Quote:
Originally Posted by Billy Nees
Barry, Glenn, Alan, you can call it a "Christmas epiphany" if you'd like but after looking at Nitro Joe's and some recent history, I will no longer dis-agree with moving the indexes! We all deserve what we get.
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Billy,
It's easy to look over how fast people are going if you're concentrating on your combination that's unusual, and fits in a class that isn't too popular. I understood where you were coming from. What passes for "progress" sneaks up on everyone, especially us old guys. We don't necessarily like it, or agree with it. A lot of it I don't call progress.
I'm not a fan of the superseded parts, but I understand the demand. I know how long I searched for Chevrolet parts that I could afford. I think it's too bad a lot of the others have it even worse.
For some, there's nothing available to replace what they either can't find, or can't afford. The thing is, you can't punish everyone for the shortcomings of some, and you can't hold everyone back, either. If you told people "they don't make those for everyone, so you can't have it, even if they're common for you", no one would put up with it. This isn't third grade, where the teacher says "have you got a piece of gum (or candy) for everyone". It's not incumbent upon one group top have something made for every group. And since combinations are factored individually.....
What I don't see as progress is what's getting through tech these days. I have a very close friend who I won't name, but we were watching Stock at Indy, and watching a few cars run, he looked at me and said "I could put his heads on my Super Stocker and it wouldn't slow down 0.05". I took him some Stock heads I had for a customer, and he looked at them and told me "these heads would probably pick up your buddy's Super Stock motor about 0.50".
We literally asked about the valve job rule for Stock, and were told by tech guys, "Just don't make us look stupid". Well, with a good TIG welder and the right blast cleaner, I can do a lot that won't make you look stupid, because if you don't have an unmodified head laying there, or you haven't seen a thousand of them, you won't SEE what we did, so you won't "look stupid". I couldn't get an actual answer as to whether or not a radius valve job was legal. "We'd have to see it". It's a radius valve job, here's the cutter I want to use. "We'd have to see it". So if you decide you don't like it, you can't tell me in advance, but I'll have to cut eight seats out of two heads, and put eight more in, and hope all the work doesn't mess up the rest of the work, and hurt the heads.
Of course, the problem is, when caught, a bunch of childish people want to sue. So, NHRA doesn't want the fight. It wrecks the class, but what do we do? We as racers can't fix it. Like a lot of things, I don't know what the solution is. I know that I/we won't do it. We may not be as fast. But we'll be truly legal.
I love these classes, I want to see them survive and thrive. But I don't know the solutions, or claim to.