its hard to make a set of rules thats fair for everything from Geo Storms to NSXs.

 

what sort of rules do the japanese use for their time attacks?

n

 

I only suggested looking to those rules as guidelines of what works and what doesn't.

I suggested that displacement limits and power adders have limits set, not that dynos be employed. It's much simpler than what you've outlined. Now, that's not to say that every 2.0L Turbo will come with the same power... but hey, that's where the "tuner" aspect comes in. The best shops will produce the highest specific output motors that can last the event. Such is Time Attack. The key will be what limits are set, not creative dyno cheating.

Power/weight ratio. That was the whole point I was making... And if somebody wants to come out in a Dodge Magnum, they can lose. It's simple as that.

Manufacturer limits have no place in competition and are IMO, irrelevant. Tire widths can be used to create parity as they are in every other race series. The relationship between vehicle weight and contact patch is what's important.

 

If the main objective of changing the street class rules was to get everybody running as close time wise as possible I would agree, but unfortunately the main objective is to attract more participants and help the sport grow. The majority of new participants are naturally going to be entering the street class. The majority of people running their cars at the track on street tires are on the stock tires their car came with, or maybe tires a little wider, but probably still less than 20mm wider. This means that the majority of people interested in getting into time attack will not have to buy a new set of tires just to try it out. The more you narrow down the tire limitations, the more potential new entrants will be lost because they don't want to buy new tires just to try out time attack. Thats my theory at least.