Quote Originally Posted by chuck baader View Post
"at least two E36s remained fairly competitive with" who and at what tracks. And 2 out of how many that were built? SIR killed the car, period.

"They still hold the track record at Summit and VIR. " two tracks I'm not familiar with. Road Atlanta (the ARRC) and other SEDIV tracks, I believe, have been eclipsed. Furthermore, in my and many other's opinion, if they don't show up at the ARRC, they don't exist.

"What's happened is that shock and spring tuning, brake pad performance, and engine development on other cars have started to catch up." reinforces my point of development. The e36 was the first car to benefit greatly from the ECU rule and prompted the CRB to kill the ECU rule. Development:026:


"190ish whp. Which at 2850 is still reasonably competitive with the rest of ITS" Until you realize that the RX7 has about that much HP at 2680!
Let's start from the bottom. No, ITS RX7s don't make that kind of power. You've been misinformed. 180, maybe slightly more, is the best they will do. And they are at a huge torque disadvantage to the BMW.

Kill what ECU rule? Everyone has a free ECU now. Everyone takes advantage of it. The VANOS on the E36 did I agree react better to ECU tuning than expected, hence the overdog problem

I repeat: 215-225 whp at 2850 was a HUGE problem. THE single biggest overdog in IT in the last 15 years.

The Robertsons ran their E36 (Taylor and Grafton and their dad) for sometime after the SIR was implemented. THey weren't happy about teh SIR, but they remained reasonably competitive. Mark Andrews ran his car in the CenDiv and I raced against it in the TR at Nashville. Roughly equivalent power it seemed.

I do agree the SIR killed the ITS E36 because it levelled the playing field and people were racing the car because it was the easy button overdog. Those people looking for the easy button -- rather than doing the hard work I've done or Eckerich has done or STeve Parrish or Ron EArp or the ISC guys with the Miatas -- bailed because they didn't want to do the work.

No one that I know has spent any real time developing the SIR. The car may be very compeittive with it if they do. SOme think the SIR really won't impat overall power when tuned right (the Robertsons disagree).

And stop with the homer "if it isn't at the ARRC it doesn't exist" nonsense. The days of the ARRC being the measuring stick for IT competitiveness ended years ago. There is better compeittion in the NEDiv and the SEDiv in ITS than at the ARRC now.