Project Update for February 21, 2013: I've been dreading this update for more than two months, but I have to write it one last time here and then we can move on. I'm only putting this in the thread to explain why we are leaving SCCA competition for 2013, since that has been a part of this build since 2010 (and has been a part of my life since 1987). Once this is posted I am not going to "re-argue" this whole mess again - since I have already done that in other threads/forums. Please don't crap up the thread with more questions about why we are leaving the SCCA, or suggestions how we can get around the new, borked rule re-write that has now banned 80% of the Watts Links on the market for SCCA use. You can send me PMs or emails, but I won't likely get into it further. We've already been over this dozens of times with other folks inside and outside of the SCCA, and have wasted enough time trying to find a work-around. It doesn't exist - there is simply no way for us to race any of our S197s in SCCA Solo for 2013. Their ruling is final and nothing is going to change the SCCA's ways, other than continued membership attrition.
That first half of my thread update is pretty negative, but there's no way to dress it up nicely. Luckily the second half of this thread update is a bit more positive - we cover the current and future status of our 2013 Mustang GT, touch on a new letter we have written to the SEB about moving the S197 to STU class for Street Touring use, introduce some potentially big news for Mustangs and hopefully Vorshlag for 2014, and briefly discuss the next few mods we have in store for our 2011 GT in the coming weeks.
Let's get this first half over with. If you already know this story, feel free to skip to the second half.
SCCA SPAC/SEB Bans Alternate Differential Covers (and most Watts Link Kits) in Solo
As many of you reading this know, Vorshlag was one of Whiteline's first testers for their S197 Watts Link kit. We talked about their products in this build thread, installed and tested their Watts Link in August 2012, and then used it at the 2012 Solo Nationals and all competition events and street driving since. We have had excellent results with this kit and have been selling many of them since it went into production. Rock solid unit. One of the only units on the market that doesn't have metal rod ends, which gives this the Whiteline Watts kit a silent, street friendly function - but it still works extremely well in autocross and track competition with big 315mm R compounds and aero.
So after the 2012 Solo Nationals, someone with some pull in the SCCA piped up online and said "that Watts Link is illegal because it changes the differential cover!". Ludicrous, I said.
The mounting is unrestricted and the most common mounting for any Watts Link propeller is to the differential cover. This is the way most factory units are installed and the vast majority of aftermarket units as well. It is the most logical way to mount the point on the axle that attaches to the lateral links and chassis for the Watts Link.
We didn't hear a single ESP competitor complain about any potential Watts Link illegalities at the 2012 Solo Nationals.
To clear this up before we spent upwards of $50K building our 2013 GT for ESP class and getting a silly protest at a National event in 2013, we asked the Solo Events Board (SEB) for a clarification. Big, big mistake. You see I felt like this was just a formality, because this style of Watts Link mounting is by far the most prevalent and has been in use for decades in SCCA Street Prepared. Logic would prevail, the clarification would be simple, and the obvious answer would remove any doubt about the legality of the Whiteline Watts link and the other seven brands for the S197 (Cortex, Griggs, etc) that also relied on an alternate differential cover for their kits. These units had many years of precedent in ESP class without issue.
But this is the SCCA, and logic often has
nothing to do with their decisions.
This is the same group that argued about removing 0.5 ounce badges from cars,
for two years. So I should probably not have been surprised when a 8+ week discussion took place within the Street Prepared Advisory Committee (SPAC) and then the SEB. And they finally ruled, "you know, we don't think the original rule writers
meant that..." and they changed the rule, banned our preferred Watts Link kits (plus many other brands), and our next S197 ESP project was doomed.
To get a clear sense of the history of this rule and how this re-write went down, let's look at the original Street Prepared "solid axle" extra rule set that we felt clearly showed this and many other a Watts Link kits were legal:
2013 SCCA Solo Rules said:
15.I Solid axle suspension allowances:
1. Addition or replacement of suspension stabilizers (linkage connecting
the axle housing or De Dion to the chassis, which controls
lateral suspension location) is permitted.
2. Traction bars or torque arms may be added or replaced.
3. A panhard rod may be added or replaced.
4. The upper arm(s) may be removed, replaced, or modified and the
upper pickup points on the rear axle housing may be relocated.
5. The lower arms may not be altered, except as permitted under
Section 15.8.C, or relocated.
Methods of attachment and attachment points are unrestricted, but
may serve no other purpose (e.g., chassis stiffening). This does not
authorize removal of a welded-on part of a subframe or bodywork to
accommodate the installation.
