More Free Stuff!

[takjak2]

Flywheels are free

Radiators are free

Hood vents are free

Coolant tanks are free

 

Bring on the speed creep and cost to compete

[Black Magic]

Not sure what coolant tank and hood vent you know that will change the performance envelope of the series in a major way.... but it sounds like I need some.....

 

Until you see people taping over the majority of the nose of their car and trying to maximize the airflow that goes thru the duct..... I think the series will be fine. When they are using a single square foot of cooling duct with a $3000 rad, then we will have issues. 

 

The flywheel rule most likely has the greatest creep by allowing a car to be lighter, agreed that one would have been nice if it at least forced steel flywheels on people as a gentleman rule. You will be able to lose 5-10 lbs on a car by simply spending, which does sort of stink for the series. The enforcement I think is what made those open, as it would hard to tell what many cars are running. We can do the energy calcs on a flywheel change, but I think you will be very disappointed in the gain given the ramp rates our motors have on track.  

[Clapped Out Racing]

I also dont see how this really hurts speed and cost creep. 

 

We cut our own hood vent and it works great.  But buying a professional one would just make it look nicer with less time invested.

 

My understanding for radiators is some cars were having a hard time finding OEM radiators at a reasonable cost, but chinese alum ebay rads are much cheaper.  We have had over heating issues in the past, but never because a cheap OEM rockauto rad failed.

 

Flywheels...lets be honest, I would be almost everyone was running a lighter flywheel, or at least non-oem, knowing the chance of getting "caught" was really low.  By keeping keeping the clutch within reason, there's only so much a flywheel can achieve. 

[takjak2]

2 hours ago, Clapped Out Racing said:

I also dont see how this really hurts speed and cost creep.

 

Take a top running car. Let's use a "basically stock" 500-point maxed out NC miata as a currently popular example.

Give them hood vents.

Give them a lighter flywheel.

Give them any radiator they want.

 

They're definitely not going slower than they were before.

If you want to catch that car you're going to have to compete on the same level; better get yourself a lightweight flywheel and some hood vents.

That's gonna cost you some real world $$, and it applies all the way down the field. If you want to compete.

 

[turbogrill]

But they made alternators 10pts, so that makes them 5lbs heavier and saves you $269 since you don't have to have a light weight alternator to win.

 

 

[Grant]

7 hours ago, takjak2 said:

Take a top running car. Let's use a "basically stock" 500-point maxed out NC miata as a currently popular example.

Give them hood vents.

Give them a lighter flywheel.

Give them any radiator they want.

 

They're definitely not going slower than they were before.

If you want to catch that car you're going to have to compete on the same level; better get yourself a lightweight flywheel and some hood vents.

That's gonna cost you some real world $$, and it applies all the way down the field. If you want to compete.

We already have a light flywheel, so I guess this frees up points. But lets be honest; lighter flywheels are often cheaper than steel ones (Fidanza replacement friction surfaces are like $60) and a good portion of the field cheats on them anyway. Allowing them helps the non-cheaters.

 

I guess we could now run a custom thinner radiator and save idk 2 lbs? Not sure how it could make us faster. This would let us run a fully welded aluminum radiator for more reliability. That's it.

 

Hood cutting was already free, I guess this just makes aftermarket vents become free? Some of these (like racelouvers.com) reduce lift more than most home-cut hoods would, at the cost of additional drag. I see this as a nothingburger.

 

ChampCar is weird. Teams can show up with stacks of A052s and no one bats an eye, but minutiae like camber adjustment and radiator construction are hotly debated.

[Grant]

11 hours ago, Black Magic said:

The flywheel rule most likely has the greatest creep by allowing a car to be lighter, agreed that one would have been nice if it at least forced steel flywheels on people as a gentleman rule.

Lightweight aftermarket steel and aluminum flywheels are generally about the same weight, but the Al ones have cheap replacement friction surfaces. Also it's really hard to tell what kind of flywheel a car has, but the clutch diameter can usually be seen pretty easily with a borescope. So I think this rule makes sense; just let people run whatever stock diameter clutch setup they want.

 

If ChampCar is worried about balancing car weights the easiest thing to do is just to weigh the cars, not crawl under them and try to figure out what their flywheels are made out of.

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Grant

[MR2 Biohazard]

17 hours ago, takjak2 said:

 

Take a top running car. Let's use a "basically stock" 500-point maxed out NC miata as a currently popular example.

Give them hood vents.

Give them a lighter flywheel.

Give them any radiator they want.

 

They're definitely not going slower than they were before.

If you want to catch that car you're going to have to compete on the same level; better get yourself a lightweight flywheel and some hood vents.

