Wouldn't a car that has this shift quicker and cleaner thereby having a performance advantage over those of us who don't? And if you allow that part, that is cheap from one vendor but could be made with lighter more expensive materials, who determines its "dimensionally equal" and at what tolerance? It's a threaded rod that can be made to any length so is there an advantage to preloading it a bit. Wouldn't it be easier to be able to check compliance at a glance with the stock piece that works just fine?

So they don't shift like my s2000. They also don't turn well, don't accelerate well, don't brake straight or well for that matter but drive like a very good 30 year old porsche!

We're not trying to build perfect race cars, we are building fun, safe, reliable and AFFORDABLE race cars! If you want a heim jointed, perfectly engineered racer join grand am, I'll keep my cheap rubber bushed, sloppy 30 year old car. Let's not nickel and dime us out of racing.

Before anybody says its for reliability I call b.s. A solid mounted shift linkage won't do anything but delete beer money from your atm and might even hurt your car by putting more force on the synchros.

A couple of last things.

I received a query about cryo treating engine parts. The rules allow cryogenic treatment to rotors, but make no mention of this elsewhere. As a practical measure, there is no way to enforce disallowing this. Anyone have issues with specifically allowing this for equal access?

It has also been brought to my attention that the allowance to add oil before dyno runs could be used overfill the motor, increase windage, and decrease HP after the race. This must be done under the observation of a NASA official (if rules are followed), but controlling this by rule is tricky. We could add a line about overfilling the oil sump not being allowed, or be more specific about the oil level - i.e. no more than 1/8" above the full mark. Thoughts?

Finally, we need to get this wrapped up, so I am going to take it back to the series director forum, and getting the rules draft going. So I will be shutting this down in a couple of days. Speak now, or...

I think the cryo treatment is an open ended problem. We dont know what the end effect could be and no way to monitor it. Cant see any reason to make it legal. This is a great example of rules creep that we should avoid.

As much as I dislike new rules there is something that came up from the SpecE30 WSC tech that we need to consider. You can make the car test lower on HP and TQ by allowing the car to be tested to heat soak before getting on the dyno. That is done by letting the car run to the almost over heating point of say 230 degrees or so. A competitor did this at WSC and his car tested quite low. It was not dissallowed by the rules so they had to let it stand. This was a car that finished on the podium.
The solution to this is to define a minimum (we have) and a maximum operating temp of the engine coolant and oil.

I agree that we may need to define the oil level for dyno testing too. Maybe only change the wording to allow oil to be added to the full mark if low.

I am onboard with Joeblow's request for allowing the stock turbo trans-axle cooler set up. There costs are minimal, they are available, and the engineering is most likely better than the homemade set ups currently allowed by the rules.

To echo Jason Stanley in a previous post, different racing environments create different failures. Stating no failures at a national event does not mean others in different parts of the country wouldn't benefit from a a rule change which does not increase performance but does help to preserve the equipment. This is a national class which is run by multiple sanctioning bodies throughout the calendar year. The demands on the equipment are different based on location, sanctioning body (other sanctioning bodies tend to run longer duration races which result in significantly more wear on the cars during the weekend), as well as the time of year (it gets pretty hot here in Texas). I have seen several trans-axle failures here in Texas in the past few years.

Based on the prescribed requirements laid out in the original post- it seems the use of a factory set up to help cool the trans-axle meets each of the four.

Charlie, I do like the wording on the oil fill. If you raced it overfull, then you can dyno it the same way, but if you add oil, only to the full mark. Next we'll be adding dipsticks to tech...

As far as the high temp parameter, I haven't seen 944's lose power as they get hot on the dyno, but then we are almost always running very thick oil. If someone takes the risk of running thin oil, maybe it could be a problem? We already have the most detailed procedure in NASA for dynos, so I am a bit loath to add more parameters. Any other opinions on this?

So I made a call to a well known porsche junkyard asking about turbo trans coolers and costs. They said they don't have the parts separated from the trans and don't sell them that way because most trans are in working condition. They would however sell a complete unit with the cooler for $1500! Those transmissions are very popular with kit car builders so demand is relatively high. Not sure how that's considered affordable.

It gets hot here in Cali as well being a desert and all, in fact I average two pumps a year for my Coolshirt. It gets hot everywhere in this country. I believe someone earlier said that every car in his region is on their original engine but have had several trans failures which doesn't ring true. Also the person proposing rule changes for reliability doesn't race with us yet and has yet to break parts but the current western states champ and former national champ(and I believe he's finished on the podium at every nationals he's attended) has never had a single failure. Who's opinion would you listen to?

I just don't want to have to keep spending money to keep up with the Jones(and b4 you say I don't have to remember the old racers saying,"the guys in front of me are cheating or have better parts and the guys behind are slow").

Having said all this, isn't it legal already to have any cooler you want? The other part of Joes proposal is shift linkage. Again not sure how he knows what doesn't work on a spec car but there you go. You're allowed to modify the shifter to remove slop and this can be done for free with parts in your garage already or go the fancy way like I did and order needle bearing washers from Mcmasters Carr for a few bucks. I'm telling you it works great! Now if I miss a shift its cause I'm in a hurry. His proposal said "any" shifter. That just opens up clever interpretations. Can someone build a sequential shifter or hydraulic? I know of a car that has a short shifter using all the factory parts legally and still shortens the throw. Is it legal?