"Paul Foster" sez:
>My vote goes to the person who convinced the SEB that stock cars
>should be allowed to use 1/4" spacers. Sheesh.
I believe I can offer a little history on this. In the beginning, there was
an allowance on wheel offset (1/4") because it was not always easy to find
aftermarket wheels for a car in the exact correct stock offset. And since
lots of cars came with steel wheels from the factory, requiring them to run
stock offset meant disallowing them from going to alloy wheels. You can
argue the merit of this allowance, but that's not what Paul was questioning.
So, if you have a rule around that allows for 1/4" offset variance, and if
you run a car with an oddsize offset where you can't find light alloy wheels
that are made in the offset you desire, what do you do? Well, you "make"
your own wheels by welding a set of spacers to some wheels that are of the
correct diamter and width, but have the wrong offset. Presto! Now you have
the correct wheels and are legal...maybe...but not according to a Protest
Committee at Nats that tossed a guy (memory is foggy on who) for doing
exactly this. Their logic was that, spacers are not allowed (I believe the
old rule book specifically disallowed them), no matter whether they are
attached or not. Their concern was for the safety factor of people doing
this themselves (and rightly so). Hmmmm...
Anyway, a couple years later, the spacer allowance got added and so did the
longer stud/bolt allowance (to help on the safety side).
Anybody got any more details?
--Andy
|