Sway Bars w/ Whiteline RLCA Relo Brackets?

[DILYSI Dave]

I was going to let yesterday's tirade go.
I was going to let the out of line PM go.
And then I get on here today and see that Terry continues to make personal attacks. I'm not sure at what point ignoring him passes from taking the high road to being a punching bag. I'm not fond of playing the latter.

DILDO Dave,

I am not going to let this Watts Link issue go. You are CHANGING THE FACTS and I won't stand for it. I know what went down from start to finish with the SPAC and SEB calls. My employees and I have spent upwards of 10 hours talking on the phone with both AC and SEB members about this issue. We took notes, gave reams of information to support our case. We've got all of that saved.

Your piss-poor attitude and aloofness don't work with people like me. I don't back down from morons. I know all about people like you, and your bullshit is too easy to discredit. "Let's weld a Watts Link to a stamped steel diff cover!" Only someone who has NO CLUE what this device does would suggest this "easy couple of hour" fix. You are a know-nothing fool.

But now you've made it personal.

You can keep LYING and trying to discredit my version of the facts, but it isn't going to work out for you. I DON'T CARE WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, or what committee you are on - I won't stand for your bullshit, for you calling me a cheater, or a liar, you PIECE OF SHIT. You are slandering my name and my business with your PUBLIC LIES. Think about that.

Just keep it up. I will show the world what a buffoon you really are.

Sincerely,
Terry Fair - Vorshlag Motorsports

Terry,

I have not called you a cheater. I have not called you a liar. I have not made anything personal. I'm not changing the facts. I have tried to be reasonable and transparent.

I am a frankly shocked that you have chosen to make it personal. So we disagree on the interpretation of a rule? So what? Reasonable people disagree all the time. How we get from a disagreement on a rule interpretation to you laying down a tirade of personal insults is baffling. I'm not real fond of the non-engineer label (given my engineering degree, my state license, my profession, my numerous patents, etc.) nor the non-fabricator label (given the huge amount of successful fab work and happy customers I have). You disagree with my proposal for a potential stop gap. That's fine. Disagree. Why the insults?

Part of what I wanted to do better than some of my predecessors when I got on the SEB was to interact with the membership. I didn't like the black helicopters / bullshit coming out of nowhere / etc. any better than anyone else. So I have tried to maintain a high level of interaction and availability to shed some of that "man behind the curtain" reputation. Having my knowledge, integrity, qualifications, and motives all questioned in public sure doesn't feel like just reward for that.

As an aside - I drew up the "absurd suggestion" for you. Now, I didn't have any actual parts in front of me, so the diff cover was drawn up using some dimensions I found for the flange gasket and going off of pictures for the rest, and the Whiteline part was done just scaling off pictures, so it isn't exact. But going on the "picture is worth 1000 words" premise, hopefully you, or others who could benefit, find it useful. I can run the FEA if you would like, but I assume you will agree that transferring the loads to the axle housing via a weldment out of 1/4" plate will do just fine without ripping the OE cover apart. FWIW, I like this method better than the suggestion of starting with an aluminum cover, mostly because welding cast aluminum is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's butter. Other times it just flat hates you.

Regards,
Dave

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

SEB member # 2 sharing his broken logic on meaningless tangents yet again. This time the infamous MarkA from the Sandbox. How on earth they let your smartass self on the SEB I'll never know. At least you can be funny when you get into the ring. OK, I'll play.

1) There are multiple finned/aluminum diff covers available on various S197 cars from the factory.
2) There are also finned/aluminum diff covers with ACTUAL DIFFERENTIAL FLUID COOLERS on several factory S197 models.
3) Cooling the differential fluid on an autocross car is so meaningless that it is laughable. But again, on any S197 in STX or ESP, this is still 100% LEGAL to add using factory based, street car model parts via update/backdate.

So MarkA's inference that the WL cover with the two plugs to potentially, with additional parts and lines and a pump and a cooler (wow, what a stretch!) and therefore would add some magical, autocross performance enhancing fluid cooling ... oh I mean "other purpose"... is totally and completely MOOT. That facility already exists in OEM parts for this car.

2013 Mustang GT500 factory installed differential cooler

Since there are multiple OEM diff cover/cooler parts legally available to use on all S197 models through update/backdate, that can do so much more than you are obviously aware of, none of your logic holds water in this case.



Beat that dead horse! Keep using broken arguments, over and over. Rinse, repeat. We sent ALL of this to an SEB member early on.

