rd7839 wrote:
Heim joints, are you serious? This is what I hate about this time of year, the crazy ideas that are so far off the class intent. The only shifter issues anybody ever had are VERY easy and VERY cheap to fix and are well documented online but you want to swing for the fences and reinvent the wheel. We have been racing for years with the stock setup with very few issues. Shoot, twice this year when I had clutch hydraulic issues I ran races without the clutch pedal and made every upshift and down without issue. If you maintain the stock stuff and fix what's worn and still miss a lot of shifts, it's you!
Every car that I know personally has a rebuilt or replaced motor but only one that replaced a trans because of a failure so what's the ratio, 10 to 1, 20/1? Trannies( not you Steve) are not scarce, picknpull sells them for $150. There's always a couple cars there. If you're pulling fenders or other things, crawl underneath and pull the trans and stash it in the truck for a spare.
No offense Joe but you're telling us how bad our cars shift but you have yet to race yours. When you make it out I think you'll find just how fun these old cars are! As is! I appreciate that you want to make things better but your ideas are not free, not within everybody's means, and not needed.
I go through a couple cv joints a year, how about allowing custom u joints with chromoly axles? Or for engine reliability how about dry sumps?
Different racing environments cause different failures. Do you race in predominantly sandy environments? Is that a leading cause to your CV joint failures after the sand wears its way into the boot? Ive been racing for 3 season now and not had a single CV joint failure. Within the second race, my ring and pinion blew. Since racing in those 3 seasons, I personally know of 5 ring and pinion failures. On the flip side, I also personally know of zero blown motors and faintly remember 1 CV failure. Just because your group hasn't had a problem doesn't mean a separate part of the country isn't experiencing the issue. Different climates and different tracks take their tolls on our cars differently.
I for one cant stockpile transmissions from junkyards and donor cars like Chicken Shack Racing. I PCS to new duty stations every 2-4 years and cant afford the weight for the government to ship all these spare racing parts from one post to another. Id rather focus on simple improvements that dramatically increase the reliability and usability of our equipment. When these improvements are the right about of common sense, value, and ease to install, they deserve a consideration.
Another defense for the new mirror rule, sometimes it should be the underlying message that is the driving factor. The underlying message is that you prepare yourself properly for racing and to do that, you need to know who else is on track around you. That requires something so simple as blind spot elimination mirrors for the sake of both your car and others having fun with you on track. You don't want to do something simple like properly setup your mirrors? Then go race in another class or go back to point-bys in DE.
