914Driver wrote: There were stories about Sam Posey dipping the Challenger, Tech Inspector leaned on the roof and crumpled it. Could be a rumor.
I heard that Donahue was talking to one of the tech inspectors, and he leaned back against the acid-dipped Camaro. He felt the fender crumple under his butt, so he just casually crossed his arms and kept shooting the breeze until the inspector left. They had to push his butt-print out of the car before anybody saw it.
Touring car racing was huge in the 80's between Ford and BMW with the Cosworth and M3, both used to bend the rules outragesly, but didn't protest each other when in Europe. When they went down under to the Bathurst race, most of the Cosworths got thrown out as they had tweaked the front fenders to get more tire clearance. Also when Tom Walkinshaw got caught for illegal inner rear fenders on the Rover SD1, he claimed at first it was an 'export only' shell used for Africa.
One of the simplest, yet most effective stories I heard out of NASCAR was out of Talladega a few years back. The teams used to run ultra-soft rear springs to get the rear spoiler as low and out of the airflow as possible. NASCAR mandated a minimum rear spring rate to combat that. One team stacked washers underneath the roof flaps so that it broke the Coanda effect, and the air didn't follow the rear window down to the spoiler.
They also got incredibly busted.
In reply to Will:
few years ago a team at Daytona modified a set of trunk pins so that during qualifing the trunk lid would sink and get the spoiler out of the air.
The vinyl looking top is textured paint that was supposed to break up airflow like the dimples on a golfball,
Unfortunately the roof skin started to peel of, possibly from excessive acid dipping and needed to be beaten and duct taped back in place. That is Richard Petty out of the car helping beat it back.
Adrian_Thompson wrote: I've heard of narrow poly bushings in the center with bits of stock rubber stuck on either side in Showroom stock and stock autocross. Also acid dipping the brazing all seams on a Mustang bodyshell for A sedan. The braze gets sucked into the joint so isn't visible like a seam weld. Once painted it looks stock.
I've read stories of well-connected people pulling body shells off of the assembly line, stitch-welding the whole thing, then having it put back on the line for sealing/painting/undercoating, which would hide the work.
I've had a chance to hang around the Vee guys for a few years and hear all kinds of stories of people trying to get the extra half horse power out of the 1200 air-cooled motor. Seems that once a group of racers is caught the simply get the offenses voted in as legal. $1200 for a thin walled tube intake is ridiculous.
It was found that you could heat up the material and force a steel ball through the manifold to open up the curved sections of the stock manifold and be measured as legal based on where the measurements were taken from. Problem is you had to make sure not to split the manifold open.
There was so much stuff going on in Firestone Firehawk back in the day...
Crank dampers being removed and re-installed two degrees behind, so that if the book said you were supposed to be at 6 and a half degrees BTDC, you could go as much as 8 degrees, and it would read 6 under a timing light.
Hollow sway bars, brake packages that were on a limited run car that was sold only in Australia (Roush started that with his V8 Merkur in Trans-Am), Aluminum drive shafts, to name just a few.
I remember the Pontiac T/A guys would put really weak plastic rivets in the front access panels under the nose of the T/A's, so that when they bump drafted, the rivet would fall out (or just loosen up enough) to form a brake duct for the front brakes.
a friend of mine tells the story of bringing his car to impound knowing it was under weight .... they had a large cooler there full of ice water so he took a huge beach towel and totally soaked it in the cooler ( weighed several pounds) and dropped it in the floor boards then when his turn to be weighted they pushed the car up on the scales and he deliberately left a water bottle on the roof .... the inspector went nuts .... " take that bottle off ... you know you can't leave it there" .... " oh sorry, sorry " with a very embarrassed sounding voice ... they passed weight by something like 2 - 3 #'s
914Driver wrote: I remember a car talk show where Posey was talking to another driver (don't recall who) about the old Trans Am days. One driver said: "Sure, we kept a little under the seat, why; where'd you keep yours?" Agast and feigned shock that anyone would suggest cheating, he finally mombled "Under the dash."
A little what may I ask?
