(Cutting and pasting from several posts, attribution may be screwed up)
Sam Strano wrote:
>Fact is we have turbo cars that have won, some that don't. They have to
>have the same rules, just like the rest of us. I think the rules should be
>blanketed like they are now. Allow turbo cars 2 psi over stock for creep
>allowance and that's it.
Except that a hard boost limit (as a rule) doesn't work for anybody.
Firstly, there is no blanket rule that says that 1 PSI of boost = x HP. That
extra pound will make a little bit of power on a small displacement engine, and
a whole lot of power on a large displacement engine. Little bitty engines run
boost numbers in the high teens/low twenties all the time, but all those nifty
Calloway small-block Chev turbo kits seem to only make 4-6 PSI.
Secondly, as the rules stand, there's no way that a turbo car could enforce a
boost limit. Without a boost controller of some sort, there's no way I can
assure that I always run the limit, and if you allow me a boost controller but
enforce the limit, there's no way to enforce that the limit I've got set in
Impound is the limit I was running on the track.
Trying to enforce an arbitrary boost value is a lot like trying to impose a
manditory compression ratio limit on all NT cars. It's meaningless taken out of
context.
With one major difference - CR is set in stone, boost level is variable. Imagine
a rule that said that your exhaust temperature could not exceed 900 degrees, we
put a strip of temp paint on your header, and if it burns off, you're DQed. How
would you ensure that your cars was in complience?
Sam again:
>But, pretend you didn't own a Turbo. Aebersold's Supra, Maruinus' RX7 are
>really the only two turbo cars that have been prepped to the extent they
>had to be, and a look how they run.
Keep in mind that both of these cars are twin-sequential turbo cars. It is the
nature of sequential turbos to overcome a lot of the engineering trade-offs
involved with single-turbo or twin-non-sequential turbo cars.
They really are different beasts.
> Dennis' car seems pretty quick from what I saw in Ft. Myers, and it
> has yet to be really dug into I bet.
Well thanks, but power-wise I'm pretty well tapped out now. Yes, I'm still
running the "small" turbo, but the "medium" turbo that I'm allowed doesn't make
any more peak power, it just moves around the power I already have. There may be
an "area under the curve" win in there; I won't know for sure until I've done
some testing. Lag is a real issue here.
In any case, I might be able to squeeze out another 5-10 HP from the other turbo
and a better intercooler, but that's pretty well it. If I was allowed a boost
controller, there might be another 10 in there.
Note that this puts me at somewhere between 260 and 280 flywheel HP (at my best
guess, it's hard to find an AWD dyno) That puts me down almost 100 flywheel HP
to the pony cars - when I'm at full boost.
Also keep in mind that ProSolo skews the balance a little bit. The dragstrip
start plays both to my car's strengths and to my strengths (I drag raced pretty
seriously for about 6 years before I started Solo) Things are quite different
when you take that start away from me at Nationals
Anyway, we both know that power numbers don't tell the whole story. I'm
seriously hurting on power, but AWD and smaller size make up for part of that.
The important part to get out of this is that 1) The SP DSM sure the hell ain't
an overdog and 2) allowing boost controllers as a means of removing the
legislative problems turbos seem to create (as I have proposed) wouldn't make
the car into an overdog and 3) The proposed rule punishes the hell out of me for
no good reason.
>Remember how bad the DSM cars got f*cked when they were classed in GS? I
>do. What happened?
Huh? The DSM cars belong in GS. It's just that nobody ever tried running one.
Hell, _I_ wouldn't have run it at Peru if it wasn't for John's MX-6 breaking,
and John did everything he could to _avoid_ running it. The DSMs were never
screwed, people were just afraid to try something different.
DG
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