Nickfromny

In BS the factory Dealer areo mods are not legal. These came with the used car when I bought it. Hoping that these would be allowed in AS since they do NOTHING for performance. Car looks good with them and can not justify throwing away over $1,000 worth of look good Honda Factory parts. Why are these parts not allowed is a SCCA mystery to me. This rulling has STOPED me from attending divisional & national events. If & when I get protested i will either: retire, sell car and get a legal one. Both options stink. Since we are getting bumped up lets get some allowances Please!

kenlola

[QUOTE]By "Todd Morrow" And Ken, we need to talk about a Victoracer or Pilot Sport Cup season, Hoosier battles will leave us both poor.

That would be great. I've always wanted a spec tire that is cheaper to run and if we could organize it with everyone in our class that would be awesome. Even better would be a street tire class so we don't have to change tires at every event. That would also free up some time to help out at events.

Ken

Gregg Lee

In stock, you have stop somewhere. We have never been able to objectively define "not enough to matter" so "no effect" remains the rule. And of course AS and BS are both stock classes so allowances are exactly the same. The only difference is which cars run in them.

But these parts are allowed by SCCA. They are legal in Street Prepared, Street Modified, Prepared and Modified, just not in stock category.

Gregg

GChambers

[QUOTE=kenlola,Sep 24 2004, 10:56 AM] Just an observation from a total auto-x noob, regardless of what they do with the S2000, there should be a true street tire class for every single car. This might make it a lot more attractive for guys like myself that can not justify purchasing an extra set of wheels and a $1000 set of tires every two months to be competitive.

RandyP

What? my $200 Hoosiers are not "true" street tires. Where's my lawyer? How about a horse racing rule where I can claim your tires for $100 each if you beat me.

payneinthe

Sounds good. Just let me get them down to where they're worthless first.

tmorrow

I was only talking about an agreement between locals. Your region does have the authority to create a street tire class if the demand is there. In this case Ken & I will almost always be running together and rarely with anyone else of the same speed. It's just an effort to save us both money but, of course, we'd still have some Hoosiers in the closet for the big events.

Back on topic?
The S.E. was very weak in AS this season. The Divisional level was won by an OE tire STi. The Tour in Ft. Myers was w/o any C-4's and won by a Boxster-S. I worry that we, down here, won't feel the full impact of the reclassing until we hit Topeka and get crushed on one or both courses that have us bogged below VTEC.

Orthonormal

Nick, are you talking about dealer-installed Honda accessory aero pieces, or dealer-installed aftermarket aero pieces? In the former case, the dealer is doing something fairly common for Honda dealers and not that drastic. A lot of people compete in BS with those pieces and I'm not aware of anyone being protested for them. In the latter case, the dealer is acting as a tuner shop and selling you a modified car.

There are a lot of people who modify their cars before they get into autocross and learn the classification rules. It's unfortunate when that happens, but I don't really see any way around it no matter what you do with the rules.

Having an illegal modification doesn't prevent you from entering and competing in divisional and national events. It makes you a target for protests if you beat a lot of people. However, if you really don't think that the mods affect your performance, why not run anyway for the experience, and expect to get protested? If you win the whole thing, you'll know that you really can beat all those people. Then and only then do you have a decision to make about which is more important to you: the appearance of your car, or a piece of wood and your name on top of the results. The $1000 you spent on the aero kit is chump change compared to what people have to spend to set up and operate an S2000 for national level competition.

You can't get an extra allowance when switching classes because all of the stock classes use the same preparation rules. If you could get additional allowances for changing classes, then there would be different rules for each class! That would be total chaos...people have enough trouble understanding just one set of rules. New people get wrong information provided to them all the time. Just think how much worse it would be if the "veterans" giving out advice had to remember and understand the rules to nine stock classes instead of just one stock category?

Orthonormal

We're geting kind of off topic here, but the quick answer is that the SCCA regions are allowed to offer any class that they want. A lot of regions do have street tire only classes and they are very popular. If you'd like to have one, you should talk to your region's leaders. Be diplomatic though...I'm sure that they work very hard for little reward, so offer to help figure out and write the rules, and maybe see if you can do an informal poll of how many people would really compete in the class if it were created.

For an example of a successful street tire class, look at the San Francisco Region website. The Street Tire Rules are in the supplemental regulations, and you can see the participation levels by looking at event results.

GChambers

Thanks for the advice.