Saw this tread on another site, cant stop reading the stories of guys trying to get by at tech inspection. Smokey was a friggin genius!!
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162615
Saw this tread on another site, cant stop reading the stories of guys trying to get by at tech inspection. Smokey was a friggin genius!!
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162615
I don't know if it was mentioned, I'm only on page 2 of that link, but my favourite Yunick tale is the basketball in the oversized fuel cell.
Inflate the ball for tech, deflate for the race.
Xceler8x wrote: There are 146 pages on that thread!
You must be refering to the "Ignore" thread, I only see 8 pages.
Carson wrote:Xceler8x wrote: There are 146 pages on that thread!You must be refering to the "Ignore" thread, I only see 8 pages.
NO ignore has 91 maybe 92 pages by now, Its gona be really bad when we dont use clock eny more and use ignore thread.......(ignore)
Volksroddin wrote:Carson wrote:NO ignore has 91 maybe 92 pages by now, Its gona be really bad when we dont use clock eny more and use ignore thread.......(ignore)Xceler8x wrote: There are 146 pages on that thread!You must be refering to the "Ignore" thread, I only see 8 pages.
Ah, I might've noticed if I hadn't been ignoring that entire thread.
Back to topic: I don't like cheating but I do really like stories of reading between the rule book lines.
I swear to god if I read one more reply to that thread concerning the bellhousing supercharger that says "thats a smokey yunick story" I'm going to throw my laptop through the window.
That was a good read. I always heard that the Yunick gas tank story involved the fact that the spare gas was in the roll cage, but I didn't see anybody mention that. I also heard his quote that "It's our job to cheat, and their job to catch us."
Such a cool guy.
Hmm I wonder if AB foam in the rockers really makes a difference in chassis stiffness, I doubt it does, and that stuff burns pretty easily.
I never cheat at tech inspection, but I cheat like hell at insurance inspections
SO much awesome in that thread. Makes me want to start dirt trackin'. The nitrous bottles molded into the hood, fogging straight down into the carb was genius...as were the 200lb. drag slicks to meet weight min.
You've heard the old adage that "Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win."
Apparently, that's not entirely true.
I love the Penske stories of swapping acid-dipped and regular cars behind a trailer. Classic. Or Smokey using a massive filler neck (wound around inside the trunk IIRC) gas tank to hold extra fuel.
I remember watching something on TV about vintage Trans-Am racing.
Sam Posey was talking about having the bores on the motors checked, apparently they only checked #1.
Generally speaking, if you're not cheating somewhere, you're in the minority.
Shawn
a guy i worked with once told me about how his dad used to cheat with his old mustang. he'd run some bigger motor that had a 6-bolt main in, and bondo over the bolts, then paint the whole thing so it looked like the motor they were supposed to be using. then he'd put pop-up pistons on one side of the motor, and flat-tops on the other, so when they made him pull the head, he'd pull the head and show 'em the flat-tops.
Trans_Maro wrote: I remember watching something on TV about vintage Trans-Am racing. Sam Posey was talking about having the bores on the motors checked, apparently they only checked #1. #1 cylinder was left stock bore and all the others were bored out. Generally speaking, if you're not cheating somewhere, you're in the minority. Shawn
Posey also related a story about acid-dipping the Challenger bodies. His car had passed Tech and one of the inspectors paused to chat. The inspector casually (while talking) put his arm on the roof of the car and it "flexed" a bit too much (like, WTF?) and resulted in a "Houston, we have a problem" situation.
The team, to avoid a DQ, found a spectator who owned a Challenger and convinced/bribed him to "donate" his car to fix the problem. The donor car's entire roof panel was then welded on the race car and the team made the race.
IIRC, Penske was noted to have used vinyl roof coverings on the Camaros to help disguise the acid-dipping.
God bless creative engineering!
Great thread!
Back in my very early MX days the 100 class was very competitive and one of the more popular bikes was the Honda SL 100. The SL 125 was externally almost identical, the cylinder on a 100 had '99cc' cast into it and the 125 had '123cc'. One of the local hotshoes had taken a 100 cylinder, pressed the liner out, bored the cylinder and pressed in a 125 liner and put that on a 100 bottom end, giving him something like 118 cc. They used to check engine displacements with a burette, you laid the bike on its side, stuck the burette in the plug hole and measured how much oil it took to fill the cylinder, thus determining the displacement. This guy's fix for that little problem? the stock pistons were flattops, he used a high compression piston. The dome took up enough space to put the burette reading within the normal range. He never got caught; I learned all this about 5 or 6 years later. He showed me the disassembled engine, it was in his garage still.
If you want the straight dope on many of the "cheating" stories, read "The Unfair Advantage" and "Best Damn Garage In Town".
The Nitrous in the cage is a story that went around in Australia relating to the Group C RX7 driven by Alan Moffat, not aware of how true it was though.
But the best one ever was the WRC Toyota GT4 rally car which had a required restricter plate in the turbo, they had a magnificent rerouting which bypassed the restricter, they were not discovered until they were being teched and the bypass slammed shut to the curiosity of the scrutineer working on the inspection. Toyota was banned for several years for that one.
http://homepage.virgin.net/shalco.com/tte_ban.htm
I heard once that back in the 60's a tech was done looking over cars for the day and joined some guys on a team for a beer in the pits. The inspector set his beer can on the roof and it dented. They had acid dipped the body until it was paper thin to shave a few pounds.
I first heard about filling rocker panels and such with foam while watching some tuner show.They were building an R33 Skyline and subscribed to the same theory about increased rigidity.
I despise outright cheating,to me it destroys the activity/sport.Look at bodybuilding;there's the natural division and there is the...other than natural division.It's the same with powerlifting(Don't even get me started on bench shirts and squat suits).
It is a travesty when an inferior racer who is cheating beats a more talented racer who is saddled with what seems to be the heaviest and most detrimental ballast of all;honesty.
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