January minutes

[Dietmar]

The FV Ad Hoc Committee met on January 26

Members attending: Steve Oseth, Stevan Davis, Bruce Livermore, Stephen Saslow, Barret Hendricks, Dietmar Bauerle

Old business: In an attempt to stay ahead of a possible piston shortage ( if it comes), the Committee feels a need to determine some specific measurements for pistons commonly used today. The GCR does not have any specs at this time, so simply approaching a manufacturer to make new pistons, either cast or forged, without any specifications would not be productive. With determining specs as a goal, Bruce Livermore was provided with 7 piston samples ranging from current K/S stock to original VW stock dating back to the early 60's. Many preliminary measurements were made and surprisingly, most of the measurements were very close if not exactly the same from one manufacturer to another. More precise measurements will be taken before the next meeting to determine the exact locations of ring lands with relations to wrist pin locations as well as piston crown distance to wrist pin location. Bruce is also waiting to receive a sample of the Chinese piston currently being sold as the replacement for the 1200 which have yet to be determined legal or illegal based on the "dimensionally identical" terminology in the GCR.

New business: based on the many posts both on Apex and the Interchange, the Committee heard the membership and conducted a survey with regards to the use of a spec tire. The survey was sent out via The Registry in hopes that it would reach most of the active FV drivers. The actual survey results will be released once the survey is closed, but results to date show that a large majority of those drivers racing today favor some form of spec tire for use on our existing rims. There were several drivers currently running either in Vintage or non SCCA events who responded to the survey.Their vote was not/will not be included in the final tally, but their opinions are being taken into consideration. (The survey has since closed with 252 responses, results to follow.)

Not every member of the Committee is in agreement with the need for a spec tire, however, with the preliminary results in front of us, the Committee unanimously agreed that we should react to the wishes of this large majority of members and begin the process of examining the possibility of a spec tire.

Somewhere in the process, the membership will have to be OFFICIALLY polled by SCCA as to whether or not this is what the membership really wants.

The Committee's past experiences have proven that unless a significant number of affected members respond positively to the "SCCA Request for Member Input", SCCA will not implement suggested rule changes regardless of the numbers involved in any request . Bottom line, the Committee will initiate an investigation to see what can be done to meet the perceived request of the membership regarding a spec tire.

The Committee's first step will be to contact the tire manufacturers and see what tire options might be available through them and whether they can supply SCCA FV requirements nationwide. Everyone needs to understand that just to set the process in motion will take some time, and if one were to guess at a time frame (IF we adopt a spec tire), we are not likely to see an adoption before the 2014 season. Some of the Committee members have been involved in the past in tire selection and development, testing new tire compounds years ago from the two leading manufacturers. If there is more than a single option, it could be a lengthy process and can not be accomplished overnight.

The Committee also began a discussion on minimum weights. Again, the Committee is divided on a possible change to the minimum weight rule. Limited to two hours for the conference calls, we ran out of time and will approach this topic at our next meeting.


No other topics were presented or discussed

Next meeting scheduled for Feb 22

[Matt King]

Somewhere in the process, the membership will have to be OFFICIALLY polled by SCCA as to whether or not this is what the membership really wants.

If by "officially polled," you mean a survey similar to what the FVAC recently conducted, it has not been my experience that this is part of the official SCCA rules change process. Isn't it the usual process that input from an advisory committee is provided to the CRB, which submits a recommended rule change to the BoD and asks for member input through publication in Fastrack?

[tiagosantos]

I think the "request for member input" is what was meant as polling by the SCCA..

Let's see those results!

[SOseth]

I think the "request for member input" is what was meant as polling by the SCCA..

Let's see those results!

Exactly correct

SteveO