Engineered rule bending

[thunderbelmont]

Ahonen said:

thunderbelmont said:

The TWR Built Volvo 240 Turbos had wider rear bodywork than standard, they were modified from the rear light right back to the bulkhead so they looked standard. That information came from someone who drove in the ETCC at the time.

The Volvo 240 Turbos weren't built by TWR. This is the second or third time someone has mentioned the TWR 240s, which is a bit puzzling. Volvo's motorsport department (such as it was) supplied teams with parts and had its works teams, such as Eggenberger, RAS Sport and to a lesser extent Ulf Granberg's Magnum team, but not TWR. TWR ran the Jaguars and the Rover Vitesses and spent most of the '85 and '86 seasons protesting the Volvos at every opportunity.

Allegedly, TWR prepared a couple of shells. The info came from Peggen (Per-Gunnar) Andersson - to quote:
"The wider fenders was made by TWR. In fakt the car vas cut from the buklhed to the rear lamp on both sides."

(remember that Tom would do anything for money!!)

[Chassis 33]

bobthemonkey said:

Does the Ilmor 500I belong here?

At the time, Indy 500 rules allowed for a maximum capacity of 2.6l for racing engines, or 3.4l if you used a single cam, pushrod block. This was to encourage use of production based blocks.

Ilmor however, went and produced a custom pushrod racing V8 in complete secrecy, with a near 200bhp advantage over the rest of the field. This was a custom engine for a single race, and the engine was banned for the following year.

There was an article on that engine a couple of months back in MotorSport.IIRC The rules for 1994 dropped the requirement for a pushrod engine to be production based (not sure about the ins and outs but i think the intention was to allow production derived blocks to be used but strengthened) giving rise to the loophole that allowed the Ilmor pushrod. So while it was maybe outside the spirit of the rules it complied with the letter of the law - as has been said before there's no such thing as the spirit of the rules, only the rules.
Regards
Iain

[CO2000]

Mr E said:

MrKipling43 said:

I can't believe the Toyota restrictor plate fiddle only got a cursory 'they had one, and got banned from motorsport'.

It's one of the cleverest cheats ever.

The cleverness was in the fact that when the airbox was opened for inspection, the modification that bypassed the restrictor plate literally hid itself thanks to a spring loaded mechanism that snapped the gap shut.

They only got found out because they got greedy at the Safari Rally (do you also remember when the WRC was not some soft-cock mince about on a couple of re-run stages?) and were clocked at silly top speeds.

Diagram of the widget:

The group a 'dodge' wasn't actually found to be in breach of the rules...

....just the spirit of the rules, hence the two year ban...

As per Chassis 33 post above this one I can't think that they got the 2 year ban for activities not in the spirit of the rules.

[Marf]

ZeeTacoe said:

motorsportbeng said:

apparently the rs500 touring cars used to have a cage inside the boost pipe on the inlet side which would be filled with some sort of dry ice for the race. the first handful of laps the charge temps would be around single figures obviously equalling more grunt, come the end of the race it just looked like some sort filter

Would you really want to be adding CO2 to the intake of an engine?

You wouldnt put it in the intake, you'd use it to cool the intercooler.

[350Matt]

one from the TWR days when they were running the SD1 touring cars, you had to make the cam from a production blank - naturally TWR were a bit quicker than the rest so the engine was stripped in the presence of an inspector who took the cam off to be measured

however when the tech was pulling out the cam he 'accidentally ' dropped it into the oil tray under the engine stand ( this tray was full of oil)

'oh sorry let me get that' reaches in under the oil and withdraws cam and passes to inspector

all legal

naturally the dodgy cam was still hidden in the oil

[rev-erend]

Good one

[Life Saab Itch]

Marf said:

You wouldnt put it in the intake, you'd use it to cool the intercooler.

Nissan did that when they ran the Pulsar in the WRC. They had to keep the top mounter intercooler and were losing power because of it. They won a coupke of short stages by "packing it and the area around it with dry ice" and the thing won a couple of short stages.

Dry ice is common.

[daveake]

MrKipling43 said:

I can't believe the Toyota restrictor plate fiddle only got a cursory 'they had one, and got banned from motorsport'.

It's one of the cleverest cheats ever.

I was thinking that too . I was told that the FIA guy only figured it out after he accidentally dropped it and heard the mechanism ping inside.

Dave

[jains15]

daveake said:

MrKipling43 said:

I can't believe the Toyota restrictor plate fiddle only got a cursory 'they had one, and got banned from motorsport'.

It's one of the cleverest cheats ever.

I was thinking that too . I was told that the FIA guy only figured it out after he accidentally dropped it and heard the mechanism ping inside.

Dave

...and I heard that their sentence would have been much harsher but they held their hands up to the cheating straight away and that saved them for being banned for a lot longer.

[MrKipling43]

CO2000 said:

Mr E said:

The group a 'dodge' wasn't actually found to be in breach of the rules...

....just the spirit of the rules, hence the two year ban...