That's gonna cost you some real world $$, and it applies all the way down the field. If you want to compete.

 

As a Miata NC owner I can tell you none of this changes anything.

Hood vents are free, so what. Anyone who wanted one just cut the hood. I did that already and will keep it that way. If the hood vent was free I could buy a plastic one and this could be nice for one simple reason. To keep my hands from getting bloody getting scraped by them. That is it.

Lighter flywheels, sure, steel is and will be free and now alum is free. It was free forever, then added 10 points and now back free. So no real change there.

Radiators. No one overheats now so a free alum radiator just lets us save money. On the NC, I have the stock rad and so do others, done. On the MR2 I can not even buy a stock radiator anymore and if I could find one it was $440 at Toyota instead of $89 on ebay. I have the same stock rad for 8-9 years now in Bio 1 that is fine. Only reasons to replace would be from and accident. I thank them for saving me money.

 

This entire, free stuff equals speed creep is the same argument year after year and is just not real. Some will try to bring up some really one off examples that are not real, but in reality it does not work to solidify the argument side.

 

If you want to control speed creep you need to try to control a few things.  Tires and/or HP.  If you want to go on a rant about speed creep and not include some talk on tires then the talk is really nothing to me.

 

HP might go down for some cars now that fuel is being limited, but that might help with speed creep if people want to go 2 hours still. Though it might make it worse as people that know they can not go 2 hours will need to go faster to make up for their extra pit stop. So in reality the fuel rule might actually increase the speed creep on some cars. It just depends.

[MR2 Biohazard]

10 hours ago, Grant said:

We already have a light flywheel, so I guess this frees up points. But lets be honest; lighter flywheels are often cheaper than steel ones (Fidanza replacement friction surfaces are like $60) and a good portion of the field cheats on them anyway. Allowing them helps the non-cheaters.

 

I guess we could now run a custom thinner radiator and save idk 2 lbs? Not sure how it could make us faster. This would let us run a fully welded aluminum radiator for more reliability. That's it.

 

Hood cutting was already free, I guess this just makes aftermarket vents become free? Some of these (like racelouvers.com) reduce lift more than most home-cut hoods would, at the cost of additional drag. I see this as a nothingburger.

 

ChampCar is weird. Teams can show up with stacks of A052s and no one bats an eye, but minutiae like camber adjustment and radiator construction are hotly debated.

Most radiators add capacity, which adds fluid, which adds weight. If your car does not overheat now a higher capacity alum radiator will make your slower. The MR2 the alum one weights much more than stock and holds a bit more fluid so I would say it might add like 3-6lbs. So an alum radiator actually makes me slower and hinders speed creep.

 

Glad you brought up tires when we talk about speed creep, though the tires will be ignored I bet.

[Grant]

The only free items which have sped us up are brakes and tires. Our Wilwoods save us 36 lbs over the rx8 setup, which was admittedly overkill. RS3-Rs were probably worth 1.5 seconds at most tracks, brakes about 0.4.

[wvumtnbkr]

I'll jump in....   it's not just free items it's lower value on items.

 

I now have a swapped trans, swapped engine, aero devices front and rear, an aluminum rad, coilovers, etc....

 

When we started racing in champcar this car when mostly stock was 540 pts...

 

So, yeah, there has been things that are lower value or free sometimes that are leading to increased spending and decreased laptimes

 

The solution I like for this the best is to give all reliability items for zero points, but jack the crap out of performance items.

 

Double engine swap points, double or triple aero stuff, etc.

 

All the oil coolers, radiators, oil pans, accusump you want...  all free.

[MR2 Biohazard]

1 hour ago, wvumtnbkr said:

I'll jump in....   it's not just free items it's lower value on items.

 

I now have a swapped trans, swapped engine, aero devices front and rear, an aluminum rad, coilovers, etc....

 

When we started racing in champcar this car when mostly stock was 540 pts...

 

So, yeah, there has been things that are lower value or free sometimes that are leading to increased spending and decreased laptimes

 

The solution I like for this the best is to give all reliability items for zero points, but jack the crap out of performance items.

 

Double engine swap points, double or triple aero stuff, etc.

 

All the oil coolers, radiators, oil pans, accusump you want...  all free.

And you need all those items and more to do well with the old car and setup you have, it makes senes. Times have change Rob, it is not 5-10 years ago you are quoting still. 

 

Did I hear you say free accusmp? hehe

[JDChristianson]

15 hours ago, Grant said:

Teams can show up with stacks of A052s and no one bats an eye

Well there have been some pretty eye batting debates over tire limit rule proposals.  The BOD to date has just chosen not to do anything with that issue 

[wvumtnbkr]

56 minutes ago, MR2 Biohazard said:

And you need all those items and more to do well with the old car and setup you have, it makes senes. Times have change Rob, it is not 5-10 years ago you are quoting still. 