Will wrote: One of the simplest, yet most effective stories I heard out of NASCAR was out of Talladega a few years back. The teams used to run ultra-soft rear springs to get the rear spoiler as low and out of the airflow as possible. NASCAR mandated a minimum rear spring rate to combat that. One team stacked washers underneath the roof flaps so that it broke the Coanda effect, and the air didn't follow the rear window down to the spoiler. They also got incredibly busted.
just a couple of years ago at Daytona..Michael Waltrip had the top of the windshield in one of his cars (maybe his) milled a little bit thinner than the rest of it.. when they screwed it down, they left it loose so that it was flush with the roof like it was supposed to be and looked kosher, but at speed it got pushed down about 1/8" or something like that, which left a 1/8" lip around the top of the windshield that deflected a little bit of the air up and over the rear spoiler without any sort of a drag penalty... it got caught after practice after the qualifying races were all done and earned him something like $50k in fines and i think they started the season with negative points.
it was one of those things that they didn't have a rule for- seriously, who doesn't screw down the top of their windshield?- but they nailed him with the catch-all "actions detrimental to the sport of stock car racing" that they use when they want to bust someone for something that isn't technically illegal..
A buddy who races Spec Miata says there is an incredible amount of cheating that goes on. (No!!! Say it ain't so! 
) One story he told me: it seems that it can be a bit difficult to get hot air out of the engine compartment and this can mean a couple of HP. So he's on the grid, waiting to start, sees a fellow competitor's car which looks just fine. Green flag drops and off they go. Fellow competitor is next to him on a straight, something looks funny. Next chance he gets, my buddy glances over and sees that the rear of the hood is open about 1 1/2". In a turn, it's closed. On the straight, it's open again.
Back in the paddock, he is over near the guy's car and starts looking as closely as he can at it. It turns out the hood latch had been modified; the hook opening had been enlarge and the mounting holes slotted. At a stop, the rear of the hood was even with the cowl. At speed, the airflow through the engine compartment combined with the air rush over the hood would push the rear of the hood open and exhaust hot air.
Curmudgeon wrote: A buddy who races Spec Miata says there is an incredible amount of cheating that goes on. (No!!! Say it ain't so!
The funniest part about this is that spacing your hood like that doesn't work that well on a Miata, if at all.
SOMETHING was opening that hood!
I know it certainly works on the RX-7 for getting hot air out.
Heh, i was unclear. I'm sure something was opening the hood and it probably wasn't terribly hard to do... i'm just saying that there's really no benefit to spacing your hood like that on a Miata. Might help your underhood temperatures a little bit, but will also decrease the efficiency of your cooling system.
Anyone else read this and go "these are some good ideas?"
mndsm wrote: Anyone else read this and go "these are some good ideas?"
If I could get the cash to go back NMRA Factory Stock racing, about the only thing "factory stock" about it will be the body shape and the mandatory stock pieces I have to keep.... I have plenty of ideas that class hasn't seen yet....
In reply to mndsm:
that's really the only reason i keep coming back to this thread. 
racerfink wrote: There was so much stuff going on in Firestone Firehawk back in the day... Crank dampers being removed and re-installed two degrees behind, so that if the book said you were supposed to be at 6 and a half degrees BTDC, you could go as much as 8 degrees, and it would read 6 under a timing light. Hollow sway bars, brake packages that were on a limited run car that was sold only in Australia (Roush started that with his V8 Merkur in Trans-Am), Aluminum drive shafts, to name just a few. I remember the Pontiac T/A guys would put really weak plastic rivets in the front access panels under the nose of the T/A's, so that when they bump drafted, the rivet would fall out (or just loosen up enough) to form a brake duct for the front brakes.
I worked comms in the tower once for a Firehawk endurance race. I suspect there were several teams not using Firestone tires for the entire event. Pit hauler would come flying down from the paddock with the tires under a tarp just as the car hit pit lane. Tires were changed, pit hauler would lazily drive back up to the paddock with the old ones (uncovered). Lap times would drop 1-2 seconds a lap (there was a window between Race Control and T&S, we could see the screens). Next tire stop, pit hauler was already parked behind the rail. After the stop, tires went back under the tarp and were hauled back to the paddock like a bat outta hell.
It's not cheating if the rule doesn't say you can't do it! That's innovation, and it's usually pretty cool. (Just to clarify - Eckman hiding a nitrous bottle in his oil tank = cheating; Smokey running a 6 gallon fuel line = innovation).
