Quote Originally Posted by Knestis View Post
So, the really important question: How many BMWs and other real racing cars have you bashed into with your cheap-o 'merican POS...?



K

EDIT - For those of you not in on the backstory, when I was on the ITAC and it was proposed that these cars would be a good fit in ITS, we ACTUALLY had people object to including them, in public and "official" SCCA communication channels, on the grounds that this would be a problem.
Quote Originally Posted by Ron Earp View Post

Yes, I remember those days of discussion around the pony cars. Pure and utter ridiculousness and exposed the bias some SCCA members have against domestic cars. "It'll spoil the look of the class" was the best line I remember from one of the CRB or ITAC, I can't remember which.
yes, it's difficult to be on a committee and hear such utter crap, especially when it's trounced out as a legitimate reason to exclude a car from a class. "Ruin the look of the class". OMG!! After my shock of hearing that, it dawned on me...Who will SEE the class and how will the damage manifest itself!?!? Our 3.4 average spectators at each event!??

That was one of the more disturbing things I heard while on the ITAC.
And I took obvious heat for publicizing that particular comment. In my eyes, you shouldn't say something on a committee that serves the members if you don't want the members to hear it. I still think that the ad hocs should publish minutes, attendance and voting records.

The only other IT car I've seen gather more interest from passer bys is Jeff TR8. Generally the comments there are from folks who are astonished that a) they are actually seeing one b) it is running c) it is racing without long streaks of fluids, and d) it is winning against actual other cars running at the end of the race.

One more picture of more development, finding the fundamental vibration modes of the driveshaft. Measurements were made with the driveshaft in the car and out on the bench using an acoustic transducer, A/D converter, and some analysis code Jeff G drafted up in MatLab.

Jeff G has his Ph.D. in acoustics, specially engineering vibration type work, and his daytime job is as an acoustical and vibrational engineer for John Deere. Jeff G is convinced his car has a bad vibration that we've tried to kill to no avail. He thinks the driveshaft is the culprit and that we can tune it out by properly balancing the driveshaft.

Me, I was just watching and drinking a beer. My car has a vibration that certainly gets to be pretty bad around 5400 RPM, about our max RPM for a variety of reasons. I think he's on to something and he's devised to tests to check the theory out. Ford had a 110 mph governor on the V6 cars and a numerically low rear end ratio so it is likely they would never see the drive shaft speeds we run and thus no problem would ever be observed.