136 replies to this topic

[Viet-Tam Luu]

Just not in the realm of this class.

My assertion was that racers will work within the latitude afforded to them by the wording of the rules to maximize their competitiveness. You don't believe that's true in SSM?

[Johnny D]

My assertion was that racers will work within the latitude afforded to them by the wording of the rules to maximize their competitiveness. You don't believe that's true in SSM?

Yes, that is true.
I believe disfusers are out of the latitude afforded them last time I checked.

PM sent.
I may send one more.

Thanks guys,
J~

[Numbersix]

when brian ? where on the thread ? the dyno pulls posted are Anonymous ?!? So you're Really telling me a motor Loosened up 8hp or more during a season ? pretty Magical 1.6 ?!?

[Viet-Tam Luu]

I believe disfusers are out of the latitude afforded them last time I checked.

Who's being sarcastic now?

[Brian Ghidinelli]

when brian ? where on the thread ? the dyno pulls posted are Anonymous ?!? So you're Really telling me a motor Loosened up 8hp or more during a season ? pretty Magical 1.6 ?!?

I don't have the date but I remember Doug being dyno'd at Thunderhill once last season for sure (and he posted that earlier in this thread). Was it the same weekend that Neimann and Holifield protested him? If so, that would be probably ~August and all seals/checks before 4/10/11 were below the cap.

I'm not arguing that +8hp gain is loosening up; I only wanted to clarify that there hasn't been a 121hp motor in the field from the get go (to the extent that we have been conducting dyno tests).

[Juan Pineda]

@Matt - you were not racing 121hp "all last season" - the car was both sealed and compliance checked (and that data is in the list at the beginning of the thread) and was within the limits of the class. I want to keep things factual as best we can.

Matt's point is valid. Doug's car could have been out of compliance last year at times when it was not dyno'ed. Somehow a 121 HP car sometimes dynos at 113. Doug says he did nothing to the car since it was last checked. So whatever method was used to detune the engine from 121 to 113 is intermittent. Sometimes the detune holds sometimes it doesn't. So Matt is justified in having a suspicion.

[Johnny D]

I'm new here.

How does the dyno and/or testing work at LS and Infineon.
J~

[Sacslider]

Brian-

Thank you for your hard work and your professional demeanor in this conversation. I do believe that you have made it clear as to what happened, why things changed, and what the reasoning was behind those changes. Thank you for the clarity.

Tam-

While I will not point to a single quote in this thread, I (and others) have preceived some of your comments here as inappropriate, and insincere. If you were just another racer this would not bother me in the least. You do in fact respresent the SFR board of directors and have done so in a disfavorable way and that bothers me greatly. Your disregard for others ideas because you believe you have solved the problem is rude and condesending in a public forumn. I can assure you that the rules are not "appropriate as written" should someone decide to do the work in circumventing them. Detuning a car by 8-10hp on demand is not as difficult as it sounds. As I have said before, I have choosen not to race in the class because if I could do so, so could others, defeating to purpose of the class.

[Viet-Tam Luu]

How does the dyno and/or testing work at LS and Infineon.

It doesn't... Please don't cheat?

[Viet-Tam Luu]

I can assure you that the rules are not "appropriate as written" should someone decide to do the work in circumventing them. Detuning a car by 8-10hp on demand is not as difficult as it sounds.

Craig, cheaters will always cheat. Adding more complex and burdensome rules penalizes honest competitors more than it helps to weed out cheaters. At some point you make rules so complicated and/or draconian that people just won't bother.

[Juan Pineda]

Tam,

I think now is the time for the rule makers to be encouraging input and listening rather than shutting down the exchange of ideas. Who knows, someone may propose an idea you haven't thought of.

-Juan

[Johnny D]

Direct from the SFR Regional Exec---
San Francisco Region SCCA
www.sfrscca.org
office@sfrscca.org
May 16, 2011
To all SMT and SSM Drivers

All compliance and testing results will be posted by SFR in such places as it deems appropriate.