And if you wanted to circumvent this new rules rewrite ... errr... re-clarification.... now interpreted as disallowing alternate diff covers (when unrestricted pretty much meant unrestricted before) you could then expend a LOT of time and money to make a SP/ST legal cover + mount. You'd start with one of these OEM S197 cast aluminum diff covers (which is much stronger than a stamped steel diff cover, much to the SEB's DSILLY Dave's chagrin) and weld and machine and fabricate and make it a bastardized mount for WL Watts propeller. But then you'd be wasting a lot of time and money, to meet a meaningless clarification. When in fact many other ESP competitors had assumed that "unrestricted mounting" meant just that and had been changing diff covers for years. And nobody made a stink... until good old innocent Sammy chimed in here publicly to trash the new Whiteline unit, to protect his bread and butter Fays2 sales. Sam, who is a current member of another SEB "Advisory Committee" and who has been on the SEB. "Protect your own" and all that. But I'm not skeptical of his motives, as they are pure as the driven snow...

"If it doesn't make sense, it must make money"

Thanks for playing,

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Dave... sharing PRIVATE MESSAGES on a public forum. NICE!

"Reasonable people disagree all the time." but douchebags will repost private messages to try to discredit someone, like you have done here.

This is a BIG no-no. You are representing the SCCA nicely, sir! I will ask the site owner about banning you now.

 

[DILYSI Dave]

If your own words make you uncomfortable, maybe you should reconsider saying them. Just a thought.

 

[fun4me]

DILDO Dave

 

[dontlifttoshift]

Anyone with even mild fabrication skills could pretty easily make a bracket that bolted over the stock cover to the diff cover mounting bolts and locates the propeller mount in exactly the same place as that replacement cover locates it.

Mark

Now you're in my wheelhouse. It seems you may be underestimating the loads that a watts link sees. This is what I would call an upper intermediate fab project. I consider myself a pretty decent fabricator but this isn't something I would go after when there are costeffective off the shelf solutions.

And that brings me to the other point I made in my earlier post, the aftermarket diff covers make for a "safe" mounting point for the watts link. As long as the classes we are talking about are street touring and street prepared I will choose the whiteline style watts with its urethane ends over anything that uses a spherical bearing.

 

[JesseW.]

well, this one's about to be closed

 

[dontlifttoshift]

I

Regards,
Dave

Dave, I like that. It is more than a couple hours of work,though.

But step back for a minute and pretend you have absolutely nothing to do with this. Does it really make sense that the piece you have drawn would be legal and the quys with the skill or the money can go that route, but simply bolting on a diff cover (serving no other purpose) is not legal?

 

[19COBRA93]

well, this one's about to be closed

Hopefully not. There's a LOT of good tech in here. Incidentally. And believe it or not, I think we're making headway, from both sides. These discussions aren't always pretty, but sometimes things need to be said so they can get past them and a more open discussion can continue.

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

Dave, I like that. It is more than a couple hours of work,though.

But step back for a minute and pretend you have absolutely nothing to do with this. Does it really make sense that the piece you have drawn would be legal and the quys with the skill or the money can go that route, but simply bolting on a diff cover (serving no other purpose) is not legal?

Not to mention that the DSILLY Dave's Clusterf*ck SCCACover 9000 will NEVER fit the S197 chassis without some serious compromises. There is a major space constraint between the back of the diff cover and the front trunk floor "spare tire well". Dave's giant steel plate monstrosity would be inside the trunk.

Keep sharing your CAD wisdom...

 

[marka]

Howdy,

(sorry about multiple posts originally... I didn't realize anyone cared)

Now you're in my wheelhouse. It seems you may be underestimating the loads that a watts link sees. This is what I would call an upper intermediate fab project. I consider myself a pretty decent fabricator but this isn't something I would go after when there are costeffective off the shelf solutions.

And that brings me to the other point I made in my earlier post, the aftermarket diff covers make for a "safe" mounting point for the watts link. As long as the classes we are talking about are street touring and street prepared I will choose the whiteline style watts with its urethane ends over anything that uses a spherical bearing.

I agree that there are some pretty good loads involved. I don't think that makes a mount hard to fab. If you're really going to spend $1k on it, I hope its gold plated.

There's no question that buying a cover that's already been designed for this is easier. That doesn't make it legal. There are lots of examples in sp where you need to do something the hard way because the easy way isn't legal. Usually the reason for it is that if you make the easy way legal, it opens the door to something (usually custom fabbed) you don't want. Hopefully a diff cover swap allowance won't do that.

Dave, I like that. It is more than a couple hours of work,though.

But step back for a minute and pretend you have absolutely nothing to do with this. Does it really make sense that the piece you have drawn would be legal and the quys with the skill or the money can go that route, but simply bolting on a diff cover (serving no other purpose) is not legal?

