Honestly it would be very easy to tell if boost has been altered in anyway ... at least to those who know what to look for.

Rick - the Torco 100 is that available at a pump (I assume not)? The only reason I ask is that per the rules any fuel available via a pump is allowable, which to me seems like any fuel purchased in a can/jug from a retailer is illegal?? Not sure what the ruling is on the ST fuel allowances.

On power figures, I'm deep into the 300s both on hp and tq with my tune and mods says a dynojet on 93 (and no I haven't touched boost, directly at least ) . I want to run 100 this year but, need to figure out what is allowed.

 

the rules say "federally approved for use on public highways". there are several federally approved 100 octane fuels.

 

Chris's old car (fastest day 2 at Nationals last year) was 316 on a Mustang. 91 octane!

 

According to 3.6 A it states that ST allowable fuel is that from a service station fuel pump only. Than it goes on to mention that pump fuel is defined as fuel federally approved for highway use. Since Torco, VP, etc. are not available through a pump but, are federally approved fuels I assume they are allowable, which is the bit that was throwing me off.

 

Torco 100oct is available at the pump at several Michigan Torco Fuel Stations. It also helps if you live an hour away from Torco. You know, for the newest blend.

Dave

 

There are several 100+ octane fuels available at pumps around the country. Sunoco 100 was available at the pumps at nationals last year and is available at some Sunoco stations nation wide. Torco is found at some stations as well. Out here (west) , Trick 101 is available through many fuel suppliers and a few regular mom and pop stations. All the taxes are paid and it is approved for highway use.

d

EDIT: Trick is even california legal --> http://www.trickgas.com/unleaded.htm

 

VP is the common pump race fuel found in CA.

We just used the Sunoco 100 at HPT.

 

While I'm thinking about this...

I went to the dyno this morning with some new parts. A ported manifold and o2 housing + 100 octane makes-a-da BIG torque! I saw pretty amazing gains between 3500-4500.

d

PS: Remember, I'm at high altitude so my car is very laggy most of the time.

 

What were your power mods and fuel before the new set-up? Did you go with a o2 housing that has been shown to have boost creep?

 

Exactly, its up to the protestor to prove illegality. And after 20+ years of having turbocharged cars running in Solo this protest system has never been tested for boost. Not once. Me thinks its because they know that it is un-policeable. Seriously - who's going to have every car's factory released programming packages, including every TSB update, to compare a protested car against? Then pour through every line of code to see what's legal and what's not? And the knowledge and skill to know what to look for? Its a monumental, nearly impossible task. Saying its "easy to see boost" is a gross oversimplification.

Having talked with professionals that tune these cars for a living they tend to answer "we can hide anything better than some protest committee could ever find." Most of the times racers don't even know they have had some things done in their car's code (like CELs turned off for certain parameters, boost tweaked here and there, etc). Even if you stuck a boost gauge on a dead stock car and tested it under all RPM and load conditions, then how do you PROVE a modified car has "illegal boost" when there are "back door" loopholes like "exhaust induced boost creep" and dozens of of other tricks that can and do add boost? Its pointless - the STAC will eventually figure this out and go the Street Prepared route: "boost is free". That's really the only fair way to allow any tweaks in programming on a turbocharged car - this way everyone (with a modern turbocharged car) can play on a semi-level playing field.

Now don't get me started on the massive power disparities between the turbocharged and non-turbocharged cars in STU. "Tilting at windmills" Our 2nd place M3 from 2006 Nationals makes a whopping 220 whp... this car isn't allowed to even change the MAF because of some obscure rule wording about "factory part number offerings" nonsense. Ahh, it just makes me smile. Then they moved the RX8 (a car that only 2 people ever brought to STU at Nats) into STX but the 200 pound heavier/similarly powered E36 M3 stays in STU? No thanks - I'll take one of these instead:



I get it: to run competitively in STU you need to have AWD and a turbo. I have assimilated.

 

Being that I tune Evos on nearly a daily basis I could very easily tell if one has had it's boost altered be it mechanically or electrically. Like I said for those who have the knowledge it's not that hard. Yeah it can be hidden to the average Joe though.

 

Except that the STU rules explicitly say that boost changes from allowed modifications are legal. You just can't change the boost control system, which is much easier to police. Honestly, the only places protests are used is at national events, and the competitors there should know how the boost control system works on the small subset of competitive cars.

This same argument could be used to basically eliminate Stock class. If you can't police computer code, then how do you make sure Stock competitors aren't tuning their ECU?

 

Reusing this space

I would argue that's different because you can't change any of the ECU stuff in Stock. In ST you can do all kinds of crazy stuff including replacing the contents of the ECU enclosure -- so long as it remains emissions and turbo legal (good luck!) .

d

 

I hate play devils advocate here and I swore to myself that I would get involved in this one (), but there's a lot of tricky stuff you could do. What if I created a copy of the boost table somewhere in the free space then change the load instruction to read from there. Ecuflash/Ecutek/whatever isn't going to know about my new table. Are you going to dissassemble the whole SuperH instruction sequence to look for changes?

Remember, I (we) can do whatever I want with my ROM image so long as boost the table and control system is the same and emissions equipment still worked as intended. I can obfuscate the hell of it though.

d

EDIT: That being said. I made some pretty big torque without boost control so I'm happy!

 

When/if I end up doing engine performance mods to my car, I'll go for an STU legal tune because:

1) It's the rules
2) I'm nowhere near experienced enough to take advantage of the extra boost

Maybe my lack of experience with tuned Evos and STIs blinds me to how big the advantage is, but like I said, I'm not a good enough driver to reap the benefits of those extra tenths anyways.