This article is great: http://www.motortrend.com/features/112_0504_unfair_advantage/viewall.html
The drag racing guys have a lot of interesting ones. Super Stock racers (loose tolerances in the motors) putting a little nitromethane in the oil so as the engine eats some making a pass it actually makes more power.
Another is they would check the temperature of the fuel right before the burnout box (chemistry/physics - a colder fluid is denser, which = more power). They would fill the bottom 3/4 of the tank with the coldest fuel they could go and top it off with warmer than minimum. When the NHRA took a pipette off the top they were free and clear.
Swank Force One wrote: Heh, i was unclear. I'm sure something was opening the hood and it probably wasn't terribly hard to do... i'm just saying that there's really no benefit to spacing your hood like that on a Miata. Might help your underhood temperatures a little bit, but will also decrease the efficiency of your cooling system.
Probably so. The best part of the whole thing was that in tech the hood was even with the cowl so no red flag went up. The 'system' was completely self operating, the hood only went up when the car was generating enough airflow.
The Yamaha kart thing reminded me of another deal I saw many years ago. The 100cc motocross class was big and hotly contested, a lot of the riders had Honda SL100's. The Honda 100 and 125 engines were basically identical except the 100 had '99cc' and the 125 had '123cc' cast into the cylinders, they shared a common stroke but different bore. One guy got a 125 cylinder, heated it till the sleeve came out, then did the same with his 100 cylinder. The finned part of the 100 cylinder was then bored, heated, and the 125 sleeve slipped into it. Voila: a 125 cylinder with the '99cc' casting. But that's not all! The 125 cylinder sleeve received a high compression domed piston which, if displacement was checked by the burrette method, took up about enough room to make it look like a 100 with a 3rd oversize piston, which was legal. Sneaky.
The same guy later removed the charging system rotor, cut the end off the crank and built a 'total loss' ignition system powered by a 6v lantern battery. It was good for about 40 minutes. That was legal, since there was no rule prohibiting it. The damn thing revved like a 2 stroke. Since the little motors redlined at something like 9500 RPM the quick revving was not a problem.
Anyone ever noticed how fast some of those cars in the 'factory appearing drag's' are. I would bet most of those guys could write books on this subject
I heard one guy talking about just how far you could alter the wheelbase before anyone would notice.
In reply to ronholm:
The actual FAST class (Factory Appearance, Stock Tire) literally has no rules outside of outside appearance, on purpose. 550+ ci strokers live in those cars. The best one was the guy with aluminum heads who sand blasted the outsides so they looked like the real iron ones. The innovation in that class is actually really cool.
As for the wheelbase thing, I forgot about how common that was in drag racing! You simply made one front side a little further forward than the other, like maybe an inch. You would "deep" stage the longer front in essence, so the car would only have to run 1319'11", making you quicker without actually being quicker.
Look back to the thunderbolt arriving at drag strips in 1964.......it originally had a fiberglass bumper, but nhra went ape E36 M3......so ford had aluminum ones stamped out that were conveinently lighter than the glass one. Those cars also wouldn't meet minimum weight without a full tank and some extra help.
Donebrokeit wrote: Back in the 90s I purchased a Dodge Omni GLH turbo car that was used for road racing (SS I was told), anyway I was going through checking this that and the other and noticed the hazard lights did not work and the pull button for the hazards felt "odd". So I was looking at pull button (located on the steering column) and the button pulled off but was not brokenafter a closer look I realized there was no switch in the steering column? But instead a small open tube (WTF) At this point I was not sure what to make of this so I started to take the steering column apart and discovered a small tube (not factory) running towards the dash area. At this point I am very interested in what the hell this tube is used for, I trace the hose that supplies the MAP sensor with vacuum and boost pressure
Paul B
A few years back, I went to a Shelby Dodge Auto Club event here in MA, and a guy who ran the parts operation for Shelby during the Dodge days in the 80's was a guest speaker. Among all the awesome stuff he shared with the crowd, he told stories of 1987 CSX Showroom Stock cars having two computer maps: one stock and one that would give it a few extra PSI of boost, and certainly enough to make a winning difference. He said the secret map was accessible by cycling the key on in a certain sequence. After that, the high boost map would be switched on and they would win races. Right from the "horse's mouth". 
That show and that story are the reasons why I have a 1987 CSX sitting (in pieces) in my garage right now.
Sounds like the same person or at least the same story.
Fun fun
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