Its almost like we didn't think that made any sense and proposed a way to fix it!

So hey, speaking of Fays and a bracket that links the two stub frame rails together...

I'd be a little careful with that clarification letter.

Not to mention that the DSILLY Dave's Clusterf*ck SCCACover 9000 will NEVER fit the S197 chassis without some serious compromises. There is a major space constraint between the back of the diff cover and the front trunk floor "spare tire well". Dave's giant steel plate monstrosity would be inside the trunk.

Keep sharing your CAD wisdom...

Huh. If packaging is that tight, its almost like a combination diff cover and watts link propeller mount _would be serving another purpose_.

Terry, when I met you at nationals this past year you didn't seem to be an idiot. I get that you're mad that you didn't get the answer you wanted on this clarification, but are you _really_ going to sit there and say that you cannot conceive of a bracket that mounts over a factory diff cover that holds a watts propeller in exactly the same location as the whiteline diff cover does?

I'm not asking you if that makes "sense" (because driving in 2nd gear around cones in a parking lot w/400 hp in a pony car is just the most sensible thing around)... I'm asking you if you can honestly say with a straight face that you can't figure out how to do it.

For a guy that's been involved with Solo at the "stupid level" for as long as you have been, you're really not showing much understanding about what it means to be on the bleeding edge of the rules.

And you calling out Dave for bad behavior makes this thread all worth it.

Mark

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

And Terry calling out Dave for bad behavior makes this thread all worth it.

Mark

Hey, DSILLY Dave Hardy called me a cheat and a liar. Scroll back here and you can read it for yourself (apparently Dave forgot that part). So I told him PRIVATELY in a PRIVATE MESSAGE what I thought of him, none of it I am backing down from ONE bit, which he then shared PUBLICLY. And the innocent children had to see adult language in a public place... they are so young, and now they are despoiled. Sharing a PRIVATE message was a very, very douchey move and is a cause for "instant forum ban" in many forums, BTW. I am awaiting some action on this.

Then he belittled the problem with his "simple" autocad solutions (which would never work without cutting the trunk floor out) and made me the bad guy. That's cool.

Dave Hardy - the SCCA's finest public example of professionalism!

So hey, speaking of Fays and a bracket that links the two stub frame rails together...

I'd be a little careful with that clarification letter.

Come on, Mark ... you are falling for the same trap that DSILLY Dave did - thinking you know more about a Mustang's rear suspension than others that actually race them, sell suspension parts for them, and that are engineers and suspension designers working in the aftermarket. Let's slow down for a second and educate another SEB member... (good grief)

You see the black bar that is on the upper left picture? That is the factory lateral brace for the PHB set-up. You can see it above the red aftermarket PHB in the picture above, right. This is a factory piece.

Because of space constraints and a differing arrangement of lateral locating bars from a PHB to a Watts, it isn't possible to reuse this factory lateral brace with virtually any Watts Link kit, so they replace this lateral brace with a new bar of similar size and shape. See pictures above.

So there isn't any additional lateral bracing with the Whiteline Kit. They replace "like for like" on this factory brace, on virtually all Watts Link kits. We'll wait while this sinks in....

Now let's look at the Fays2 Watts Link "girdle", above. This 20-22+ pound massive structure attaches between the framerails, replacing the same factory 2.8 pound PHB brace piece in my picture above. Do you see how this could provide more lateral stiffness between the framerails???? Not that I am arguing that - I am not - I just think it is silly that you could infer that a 3 pound Whiteline brace that serves the exact same function could somehow be stiffer than the factory 3 pound brace. Baffling logic, or an utter lack of comprehension.

Don't make me do this again, Mark, please? Contrary to what you might think, this is not fun for me. I am wasting time arguing BAD logic with people that don't understand the systems they are ruling on. It is a chore. And every time I make an SEB member look like an idiot, I'm seen by many as the bad guy. But I do not like internet THUGS trying to force their broken logic on the masses, especially when they are DEAD WRONG.

Look Mark - this is the kind of CRAP we have got to get away from, guys. We all look like douchebags. You look ignorant, I look like a mean jerk. NOBODY wins when we argue over meaningless minutia.

Remember the SCCA motto: Make it Easy, Make it Fun!

Thanks,

 

[marka]

Howdy,

I just do not like electronic THUGS trying to force their broken logic on the masses, when they are WRONG.

I'm guessing this wasn't meant ironically, but I still LOL'd.



Whatever Terry. You asked for a clarification. You got your answer. Sorry if you don't like it.

