Phil Trenholme wrote:
> If this seems too long just read the last line in Part II.
>
> Last Tuesday, NASCAR fined Jeff Gordon's crew chief (the head coach of
> Gordon's team)
> $25,000 for using an illegal intake manifold during a race. (Stick with
> me/you won't need
> to know what an intake manifold is.) Gordon himself got stripped of 100
> Winston Cup points
> (the points they add up to determine each year's champion).
>
> Gordon won the race in question, but the interesting part is: Even after
> it came out he'd
> been cheating, the victory stood. Gordon kept all the prize money, too.
> His Winston Cup
> ranking didn't change a bit after losing the points. Indeed, the whole
> thing's already been
> forgotten.
>
> Lesson: Cheating in NASCAR is sort of expected.
>
> Last year, I spent some time with NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield's team.
> One of the pit crew
> guys, in a moment of candor, told me that in this sport cheaters are
> actually admired.
>
I don't condone cheating, but I enjoy the stories about it and the
cleverness of it from an engineering standpoint. (Intellectual interest
only, dontcha know)
Of course everybody's heard of Smokey Yunick's 7/8 size Camaro, his fuel
line that held gallons of gas, etc. But here are a few that I found most
amusing"
Rear cylinders larger displacement, so when the officials "pumped" the
engine to determine displacement, they had to pump a front cylinders because
the rear ones were blocked by body and chassis members.....
One team was always generous in loaning the NASCAR inspectors their
precision measuring tools, in the early days -- the measuring tools were
purposely mis-calibreated to read the 'right' direction.
Or how about in the early days when each team made their own restrictor
plates, and NASCAR just checked them -- at least one team made theirs of a
material that caused the holes to grow with temperature.......
But here are a couple of very very recent ones --
Tiny holes drilled in the head, between the outside and just under the valve
seat, to give more inlet area -- nearly impossible to detect
Pop-off valve in bottom side of intake manifold for same purpose, but this
one is easier to find
--
uncle jack and New Blue
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