Joe, there is a small plastic bushing/partial cup that goes below part of the bottom half of the ball joint. It is about 3/8" wide and has a void on the bottom so the ball joint does not actually sit in it. The ball joint touches it around the ball (if that makes any sense at all). They wear out and also break in two sometimes. Of course, that means a rebuild as I had to do on the red car at Miller.

I don't believe the bronze pieces create any performance advantage, they just last much longer. The plastic bushing is very thin so it doesn't have "movement" in it like a rubber bushing would have. It is hard white plastic.

I think this is a winner for any car with al. arms.

Big Dog

Jim I assume you are talking about stock aluminum with original joints right.

I will do so some addition research and the put it in the list of proposals.

I definitely agree on the ball joint. I've taken apart several arms, and everyone I've had apart had the plastic cracked. It's almost paper thin to start. Bronze bushing is definitely better/safer.

You can see the bronze bushings here:


vs. the stock ones:


It would also be very difficult to enforce making them illegal, as you'd have to destroy the epoxied in ball joint to get at it, FWIW.

The optional extended length "geometry correct" pins, are clearly illegal, however.




As far as pump gas enforcement, just make it so any car on any weekend might be required to run pump gas. That will at least catch those who tune their car for race gas. No it won't get those who run rocket fuel in a regular motor, but at least we can have grounds to ostracize them, or make them run regular gas in a critical race.

Hmm,
I think I have an idea on pump gas deal.

We can state in the rules that cars must be capable of running standard pump gas. At any time during a weekend a car maybe required to run straight pump gas (min 91 octane & 10% Ethanol) from a local source. No fuel additives maybe added and the motor may not be retuned during the time this fuel is used.

Sort of wording does not make race gas illegal, but does mean that if you need to run race gas to keep it from blowing up you may need to fix things.

Makes compliance easy since we throw in pump gas and call it good.

Of course we still will need to get driver feedback before a change like this.

This is what I meant, but much better stated - I vote yes!
I would still like to discourage the use of exotic fuel additives - maybe a "plain old gas" motto (if not a rule)?

Weston wrote:
Really...that's weird b/c the other '83 I've seen didn't have it either. Was P/S an option on early '83s? P/S wasn't standard 944 equipment until ~ '84 but then customers could order a 944 with a p/s delete option.