We go on at length every once in a while about what the "founding fathers" intended and the fact that the "1968" rule has been on the books since Day One is indeed a suggestion of intent. (Given when the national IT rules were first published, 25 years is just about right on, BTW.)
On the other hand, if we don't take "extraordinary measures" to keep old cars on IT life support, then they will wither naturally. We just have to defend the basic substance of the rules by standing fast against the tactic of, "I can't find (whatever) for my car, so may I please use (whatever) instead?"
On the washer bottle issue: Understand that threats to the category exist in two very general terms - failure to change and TOO RAPID change. Right at this point in IT history, we are on the back side of the biggest changes the category has seen in its life. Many of you weren't even involved WAY back in 2002 when the Neon was still an ITS car and concept of using a repeatable process to establish IT race weights was pretty much roundly condemned as "impossible..."
Given this, it is probably too easy to go with the organizational momentum and "fix" all of those stoopid blue laws - unless you understand that a major reason that IT is even still around TO fix, is that those rules (no guarantee, regional only, etc.) prevented any meddling. IT came out of its stasis less than 5 years ago but to that point, it hadn't suffered the death that plagues most club racing classes - the gradual eroding of the category by incremental changes to little rules. Coined "rules creep" (someone needs to look in the archives and find the first use of that term), this is the gradual "nibbling to death by ducks" that naturally occurs with rules-making processes and constituencies like ours.
Bob gets the board to vote out washer bottles.
Carol lobbies successfully to get rid of the wipers, because the washer bottle logic worked.
Ted makes a convincing argument for removal of the HVAC unit.
Alice wants to use the area previously occupied by the now-empty rain tray/behind dash area for cage bars, to make her car safer...
If you think I'm being alarmist because I see a straight line from that to tube chassis, you - with all due respect - don't understand the history of this game. Or you don't understand that IT dodged this bullet by the same forces that require you to have a washer bottle...
...and but shutting off those forces, you kill the constraints that have worked (completely accidentally, I'm convinced) until just recently.
BUT, hey. Whatever y'all want. Just don't say that you weren't warned. 2012 seems like a long way off but it's only as many years as it was ago, that Amy was fighting for the right to race against Acuras and the like in ITA.
K
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