Let's see, I entitled this mail Panasport Wheels, didn't I? Oh, yes. Now I
remember. I was intrigued by someone's report that he called Panasport and
they made up some wheels to his specs. The reason it caught my attention is
that I remember something from this year's VTR meet. At the autocross
meeting,
the good keptin bobwrench (who with his compatriots did such a marvelous job)
was explaining the rules and said that any wheels were allowed as stock *IF
THEY WERE STOCK SIZE* "which means that those nifty Panasport wheels make you
modified." Which probably surprised a few people. Out of curiosity I looked
How about that? I mean, obviously, at some point, wider wheels make you
"modified". I seem to recall that SCCA gave you no margin in width,
no margin in diameter, and I don't remember if you could change the offset
of the wheel. Oh yes, the "base size" was for that model/year, so if the
company once issued a boy racer special with wide wheels, you couldn't just
cavilierly change the wheels on your five-year-older model to match. Any
tire that you could shoehorn onto the wheel and into the wheel well was
legal.
Then again, the SCCA people have no sense of humor at all. Technically, my
electronic ignition made me modified, as did pulling the secondary throttle
plates, etc. However, since I (Lotus Europa) was already class "A" (means
running against 911/944 turbos, for example), the local clubs let me run
as "A Stock", since I hadn't really done anything serious (headers, turbos,
nitrous, etc.)..., and was battling over a decade's technological progress
to boot!
Oddly enough, my modified 6x14 wheels (stock is 5.5x13) with 185/70 tires
(stock is 185/70 too, only 1 inch small diameter) work against me because
of taller effective gearing (although arguably wider footprint, which would
be in my favor), but the speedo read correctly - probably the only Lotus
in the US with an accurate speedometer!
-RDH
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