what are the different Road Racing classes?

blksgZ28 · 07-09-2002, 07:50 PM

Are there any I would be able to run in if I had a tubular k-member and tubular a-arms?

BobC · 07-12-2002, 01:29 PM

there are different organizations with different classes and different rules. find the tracks near you and see who runs at them, then find out what classes they have and the rules for those.

to be honest, i've learned that its best to setup a car for a class instead of trying to find a class for a car with its mods.

in Midwestern Council, you could run in ASR, I'd guess. BTW, what is the purpose of tubular K member and A arms, etc? Can you just take them off? They will take you out of most classes.

I run in Showroom Stock GT. Its a class that allows for almost no mods. Next year I plan to run in ITGT, which allows certain suspension and performance mods. I added it up, and came to about $14k of mods allowed. Now which are worth doing is another question... I don't think it would allow tubular A arms or K members.

bobc

blksgZ28 · 07-13-2002, 02:31 AM

mainly to replace the flimsy stamped pieces, for some reaosn It'd give me a better piece of mind.

Pat Newton · 07-13-2002, 03:07 AM

Those "flimsy stamped pieces" have thousands of hours of GM engineering time behind them. Can you say the same for most of the tubular pieces out there? No way. If you insist on going this way, which IMHO is totally unnecessary for most uses (and totally illegal for most road race classes where cars cost less than $20K to build), then go with one of the big boys like LG or Global West. They at least put some engineering thought into it.

IMHO,

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Pat Newton
'97 Formula - unstock
'85 BMW 524 turbodiesel - stock and stinky
'90 Mazda Miata - Spec Miata race car "in progress"
http://home.attbi.com/~patricknewton/f-body/formula.htm

BobC · 07-13-2002, 12:23 PM

Oh well, at least we tried to convince you. My guess is you'll end up in an "unlimited" type class with them. The good news is that you'll be modding to make it wildly fast. The bad news is that the others in that class likely already are real fast...

Maybe don't worry about it and just go out there to have fun...

bobc

blksgZ28 · 07-13-2002, 03:09 PM

actually, the pieces I was looking at were were LG's lower a-arms, and GW upper a-arms, I am undecided as of yet if I'm going to use a tubular k-member as was looking at PA-s unit.

There's no reason to get all pissy with me, I asked because I wanted to know if it was worth the money to invest in these products in the first place.

BTW, my father works at chrysler, and a lot of the stuff that has "thousands of hours of whoever's enginnering behind them" cna be significantly improved upon, look at the first generation camaro, and how the front suspension has changed from then to now, you can't tell me that there still isn't room for improvement.

Shredz · 07-13-2002, 04:49 PM

I don't think anyone was being "pissy" about what you are doing. Swapping those components will change the catagory of your car to the point that unless you were a top notch driver in the catagory you wind up driving in, and had all the work done to your car specific to the class, you won't be competitive.

I think making changes to your car like that is fine- you get the satisfaction of changing something to your own specs- but it won't improve your chances competitively unless your car is completely reworked to the class, and your skill as a driver is up to it.

Maybe that's not imortant to you at this point,in which case: mod away Bro. That's what owning these cars is all about IMO. I'm not going to race mine, and I'd like to think about doing mods like you're planning- tinkering is what I do. When I'm done, I'm positive there'll be lots of people that would appreciate my car outside of the community of hard core drivers.

By coming here to this site, I can see some feedback to my ideas (and others') and whether or not they'll work according to someone else's opinion in the absence of my own experience/knowledge of these cars- which isn't much compared to some of the people that post here.

I'm doing some changes down there now by swapping stock rubber bushings to poly bushings. I know from what others in my car club (I drove some of their cars) have accomplished, there's a huge difference in the way the car responds in handling. Safe mods like that are very cost effective, which to me is important.

Good luck with what ever you decide to do, and post the results for guys like to me to read about.

T

chrisbarr · 07-13-2002, 10:04 PM

You don't need a tubular K member. It may save some weight but the stock piece is stronger. The F-bodies that ran/run World Challenge and Grand Am don't use them and they go plenty fast. And they do long enduros without failure. I saw the Phoenix Motorsports Firebird run in the Daytona 24 hour. He had the stock member so you won't have to worry about breaking it. For the cost, there are much better ways to improve the lap times of our car.

[This message has been edited by chrisbarr (edited July 13, 2002).]

Silkworm · 07-14-2002, 12:51 AM

Weight's weight, folks.. Save it where you can, if you can avoid compromising longevity, but I 100% agree, build a car to a class, not the other way around.

PaulC

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Mansier · 07-15-2002, 10:06 AM

Check out NASA's American Iron class:

www.nasaproracing.com

LM