Loren

I think stuff like the clutch and other hidden maintenance items are a "given". They expect you to replace those items... bet you anything that if you were to have a chat with Jay after the race and say "yeah, we blew the 150,000 mile clutch 2 hours before the end", he's say "why the hell didn't you put a new one in???"

I'm not a big fan of cheating after the judging though, at least no "performance" cheating. I'd do something like swap out the ratty radiator for a nice new one, or change the rad hoses... something that would have been visible in tech and raised questions about $$$... but not something that's going to affect performance.

But, I guess it's all cheating, it's just a matter of degree.

Rob-00BoxsterS

I agree to an extent. If part of the fun is hiding mods and being creative in your cheating then I'm all for it. Especially if it is something that will keep you racing (like a hose or a clutch.) Although it would also be fun to see how much performance teams could get out of a true $500.00 beater. Instead of putting so much energy into cheating they could use that time to tinker with the car.

I don't think you should wait until after tech to change out anything. That, to me, is not in the spirit of cheating (as silly as that may sound.)


I also don't think teams should have close to full-blown racecars with ratty bodies on them. That will eventually turn the race into $30,000 cars with bad paint jobs and the common man (like me) will be left out of yet another form of racing.

Loren

I think the costs involved in a Lemons race car are self-policing. First, there's the People's Curse. Your "$30,000 race car with a bad paint job" would be hard pressed to not get the curse and be wadded up into a big crinkly ball. Aside from that... I know there would be no shortage of people willing to take a 30-minute black flag penalty to do some damage to a car like that. A conspiracy of 3 or 4 teams could easily take a car like that out... permanently.

The only way to take cheating out of this kind of racing would be to make it a Spec race. Like, maybe go buy a mess of retired rental economy cars. Add cages and harnesses. Fresh brakes and tires. Give each team a car at random. Give them a few hours to "prep". Go race!

Dave-ROR

I fully intend on "cheating" next year as far as replacing the clutch, hoses, etc is concerned. I should be (if I'm reading the rules correctly) pretty far from the $500 budget currently, and selling parts off the car, to be perfectly legal with the few performance parts the car needs, and that I can find used.

TAJRacing45

Even though we pretended to cheat by taping $$ to some parts, we really didn't. The cone air filter was on the car when we got it but the strut tower bar came off our spare parts car. So technically that would be a little fib.
We also built reliability in the car...not performance enhancment. (sort of like mild cheating, but cheating nontheless maybe) We replaced the timing belt and water pump which IMHO everyone should do since it's impossible to inspect without stripping down the motor which they won't.... Plugs and wires, and fuel filter (which we documented in our receipt book) Plus we took the cluch to a clutch guy to clean it up and do something to it. I have no idea what they did so your guess is as good as mine. I'm not really a clutch guy... I paid the guy $75 then I was on my way. We got lucky and ran with the hoses and belts that came with the car plus we had spares from the other spare car. We ran water wetter up till we went through tech which I think is legal then drained it all and replaced it with water... We removed the radiator and had it cleaned and tested then reinstalled and changed the thermostat.
Thats about it. Not real bad cheating, eh?

bam2002

More new cool videos This one shows the Volvo loosing it and hitting an escort.

YouTube - Cartman falling of the car

If you check on other videos by this team there are some good ones.