I'm on board here for no other reason that the harnesses and more so there sheathing is old, crack, and outside the cockpit always nasty and oil covered. I too am building a new, clean-sheet car in my head. The shell will be stripped to the bone and repainted before I start and just the thought of adding a 20 year old, oily harness back the engine bay makes me cringe.

A minimum weight is already speced. There is a potential with complete removal and rewire to shift the weight balance but any balast still has to be added in the passenger footwell so that effect is not entirely huge.

I work at an assembly plant. I did electrical repair on production vehicles for a couple years. I can assure George that repairing to factory specs is not always as pretty as his imagination is leading him to believe and would not always pass his interpretation of the rule.

I've had to buy two harnesses for my current car. Both used. They're still available new from Mazda but come from Japan (weeks of delivery time) and are MUCH more expensive than I could do the wiring for myself. I'm not a huge fan of buying used harnesses because all of them I've ever pulled from RX-7s were in the same shape to one degree or other. Dry rotted from the extreme underhood temps.

Write up a good, strong rule proposal that is for a maintanence and ease and QUALITY of build purpose only. And I will write a letter in support.

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Chris Ludwig
08 ITS RX7 CenDiv

[This message has been edited by C. Ludwig (edited December 25, 2004).]