As per Chassis 33 post above this one I can't think that they got the 2 year ban for activities not in the spirit of the rules.

I'm pretty sure it was fully illegal. They were, after all, bypassing a restrictor plate designed to limit power.

[Mr E]

MrKipling43 said:

I'm pretty sure it was fully illegal. They were, after all, bypassing a restrictor plate designed to limit power.

My understanding was the rule stated "on inspection the restrictor shall be found to be <certain size>".
On inspection it was.....

I'm probably talking out of my arse however...

[Rude-boy]

daveake said:

I was thinking that too . I was told that the FIA guy only figured it out after he accidentally dropped it and heard the mechanism ping inside.

Dave

Had a conversation with Mike Garton about this.

He’s opinion was that it was one of the best bits of engineering that he’d ever inspected, legal or otherwise.

I also believe that the ‘we found it when the part was dropped’ excuse was not entirely accurate. I have heard it said that a disaffected TTE employee alerted the FIA to the fact that this part might not be in strict compliance and TTE were advised by the FIA that they had received this allegation and would be inspecting the air intake and turbos carefully at the next opportunity. One might believe that TTE were so sure that their design would never be found that they didn’t bother to do anything about it.

This would tie in with why Toyota had the book thrown at them and because they had obviously gone to so much trouble, and expense, to cover it up. Authority to do this would have to have come from the very top in Japan, not just from TTE.

Some wags even suggested that there were other forces at work who were hoping that Toyota would take the decision to spend the next 2 years concentrating their minds and open budget on developing a car for an entirely different formula...

[mat205125]

freedman said:

Crafty_ said:

Not racing per say but I once read a story about homologation rules in rallying. This was the group B era, I cant remember if it was the 6r4 or the RS200.. either way the inspectors turned up to ensure that the correct number of road cars were being built as per the rules. They were shown to a storage building where sure enough there was a number of road going homologation specials. They were then invited to a nice lunch off premises, when they returned they were shown to another storage building where the other half of the cars were. All well and good right ? not really - the first storage shed was empty as they didn't have enough cars so moved them all during lunch!

Same with Porsche and the 917

Rules said they need to make 25 cars, which they did, but 24 of them didnt work (at the time of the inspection) and had been cobbled together by office staff etc

I think the inspectors were so astonished that anyone had actually gone ahead and built them they looked no further than the only running car

How many E46 M3 GTRs were BMW meant to make?

Didn't they promise to make the required road car number, race and win the American LeMans series, take the trophies, and then forget to make the cars?

Not unique with homologation minimum numbers, but no one will ever admit that they never ever intended to make the required number, will they!

[mat205125]

The Rustman said:

Was it Tyrell who used to have to top up the with fuel for a splash and dash on its last visit to the pits but where actually putting water into a hidden tank within the fuel tank to make the weight legal.

???

What kind of weight saving were they having to make it worthwhile scheduling an extra fuel (fluid) stop into their schedule?

[snowy slopes]

I remember the cheating in pro stock back in the day, Warren Johnson who was the older guy who first suspected them of cheating was properly pissed off, but couldnt prove anything. It was a big deal when their team got broken into, a major fuss

[Life Saab Itch]

mat205125 said:

???

What kind of weight saving were they having to make it worthwhile scheduling an extra fuel (fluid) stop into their schedule?

Enough to keep a DFV competitive with the 1984 turbo cars.

[Flying Toilet]

snowy slopes said:

I remember the cheating in pro stock back in the day, Warren Johnson who was the older guy who first suspected them of cheating was properly pissed off, but couldnt prove anything. It was a big deal when their team got broken into, a major fuss

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/00q1/blowup-sport

[snowy slopes]

Flying Toilet said:

snowy slopes said:

I remember the cheating in pro stock back in the day, Warren Johnson who was the older guy who first suspected them of cheating was properly pissed off, but couldnt prove anything. It was a big deal when their team got broken into, a major fuss

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/00q1/blowup-sport

Ahh, i stopped watching drag racing, just before all this business with Eckman kicked off

[ZeeTacoe]

Marf said:

ZeeTacoe said:

motorsportbeng said:

apparently the rs500 touring cars used to have a cage inside the boost pipe on the inlet side which would be filled with some sort of dry ice for the race. the first handful of laps the charge temps would be around single figures obviously equalling more grunt, come the end of the race it just looked like some sort filter

Would you really want to be adding CO2 to the intake of an engine?

You wouldnt put it in the intake, you'd use it to cool the intercooler.

Thats what I was trying to get from motorsportbeng.

[The Rustman]

mat205125 said:

The Rustman said:

Was it Tyrell who used to have to top up the with fuel for a splash and dash on its last visit to the pits but where actually putting water into a hidden tank within the fuel tank to make the weight legal.

???

What kind of weight saving were they having to make it worthwhile scheduling an extra fuel (fluid) stop into their schedule?

It wasn't an extra stop ??? it was their last stop, that's when all the water and lead balls where tipped in. These where the days when they stopped for fuel regularly. But for 3/4's of the race they ran underweight.