 

Did I hear you say free accusmp? hehe

So, you don't like the idea I proposed? 

 

Yeah, the 5 to 10 years is the point.  We are moving away from cheap racing that doesn't require an actual professional race team budget to be competitive.

 

Times have changed indeed....  that is my point.

[Grant]

In terms of the cost to build a top-running car, I don't think much has changed. I did my first ChampCar build 10 years ago with a Z32. Though slower than my current NC it was very quick for its time.

 

Optional items (like spares, daq and video) aside, it was more expensive to build than my NC. This was largely because it was an older car which needed more parts (i.e. everything) replaced. Running costs were higher because it was bigger, heavier, more powerful, and not nearly as reliable.

 

The 2020 rules allowing lightweight brakes did increase top-tier build costs, but that's really all that comes to mind. The winning formula is the same: simplicity, lightness, lots of rubber, and good drivers.

 

Running costs have gone up because of autocross tires.

[petawawarace]

8 minutes ago, Grant said:

In terms of the cost to build a top-running car, I don't think much has changed. I did my first ChampCar build 10 years ago with a Z32. Though slower than my current NC it was very quick for its time.

 

Optional items (like spares, daq and video) aside, it was more expensive to build than my NC. This was largely because it was an older car which needed more parts (i.e. everything) replaced. Running costs were higher because it was bigger, heavier, more powerful, and not nearly as reliable.

 

The 2020 rules allowing lightweight brakes did increase top-tier build costs, but that's really all that comes to mind. The winning formula is the same: simplicity, lightness, lots of rubber, and good drivers.

 

Running costs have gone up because of autocross tires.

I just built my first Champcar but I found one of the most expensive part aside from the consumables is the replacement of OE parts. I had a decent car to begin with but felt we should replace most parts with new and keep the old ones as spares.  This meant a motor,trans, axles, control arms, struts, brakes, alternator, ps motor, tie rods, coils, injectors, belts, wheel bearings, etc etc etc. Stuff adds up.  

[MR2 Biohazard]

31 minutes ago, wvumtnbkr said:

So, you don't like the idea I proposed? 

 

Yeah, the 5 to 10 years is the point.  We are moving away from cheap racing that doesn't require an actual professional race team budget to be competitive.

 

Times have changed indeed....  that is my point.

I think the idea has merit actually. Adjust points for speed adders and have reliability items at zero points. I think I would need to see a structured item list of values and points on different things to see how it would work out, but it could make sense. Though the majority would never go for it, like most things.

 

On your car, let's make it fast again and reliable. You say you have the points. Can we start a new thread and put up the specifics of what you have and we can debate and talk about how to make it fast, reliable and be cost effective. I think we can come up with a good plan and could be there again.

 

To me

89 RX7

VPI 300

18.5 gallons- holy crap I did not realize it was so big. Go 20 gallon fuel cell, being cheap, add .5 surge tank.

Swap calculator 221hp = 395 vpi  Ford/Mazda Duratec V6 rated at 221hp with VVT, or other similar rated. Toyota v6, but that is, though they blow up on me a lot.

395 vpi

40 springs

25 headers

10 wing

10 splitter

10 air dam

10 accusump

make it uber light

Put some big tires on it

 

500 points and you have enough fuel to go 2 hours and speed to beat everyone.

 

What is your setup now.

 

What is your setup now.

 

 

 

[Gearhead_42]

Glad the plastic bilge vents in my hood aren't going to cost me anything again.  One less thing I need to replace/remove. That was one add on last round I just rolled my eyes at.  

 

A little miffed I spent extra $$ to get the SFI rated steel flywheel though.  Meh, at least they didn't outlaw my entire swap drivetrain like 3 years ago!

[mhr650]

17 minutes ago, Grant said:

In terms of the cost to build a top-running car, I don't think much has changed. I did my first ChampCar build 10 years ago with a Z32. Though slower than my current NC it was very quick for its time.

 

Optional items (like spares, daq and video) aside, it was more expensive to build than my NC. This was largely because it was an older car which needed more parts (i.e. everything) replaced. Running costs were higher because it was bigger, heavier, more powerful, and not nearly as reliable.

 

The 2020 rules allowing lightweight brakes did increase top-tier build costs, but that's really all that comes to mind. The winning formula is the same: simplicity, lightness, lots of rubber, and good drivers.

 

Running costs have gone up because of autocross tires.

