IT should really think about welcoming Older SM's....... Without a new class..

[Chip42]

mike - I know I'm feeding bears here but:

1) depowering rack has the knock-on request to remove the PS pump. I know, crazy talk! anyhow, with that little power sapper removed, the output of the engines is thuss made different from the number we are starting with in the calculations that are generally referred to as "the process". WHAT WE KNOW (tm) is an often used mechanism to adjust the weight of car where the HP output is documented well enough for us to adjust to that number rather than a theoretical gain percentage over stock advertised hp. we do this on a handful of cars but theres a lot of cars we know diddly about in the ITCS so this isn't a practical way to overcome the issue. As stated above, the process is imperfect, but allowances that change that initial hp number and aren't 100% to all cars (some don't have power steering to start with, everything has an exhaust and all of them are restrictive to some degree) "unblance" the output. yes, I know the "noise" of the system is enough to hide this influence.

2) upDated diffs are currently not part of the class philosophy of improving what was found in showrooms of the USA. we allow alternates or modifications to stock units to keep the one wheel peel to a minimum but do nto allow replacments of the pumkins, transaxles, etc... which is what is needed in the case of the 1.6 - 1.8L NA miata diff swap. you are correct, it doesn't make the car go faster, only more often. but it is a significant change from current philosophy and THATS where the line is being drawn. it's a classic case of be careful what you wish for, and all you have to do is look at the current "max build" in IT vs. the letter of the rules and it' seasy to see that "these cast manifolds are cracking, let the guys run headers" turns into "lets send the car to a specialist fabricator to mock up a set of stainless steel 1-off headers based loosely on calculations from one of two software models or straight mathematics then tune the lengths to suit the motor on a dyno. when we're done we'll go back and try a bunch more configurations with different length between stepped primary pipes, relocating collectors, tr-Y and 4-1, mergine both sides of the V, ...." as the popular adage goes, you get the IT you want.