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Re: Safety and sense/race history

To: Mike Cobine <mcobine@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Safety and sense/race history
From: Jim Hayes <hayes@mediaone.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:22:13 -0400
Mike Cobine wrote:
> 
> While cleaning out old emails, I was checking all the web links and ran
> across Jim Hayes' site about crunching his car and how to build a safe cage
> http://world.std.com/~jeh/racing/sprnt59a.htm which is neat.  

Glad you like the cage. Having rolled one real old racecar three times
corner to corner, I have some strong opinions on rollcages. If you have
never seen my '62 Alfa Spider, you can see how we built that cage too at
http://world.std.com/~jeh/racing/spider62.htm. And read that this is MY
old racecar from the 60s - or more accurately, my brother's and mine.
The Sprint has never been a racecar, but I have a few parts from my old
Sprint I can use in the rebuild and claim it's real, right??? <g>
Other thoughts to ponder: 
I brought up the idea of building a "special" using period parts on this
list recently and the reaction was mostly negative. I, however, think
it  has lots of possibilities. A real period special today should not be
using modern technologies, at least not more than most of our production
cars. 
My 62 Alfa Spider is using plenty of modern technology - brake pads and
linings, clutches, and as we are assembling the new engine to replace
the one that blew big time last year, I realized that almost NOTHING in
the engine, save the block and head castings is original! Pistons and
rods are new, as it the Moldex crank, since we could not find a raceable
crank, flywheel, valves, valve springs and cams. In case you get upset
that all that is to get more HP, I can assure you that SCCA race engines
of the period routinely gave 10-30 more HP. I'm simply tired of losing a
$10K engine due to the failure of a 35 year old rod.
Ciao,
Jim


-- 
Jim Hayes                  
hayes@mediaone.net         http://www.JimHayes.com/
All generalizations, with the possible exception of this one, are false!

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