That bit there about
unrestricted mounting for lateral locating devices, to me and many others we have spoken with, meant
unrestricted. You can weld, fabricate, unbolt and do pretty much anything necessary to make the Watts Link fit a solid axle car.
UNRESTRICTED is a pretty damned forgiving term, and that wording has been in place for many years. Since the rule, as written, called out that you
couldn't remove welded on part of the subframe or bodywork, then a
bolt-on differential cover seemed like fair game. Remember - we had unrestricted mounting boundaries. And we had spoken with several competitors in ESP class at Nationals that themselves had alternate diff covers, simply because this rule so clearly allowed it. This has been the working interpretation by competitors for this class for ages. It wasn't like we were trying to
sneak a Corvette in under this solid axle allowance, just use the most common sense, most prevalent mounting method for aftermarket Watts Link kits. Nobody actually running in ESP class has ever said a thing to me about our Watts Link mounting. It has, as far as we can find, NEVER been an issue of protest in this class at any level. And of course, it offers no competitive advantage over other methods of attachment.
Until a certain someone, who sells a
competing Watts Link brand and therefore has a
business reason to block the Whiteline unit, made a public prolongation that "that brand isn't legal!". And this someone is on an SCCA Solo rules advisory committee.
So here was the long awaited, much debated re-write of the rule (linked
here.)
SCCA FasTrack said:
#9767 Watts Link Clarification
There is no allowance to replace the differential cover. Modifications to the original differential cover are permitted, but replacing the entire differential cover would be outside the scope of the current allowance, which is intended to permit any method of attachment, not wholesale replacement of parts to which the attachment is made.
Wow, that is some tortured logic. They just redefined what unrestricted means. Somebody call Merriam Webster and tell them their definition is all wrong.
But then, immediately after making this ruling, the SEB/SPAC proposed a "fix", an all new rule proposal to
allow these alternate differential covers and then make these common Watts Link mounting styles legal once again. This was printed in the very same
FasTrack publication:
Feb 2013 FasTrack said:
#9961 Differential Allowance
The SPAC and SEB would like member feedback as regards allowing alternate differential covers, either (1) for all cars via adding a new 15.10.CC: “Differential covers and attaching hardware may be replaced.” or (2) only for solid axle cars via adding a new 15.8.I.6: “Differential covers and attaching hardware may be replaced.”
That's great, and I agree heartily with this change... but due to the obtuse and excruciatingly slow way the SCCA works
most times, this new rule will take
A MINIMUM OF ONE YEAR to undo the damage their clarification has done. That is what I have a big problem with: they chose to do this the SLOW way. These committees could have fixed this in one single technical bulletin clarification, with no year long sentence of "illegality" for eight brands of Watts Links.
Left: The now-illegal differential cover. Right: The complete Whiteline S197 Watts Link kit.
There were many reasons to be disappointed by the SEB ruling on the Watts Link allowances. Some are selfish - as Vorshlag recommends and sells the Whiteline Watts Link that is directly affected by this ruling (which should be once again legal by 2014). Others are a general disappointment that our friends in the SCCA rules making hierarchy can
re-interpret the rules the way they did. It makes us feel that either logic has failed, or there are other,
commercial considerations that have swayed their decision. This move just
makes no sense. This is a problem they
created 100% in committee, by using tortured logic and nit-picky interpretations of previously "unrestricted" boundaries.
After this ruling was made, an argument was put forth by SEB members on public forums that the alternate cover was banned because it provided "unintended advantages", such as longer bearing life, additional oil capacity or increased differential cooling ability. We argued then that this simply wasn't the case.
What they ignored, of course, is that for the S197 chassis in question, there are
multiple factory equipped differential covers that we can legally use from update/backdate allowances, including the cast aluminum covers shown above, and even one with a
factory equipped differential cooling system. Which would, logically, allow for even cooler rear differential fluid than the Whiteline cover theoretically/supposedly could. Not that any of this amounts to
any performance advantage when
driving around in a parking lot for 60 seconds, though.
An internal argument was supposedly made during the early stages of the lengthy SPAC/SEB deliberations on this issue that allowing differential cover swaps would provide "unintended consequences" to other
IRS cars in Street Prepared. It appears the committees were debating the issue before even familiarizing themselves with the rules, and apparently whoever made this argument was not aware that stick-axle cars in Street Prepared
had a set of additional allowances over the IRS cars with regard to the rear suspension and lateral locating devices.