Mark

 

[Red_Devil]

Common sense wins again!!!

 

[DILYSI Dave]

Does it really make sense that the piece you have drawn would be legal and the quys with the skill or the money can go that route, but simply bolting on a diff cover (serving no other purpose) is not legal?

It does not. Thus the proposal to make the bolt on legal.

 

[Whiskey11]

I would really like to know how you can test lateral stiffness of a car without making some huge model in a piece of expensive software I don't own...

 

[dontlifttoshift]

I agree that there are some pretty good loads involved. I don't think that makes a mount hard to fab. If you're really going to spend $1k on it, I hope its gold plated.

Nothing is hard to fab, I am reasonably equipped and if you gave me enugh money I could build a particle collider that makes atomic margaritas.

There's no question that buying a cover that's already been designed for this is easier. That doesn't make it legal. There are lots of examples in sp where you need to do something the hard way because the easy way isn't legal. Usually the reason for it is that if you make the easy way legal, it opens the door to something (usually custom fabbed) you don't want. Hopefully a diff cover swap allowance won't do that.

Fair enough, maybe easy shouldn't be legal. But it cracks me up that you would stand behind this decision as logical when there is absolutely no reason to disallow the diff cover other than "it's not in the rules".

When the clarification was made what "core value" was the SEB looking at?

1. Increased participation and involvement?

2. Providing a variety of classes to satisfy a range of economies and commitments?

3. Evolving rules in a planned manner? Pretty sure it wasn't that one.

I'm relatively new to the sport and this is the first time the rules have really bothered me. But in reality it's not so much the ruling as the "that's the way it is because I said so" that gets under my skin.

Maybe that's just the way it is and I should deal with it but if someone would just a give a logical explanation as to why the clarification went the way it did it might help me make sense of this.

 

[dontlifttoshift]

It does not. Thus the proposal to make the bolt on legal.

Dave I was typing when you posted this. But the proposal wouldn't have an effect until 2014, correct?

 

[SoundGuyDave]

In an attempt to bring some sanity to this whole derailed steaming pile, I *THINK* that the two primary parties involved are arguing slightly different points...

Vorshlag's point is that the wording in the rules is that the mounting point for the Watts link is "unrestricted." By any reasonable definition of the word, that means ANYTHING goes, including substituting an aftermarket piece for the factory one. You all have to admit, this makes some sense.

The SCCA's point is that the substituted part CANNOT perform any other function. This ALSO makes some sense, to help prevent rules gamesmanship, like adding subframe connectors under the guise of "jacking rails," or using 1/4" plate steel to fabricate a battery box, in ballast-restricted classes.

The real crux of the argument, from what I can see, is whether the substituted diff cover serves any purpose other than sealing the diff and mounting the propeller bolt. Here's where things get sticky, when you get down to the definition of "purpose." On one hand, assuming you plug the bearing support studs, the Watts-mount/diff-cover does NOTHING else except seal the diff and mount the propeller bolt. No problem. However, the "other purpose" could be construed to be ANYTHING. It's been mentioned that the cover doesn't cool the diff as efficiently as the stocker, so is the "other purpose" to retain heat in the gear lube? Then the part fails the test. The cover has been said to be heavier than the stock piece. Is the "other purpose" to move weight towards the rear of the car? Fail, again.

We can play "what if" or "yeah, but" games forever. Even LEGAL parts can be construed to be illegal if you want to lawyer it around enough, unless they're spelled out in a spec parts list somewhere.

Guys, you really need to just finish this. Now. You're all winding up looking like a bunch of jack-holes, and while this is entertaining to watch from the sidelines, it's gone on long enough. A clarification was requested, the clarification was issued, and from what has been said (by BOTH sides), the clarification was incorrect. However, it IS now an official ruling, and unless and until that is protested/appealed and overturned, it has (apparently) made most Watts link kits illegal.

In the end, it is what it is, and Vorshlag is faced with essentially three options:
1) Pull the Whiteline piece off the car and either use a legal Watts, or go back to a Panhard. Yes, I know, tire clearances, etc, but that will make the car legal for competition.
2) Run the car as-is, and run the risk of a DQ on the basis of a protest.
3) Vote with your feet, and go play in a different sandbox.

FWIW, SCCA isn't the only one with rules drama. In every rule set I've read, from a multitude of sanctioning bodies, there are potential time-bombs. You can either deal, or move on.

 

[marka]

Howdy,

Dave I was typing when you posted this. But the proposal wouldn't have an effect until 2014, correct?

That's correct. Its a rule change just like any other rule change and that happens once every calendar year.

Mark