This seems a little sketchy for someone to protest.
J~

[Steve Holifield]

I don't have the date but I remember Doug being dyno'd at Thunderhill once last season for sure (and he posted that earlier in this thread). Was it the same weekend that Neimann and Holifield protested him? If so, that would be probably ~August and all seals/checks before 4/10/11 were below the cap.

I'm not arguing that +8hp gain is loosening up; I only wanted to clarify that there hasn't been a 121hp motor in the field from the get go (to the extent that we have been conducting dyno tests).

Just to clarify: My protest was the only one based on compliance. It was in September at T-Hill. It was apparent to me that car in question was not compliant then, and hadn't been for a while. Since I understood the car had been dyno'd earlier in the year, I focused my protest on other drive line components which at that time were found to be OK. If I had included horsepower in my protest this current discussion likely would have occurred 8 months earlier.

[dstevens]

Who built that engine? I'd sure like to be able to find an extra 7% gain in HP over the off season without doing anything to it.

[Juan Pineda]

Just saying the simple solution here is for the driver of the 121hp to do the right thing and fix the problem without going through the SCCA legal process. We all know that the car was over power. Doesn’t matter how it got there but the car did not belong and was non-compliant. The only reason the win was awarded was because of a “loophole.” Is a win based on poor wording truly a win? Surely the SCCA would have no objection to an honorable driver DQing himself based on information discovered at a later date.

It’s kind of like a situation during a race where one driver gains an unfair advantage over another by inadvertent contact and then later gives the position back. We have seen examples of that at the front of our field. That’s the right thing to do. No different here.

I will second Steve's suggestion.

-Juan

[Juan Pineda]

To follow up on Steve's info: the last time Doug's car was dyno'ed was in July 2010 at Thunderhill.

-Juan

[Ken SM94]

Do the ssm rules allow you to seal the engine with stock air box, Laguna exhaust, etc, and change those parts later? If so, you should be looking at rules that would pervent it.

Ken

[Juan Pineda]

Ken,

WRT to dyno tuning, the original sups said only this about HP tuning and compliance:

"The engine utilized in the car for any session or race shall be sealed by MCE Racing located at Thunderhill Park, Willows, CA [530-934-3237] or another San Francisco Region designated supplier."

There was plenty of discussion and reassurances that the process was thorough, including documentation about the dyno specs and process. See this thread as an example:

> http://forum.specmia...1015;p=0#000000

There were compliance checks where cars were dyno'ed within spec up until now. Then on the first failing compliance check, the rule makers and competitors come to find that the stewards find zero meaning in this sentence because they were not in on the discussion about what sealed means. And the stewards won't accept a compliance process that is not documented in the rule book.

So we are in the curious position where all the competitors are nodding in agreement about what sealed means and that a 121HP car is non-compliant, but the stewards can't enforce it. Even Doug will agree that a 121HP car is non-compliant as you can see he was a major proponent of compliance and was even encouraging testing of top three after every race.

This is not a matter of someone exploiting a clever loophole in the rules. This is a case of a poorly written contract where all the parties agree, but the contract wording itself is nonsense due to poor drafting.

Yes, the whole thing is stupid.

-Juan

[Doug Makishima]

Sorry I haven't followed up on my original post. I am on vacation in Hawaii, and haven't been interested in reading Spec Miata forum posts...

Here are some further thoughts on why I think there are still problems with the SSM class and rules. Most of this comes from messages that I've already sent to the SCCASFR BoD.


I applaud the rule change, however it doesn’t deal with some of the key shortcomings I discuss below.

Post Sealing Verification: What happens if by no fault or “doing” of the competitor, the sealing process to adjust the HP becomes faulty. Unlike weight, there is no provision for competitor pre-validation before a race. There is no way for competitor to verify for compliance in case the sealing process fails or some other issue causing HP ‘drift’, except for the competitor to pay for a dyno session.

