The dynos number are reflective of well built, stock motors. I've built several motors in conjunction with a friend who is a dealership mechanic, in his garage. They're all in the 136-137 HP range, right where Dirks is, who won it all this year. The first one we built is going strong on its 4th season, and still won in a 9 car field this year.

944 Spec occupies a niche between Lemons, and big money racing, and we should aim to keep it that way.

I spent a long time looking at Nationals data, and see no evidence that there were any big outliers. We should be proud of that. The claim that Dirks had the lowest HP was based on TM data from a single lap. If you look at other laps, the order is different, varying more than 10 HP lap to lap. We are not far along enough in interpreting TM data make any claims on that. I worry that TM data is being claimed as fact. We're working on refining it, but it's not there yet...

I think its asking a lot that a junkyard motor can win Nationals in a 30 car field, but neither does it (nor should it) require a pro-built "cheater" motor.

What kind of motors are we talking about here - are we talking about motors that are re-built to within the legal spec, or are we talking about actual 'cheater' motors that are built beyond the spec of the rules?

I don't think it's reasonable to expect any racing class anywhere to not have motors being legally rebuilt, especially motors that are nearing 30 years old. When this class started, most got into it to have fun racing within region, and that's totally do-able with a junkyard motor. But now it sounds like some think that you should also be able to win at Nationals with a 30-year-old junkyard motor, and that (IMO) is unreasonable (unless you were to go buy 10 junkyard motors, test them all, and then use the best one in true Spec Miata fashion), especially given the level to which we have promoted this class. Do we really want to dramatically alter our class and our ruleset for the sake of one event per season? Especially an event which most of us don't even attend?

A spec-built motor in this class is ridiculously cheap (compared to just about any other class out there), and I think that's down to how our rules are written. When I blew my motor at Nationals last year, I decided that if I was going to spend the time to pull it and put a new one in, there was no way that I was going to save what amounted to only a few hundred bucks to take the chance on a junkyard motor. I only get to race a few times a year (I'm usually lucky if I get to run half of a season), and it is not time-effective for me to risk being unable to race on one of those weekends by using a junkyard motor, and hope that it lasts and makes decent power.

I think it's right to learn from the mistakes of Spec Miata, but I think it would be really easy to turn this into a witchhunt against anyone who chooses to spend their money on a motor that is rebuilt completely within the rules (and beyond just motors, what about everything else in the drivetrain - hubs, bearings, transmissions, driveshafts, halfshafts, etc?) Which brings me back to my question: are we worried about actual cheaters, or spec-built motors? If it's the latter, I would guess that there is way more potential variance between 2 junkyard motors than between a good junkyard motor and a spec-built motor that is within the rules.

If I have a legal built motor and I get beat, it's because the other guy is a better driver and racer, which I'm just fine with. But if I have a junkyard motor and I get beat, is it because his junkyard motor is better than my junkyard motor? I think I would be less ok with that.

This can be debated endlessly but I don't know a way to regulate how often a guy can legally rebuild his motor.

What is considered a rebuild? Fresh head? New rings? Clean injectors? How would you know it was just done?

What about new tires or suspension parts? How often should you be allowed to replace them? LSD?

As a point of reference, I saw a dyno sheet from one competitor with a few seasons on the engine and a stock rebuild from a local shop - 134HP.

A fair set of rules exist now and everyone at Nationals was found to be in compliance with those rules. I think you have to accept that for what it is and congratulate those that won.

all good thoughts . The directors are getting close to presenting this in a form that we can all talk about and compare ideas.

Thanks to the directors for working this out and figuring out a solution.

I am not into debating, so I will just put my thoughts into this along with the others for consideration.

The ONLY WAY to honestly say, "we are racing equal cars" is to have equal cars, dah! The only way to do that is to have an accurate way of checking the cars while on track, I would think there can be variables to being on track vs sitting stationary on a dyno, I am not an expert in knowing who makes the most accurate system for measuring power. However, one would think if there are 4 or 100 traqmates on track at the same time in the same race, there should not be a very large difference in "equal" cars. Again, that is not my expertise.

What I propose:
1-Find a system that we know is most accurate to measure Hp/Torque while on track.

2-Then find the most OBTAINABLE number for hp/torque for ALL 1983-1988 motors and this number should be gotten from an average of several leagal and reliable motor.

If that average number is 135, then that should be the maximum hp for spec. It should not be hard to go from 140 to 135, if you are at 130, it shouldn't be that big of deal getting to 135 or just live with the 130 knowing your not that far off from the maximum hp car.

It was my impression when I joined 944-spec, that, this is how it would be, I know it can change if that is what the majority wants, from what I am hearing, it's not at this point. If you do want to build a car, there is nothing wrong with that and you can still race in 944cup, if I wanted to spend more money, I would seriously consider that. For now, I don't want to loose sleep over figuring out a way to find 10 plus more hp to compete with an equal driver, 5 more hp, I can sleep just fine!!!

Guys,
Although I did not attend nationals let me add a few things.

Firstly Nationals is the top race of the year. Frankly you cannot expect a 25 year old junkyard mystery motor to pull everyone down the straights. Nationals is the race on the year where everyone will bring their best. Fresh this and fresh that.

However we don't race at nationals all year. We race locally vs the same guys every month. Around my region over the past 8 years of this I have always seen the best drivers winning races at the front. A least in Arizona you don't need fresh motors each weekend. You do need to be top notch driving form to get it done however.

I have rebuilt motors are home in my garage using what every parts I was able to get in parts cars. No special anything, but some attention to detail.

Power... I have always been ok for power except when my 5 year old motor got soft due to carbon build up on 2 valves. No big deal really.

As for performance.... I have always been pretty close. Lately not very front, but it is driver holding me back not my motor. How much power do I have? I am not sure.

Look if you take away nationals I still see lots of strong competition by cars built and maintinaed to the intent of the series. Some guys can build a motor at home and other pay a shop.

So I don't see this as a class crisis by any means. I still think you can show up to a race with 9.5:1 motor running in good shape and pick-up wins if you can drive it.

As for traqmate and hp. Well if we can find a repeatable method to use traqmate to minimize the impact of small hp variations then great. If not so be it. I just don't want to see people in the series getting down cause that guy has 2 more hp. Really...

Also.. I want to make some thing clear. There is talk that Dirks had the least hp of anyone in the front. Well that is premature. We only dynoed 2 cars and Dirks had more Hp than Palmer. Even so that does not tell much. We had traqmate on two more cars and despite the initial numbers we have looked into the data and found it inconclusive at best. Maybe we can develop it to get usefull data, but we just don't have it right now.

Lets also remember that Nationals in 2011 will be very different from 2010. The distance from the core of racers creates entirely new challenges.

Remember the sky is not falling.