 

A big difference is that a lot more people are building to a similar standard now. Yes the top tier builds haven’t changed a lot but if you want to score a good result you have to run with a lot more of them nowadays.

[wvumtnbkr]

25 minutes ago, MR2 Biohazard said:

I think the idea has merit actually. Adjust points for speed adders and have reliability items at zero points. I think I would need to see a structured item list of values and points on different things to see how it would work out, but it could make sense. Though the majority would never go for it, like most things.

 

On your car, let's make it fast again and reliable. You say you have the points. Can we start a new thread and put up the specifics of what you have and we can debate and talk about how to make it fast, reliable and be cost effective. I think we can come up with a good plan and could be there again.

 

To me

89 RX7

VPI 300

18.5 gallons- holy crap I did not realize it was so big. Go 20 gallon fuel cell, being cheap, add .5 surge tank.

Swap calculator 221hp = 395 vpi  Ford/Mazda Duratec V6 rated at 221hp with VVT, or other similar rated. Toyota v6, but that is, though they blow up on me a lot.

395 vpi

40 springs

25 headers

10 wing

10 splitter

10 air dam

10 accusump

make it uber light

Put some big tires on it

 

500 points and you have enough fuel to go 2 hours and speed to beat everyone.

 

What is your setup now.

 

What is your setup now.

 

 

 

I mean....  we finished on the same lap as the miata that is causing a good bit of drama (we finished in 2nd place).

 

Reliability is just new build dramas.  (Engine mounts failing.  Exhaust failing)

 

My point is that we spent a ton of money to basically stay on the podium.

[MR2 Biohazard]

42 minutes ago, wvumtnbkr said:

I mean....  we finished on the same lap as the miata that is causing a good bit of drama (we finished in 2nd place).

 

Reliability is just new build dramas.  (Engine mounts failing.  Exhaust failing)

 

My point is that we spent a ton of money to basically stay on the podium.

I think it is one of those, if you look back at all the money you spent, was it spent right. I know I can say, nope, should not have done A-Z, but that one thing helped. Live and learn.

 

With the massive amount of fuel you have and swap hp potential you have it made.

[wvumtnbkr]

1 hour ago, MR2 Biohazard said:

I think it is one of those, if you look back at all the money you spent, was it spent right. I know I can say, nope, should not have done A-Z, but that one thing helped. Live and learn.

 

With the massive amount of fuel you have and swap hp potential you have it made.

Sure, I have instances of not picking the right part here or there.

 

However, the racing is not any better now that we go 10 to 15 seconds faster at tracks.

 

The engine, trans, driveshaft, coilovers, aero, etc I bought to be at the same place sure as he'll wasn't free....

[mender]

53 minutes ago, wvumtnbkr said:

Sure, I have instances of not picking the right part here or there.

 

However, the racing is not any better now that we go 10 to 15 seconds faster at tracks.

 

The engine, trans, driveshaft, coilovers, aero, etc I bought to be at the same place sure as he'll wasn't free....

How many race weekends worth of investment did you have to make just to keep pace with the speed creep? And how many hours?

 

You'd think that a race series would try to keep the car costs down so teams could race more times per year and put more money into the series' coffers. Also, have rules that keep the running costs down as well. Seems like good business practice.

 

 

[MR2 Biohazard]

2 hours ago, wvumtnbkr said:

Sure, I have instances of not picking the right part here or there.

 

However, the racing is not any better now that we go 10 to 15 seconds faster at tracks.

 

The engine, trans, driveshaft, coilovers, aero, etc I bought to be at the same place sure as he'll wasn't free....

The only series that I know of that has not changed and still slow is Lemons. I personally like that we are going faster. BTW - we did a 2:46 at Road America in 2012 and now would do like a 2:43. The series has really not gotten that much faster, people are just figured out how they should go fast and go series. Now everyone is up to speed. The real recent speed creep is from experience and tires. Why do you think I harp on tires so much. If you have had to make up 10-15 seconds a lap from the past then you were going far to slow back then.

1 hour ago, mender said:

How many race weekends worth of investment did you have to make just to keep pace with the speed creep? And how many hours?

 

You'd think that a race series would try to keep the car costs down so teams could race more times per year and put more money into the series' coffers. Also, have rules that keep the running costs down as well. Seems like good business practice.

 

 

The real cost difference for us, assuming inflation is the same, are really tires now.

[collinskl1]

9 hours ago, MR2 Biohazard said:

The only series that I know of that has not changed and still slow is Lemons.

You might be surprised. The guys that actually show up to race are pretty fast these days. Some of them are Champcar fast, but it certainly isn't the whole field. Still lots of parade float chicanes running around.