And just for a similar example, when similar clarifications in the past were brought up
for the Miata chassis, they ruled to allow the
broadest possible reading of the given allowances. Specifically the reading of the Stock Class swaybar allowance, which uses wording that is not as open as the SP wording, allowing competitors with Miatas to cut off
welded chassis brackets in order to install alternate swaybars. In a
Stock class. But we cannot unbolt a part in SP? That seems backwards.
In the case of the SP solid axle lateral locating devices, the SEB used the
tightest possible reading of the rule to disallow multiple brands of Watts Link kits that require alternate differential covers, but in the same instance used the
widest possible reading of the rule to allow the alternate style that uses
a giant girder bolted across the rear frame member - which is a violation of a Street Prepared wording that forbids "chassis stiffening" from these lateral locating parts. They over-analyzed this rule, glossed over the actual specifics, ignored the common aftermarket solutions, inflated the "What ifs?" to ludicrous proportions, and kicked out the most logical methods of attachment for Watts Link kits.
This is particularly galling because even a
casual read of the section of the rulebook that gives additional allowances to stick-axle cars in Street Prepared leads the reader to believe that the original rules makers who came up with them (a completely
different set of volunteers than those serving now) thought the stick-axle cars were at such huge deficit compared to other suspension types in Street Prepared that they gave these cars many
extra allowances for rear suspension correction devices, and wrote them as to be unrestrained by minute restrictions.
Someone from the SEB even suggested on a forum after the ruling came out that there was an "easy fix" we could do and make this system legal. If we would just fabricate a huge plate steel structure to bolt on
around the factory differential cover, to take the place of the compact cast diff cover that Whiteline spent a good deal of engineering time and money producing, then the rest of the Whiteline Watts Link kit could be used. Never mind the fact that bolting on a giant plate steel welded structure would likely end up
inside the trunk, as the space between the rear axle and the spare tire well was
very tight. There are also many hundreds of pounds of suspension loads passing through this diff cover, and it is beefed up to handle those loads. Could a bolt-on ding-dong work as well, without having to gain a lot of weight or space? No. There were even spit-balled CAD prints posted and everything. Was an enormous contraption that Rube Goldberg himself would be proud of. I dubbed this monstrosity the "SCCA Clusterf**k Cover 9000", which made even the SEB member who posted it laugh.
In the end, we would have to chuck the entire Whiteline kit and start from scratch, burn dozens of hours fabricating, machining, measuring, and testing an all new system - or buy one of the two competing brands that was now the only legal option. This isn't uncommon - the SCCA often completely ignores common, bolt-on, aftermarket solutions available for most cars and just
expects autocrossers to have to make custom-fabricated-anything to work around the tortured rulings (and clarifications) that they come up with. This is a fundamental problem with the rule making process within this club - they are either ignorant of or willfully ignore "what is out there" for their members to buy and use for autocrossing.
The SCCA Solo's often stated motto of
"Make it Easy, Make it Fun" was trashed by reading this rule in the tightest possible way, then turning around
in the same breath and suggesting the rule
was too restrictive and then offered up additional allowances should be written into the rulebook to correct this issue
for next year. But this could have all been fixed in one fell swoop - the SEB has shown in the past that it has
the ability and the will to correct minor issues like this by issuing a "Technical Bulletin" when the rules have some leeway, like the rules did here. This allows the SEB to either tighten up the allowances, or relax the restrictions because the rules don't say exactly what they
thought they should say. But they failed to do this, threw out eight brands of off the shelf Watts Link options for the 2013 race season, and lost at least two competitors and a regular SCCA sponsor in the process (and a new manufacturer).
If reading this text above makes me seem bitter and angry, then it isn't
half as angry and let down as I feel. But it goes back for decades - it is just one more botched SCCA ruling among hundreds of such mishaps over the past 25 years that I have witnessed. Jason M here at Vorshlag is just as disappointed about this, and has also been let down as often as me over the same time period of his racing in SCCA Solo. This "banned year" for a product and company we had worked hard with in 2012 was just the last straw, for us. We are done for 2013.
(continued below)
They actually had this in MotoGP for a while but they banned it because they felt it was a unfair advantage. Now you can still get rear shocks with remote Hydraulic Preload adjusters that are legal but you cant use the trackside computer to adjust your suspension anymore. It was cool as hell tho!!!
