>Why is it that a lot of people running in stock class are not able to
>understand the meaning of the word STOCK.Sure there are 432 good reasons to
>modify your car. as in;It's faster/safer/more
>fun/dependable/cheaper/better/and
>the one I love,I bought it with a factory defect and need to fix it!
>Stock cars arriving at a event on trailers- think about it,foolish??
>Sport cars towing trailers with a $1000 worth of rims/rubber to run stock
>class(vetts $2000) yes you were sold to the tire Co's so you could change to
>there rubber when you got there,foolish??
>Sid
>Got out of stock
OK, how many "stock" cars are on the road? Quite a few brand new ones,
with a steady progression to basically none once they get 5 or 6 years
old. We're talking tires and everything. Can't get the OEM tires? Maybe
they were never sold in the replacement market, just the OEM market? Too
bad, gotta go to SP. Better check to make sure they run the manufacturer's
recommended pressures while you are at it, can't be doing any cheater
modifications. Oh wait, that's not what you meant. It's OK to change
"reasonable" things. Seems to me that's what we've got. See DG's post on
that. The sway bar rule seems a little odd these days, but if that's the
only real mod we can play with, what's the problem? Might be time to
grandfather it out, but it doesn't seem to be a big issue for many people
at all.
We allow any mods the factory allows (alignment within the range of
adjustment, etc). This makes a car non-stock? We run DOT tires. Yeah,
they're at the extreme limit of that, but DOT says they are street
tires. Even if the manufacturers of the tires don't. We've been over this
argument over and over, and I'd like to find a solution too. We get to
change air filters. Heck, the factory manual tells me I should do that
regularly. They recommend their own, but I would venture to say that the
majority of the non-autocross cars you might call "stock" on the road are
not running the OEM replacement element. If you go to AutoZone, I suspect
that you'll find that their store brand replacements make some high
performance claims. I guess we better not allow them, eh? And shocks. I
don't think I've ever see replacements for sale that didn't make
performance claims. I guess we'd better require the OEM units. And
somehow we're going to have to get OEM specs on them all, and have a shock
dyno available just so we can make sure nobody has revalved theirs or even
just replaced the oil with something thicker. Seems like maybe allowing
aftermarket replacements is the easy way to deal with this sort of stuff,
even if it allows K&N's and Konis.
This "foolish" idea that trailering a stock vehicle is a problem pops up
once in a while, though thankfully not as often as most of the threads of
that ilk. Trailering a car doesn't make it any faster. Doesn't mean the
car isn't streetable (I have to swap tires on the MR2 for every event; I
just choose to do it at home.). Doesn't mean it is
uncomfortable. Etc. Just means that I've made the decision to trailer it
for some reason. Maybe it doesn't hold an alignment very well, and I'm
worried about potholes on the way (I spent 3 years in a Neon - this alone
is a good argument). Maybe I decided to get a car without A/C and that
stretch between Needles and Kingman might be fatal in the car. Maybe I
just don't want to rack up miles on the car. Maybe I can't fit two people
and luggage in the race car, let alone all the other stuff (parts, tools,
coolers, tires, etc). Maybe the race car is getting old and I like the
idea of being able to tow it home if it dies. Maybe it's a lot less work
at the event to take the car off the trailer than it is to unload it and
change tires (getting back to the old street tire argument, even if I was
racing on the same model tires I was driving on the street, chances are I
would have a set just for racing, and for big events I'd want a set with
more tread on them for rain - yeah, that might be the ones being driven on
the street, but it still means at least two sets, and that's impractical in
a lot of cars. Add to that spare tires in case the are needed. Maybe the
car is nervous with the autocross alignment (toe-out alone can do this, and
I don't know of any cars where this isn't adjustable; yeah, it can be done
at the event site but that's just one more thing on the list of things to
do).
I've found that it's a lot less work unloading the car from the trailer
(just under 5 minutes) than unloading all the stuff, changing tires,
etc. And I don't have to worry about how much gas I'm going to get to the
event with. Or if I'm going to get a bad tank on the last fill-up. What's
the big deal? Just a few years ago, after trailering my Conquests for
years, I ran a CRX for a couple of years. That car had to get itself to
events. Since it was a Honda, I wasn't so worried about it
breaking. Since nothing but toe was adjustable, it didn't lose its
alignment. With a little tire trailer, it easily hauled all I ever needed,
even to Nationals (where I carried the OEM struts, all the wheels and tires
I had, and everything else I thought I could possibly need). It got 35 MPG
doing that. It was also noisy and fatiguing on trips. We had to unload
the car at the site and change tires in addition to all the other little
things to get ready for an event. We had to change tires and re-load the
car to go home. If it rained, lots of our stuff got wet. Towing,
everything lives in the back of the truck at the site. If it rains, we
might get wet but the tools and shop manual don't. After the Honda, I went
back to towing. The Neon, due mostly to the lack of A/C but the alignment
issues and other things came into play. The MX-6 because I didn't have a
hitch on it and I didn't want to rack up the miles on it. The MR2 because
of a lot of things - alignment, space, noise, and miles. The truck is
close to 170K miles. I'm not worried about racking up miles on
it. Obviously. I see no real reason why it's any worse to tow a stock car
than any other car. It's certainly easier to drive most stock cars than
most others, but that doesn't make that the only reasonable way to go, or
foolish.
The rules got the way they are by evolving. Most of them aren't arbitrary,
even if they seem like it now. Many of them have an interesting
history. Knowing that history can even make some of them make sense. And
some of them are badly in need of being rewritten so that historical
perspective wouldn't be required. And that leads to evolution....
Paul and Meredith Brown
MR2: "Not the easiest car in the world to work on"
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