Regarding a DQ with new rules: There is no way to protest the DQ, and no provision for retesting with the driver present like you can for minimum weight. The competitor does not witness the testing, and once it’s done there is no way to call for a retest that supervised by the competitor. No way to challenge that the equipment is out of calibration, etc.
HP Compliance Testing:

Prior to the rule change, if the seals are intact, the car is compliant. Periodic dyno testing has been carried out, but the results generally have not been communicated to the drivers. I can think of four main categories of things that could cause a car to test with too much HP:

1) Unintentional variability: There is “variability” that is being taken into account and acknowledged by the fact that sealing process targets a specific HP reading that is below the actual class maximum HP. If this variability is actually wider than anticipated, it could cause a car to be found above the maximum class HP upon re-dyno testing. This variability may included dyno test results accuracy or natural increase/decrease in HP through mechanical processes (e.g. engine break-in and response to different conditions).

2) Failure of the mechanism used to “set” the HP at the target number (I am not sure how this is accomplished, but it could be vulnerable to mechanical shift or failure).

3) Intentional modification: Competitor has found a way to increase HP via some mechanism that is SMT and SSM legal.

4) Intentional modification: Competitor has found a way to increase HP via some mechanism that is not SMT legal, nor SSM legal.


Procedure for “out of range” readings:

Too Low: It has been observed that a car with very low HP will still be sealed even though it would not be competitive. What’s worse is that the competitors are not informed that their car tested low.

If a car tests with HP that is too high and if the seals are intact, there is no way to quickly determine the reason for the high reading. If the reason is not #4 above, should the competitor by punished (e.g. DQed) for no fault of his own? Minimum weight is easy to test at the track before competition through the use of the free scales provided by SCCA. There is no convenient, no-cost way to test for HP compliance before competition. If a competitor were DQ’d for HP being too high caused by cases 1, 2 or 3 above, the competitor would lose his time and money invested in participating in the race weekend for no fault of his own. Furthermore, if a car tests high, there is no provision to bring the car back into compliance by readjusting and resealing the engine to be under the maximum HP. If a high reading was caused by anything other than #4, should the competitor have to pay for the adjustment?

Here’s another issue: What if there was action taken against a competitor for a high reading? The competitor should be able to protest it, and have the procedure redone similar to the process for minimum weight. This would add even more time to the compliance testing procedure.

So far, all compliance dyno testing during SCCA races have been done after a race. During the season opener, I almost missed the group 5 race due to the length of time the testing process took. One competitor did miss the race due to the testing duration. This is obviously problematic.

Another issue with compliance testing is that it can only be done at Thunderhill. Issues 1-4 above can happen at any track.

Recommendations:
1) Establish a maximum HP/TQ for compliance checks. Done. Thank you!
2) Establish a minimum HP for sealing. Inform competitor that MCE was unable to achieve the minimum HP number. Provide one additional free sealing session to the competitor with failing car so the competitor can attempt to rectify the low HP issue.
3) Compliance testing: Test cars after qualifying session or any time on race day before the race. Make sure the race schedule can accommodate this. After testing, seal the hood and/or have the car monitored. If a car is found to be tested too high, and it cannot be readily determined that it is being caused by #4 above, adjust and reseal the car at no cost to the competitor, and inform the competitor that this procedure has been carried out.
4) Seals: Add additional seals to the intake all the way to the air filter, but not including the filter itself, and also seal the exhaust system. Alternatively, use a standard intake and exhaust for the sealing procedure.

[Doug Makishima]

First: I vehemently deny "doing" anything to the car at all, esp. anything that could be considered cheating. I feel just as much a victim here. I paid entry fees and incurred the cost of that Sunday race. I did nothing to the car except change the fluids, tires and brakes. From my perspective, either the sealing process failed, or the test was inaccurate.

Second: As I mentioned before, my car was tested more than once last season. Also, I had two top SSM competitors tell me that my car does not have an HP advantage over them at two different tracks last season. They judged this by close quarters racing episodes. This leads me to believe that the issue, whatever it was, happened at the season opener either on Sat or Sunday.

Third: Season Opener Sunday race results: Many seem fixated on the track record. Even though there is no way to challenge the results of that test and have it validated, I will agree to relinquish the track record set on that day. The points don't matter b/c I will be running SMT -- can I instead have SMT points for that race?

Note: It is interesting that they did not distinguish between the original SSM w/ pre-sealed engines and the new MCE dynod engines. How do the original SSM pre-sealed engines folks feel about the track records set by the MCE sealed cars?