Easy come, easy go. 2 years ago Jason Frank (and CraigM) was disqualified in STS for having removed undercoating on their Civics. This year Andy Hollis (again) is stripped of the 1st place title due to an illegal valve spring shim. This year in impound they elected to pull off valve covers for post run inspections.


Geez, and this is the entry level for motorsports?

 

What a freaking CIRCUS!!

 

That's pretty hardcore! I'd like to go to a larger event other than my local region, just to see what it's like.

 

Yup - it's crazy here - about a thousand cars, special trailers everywhere, yeah, circus is about right.....

 

I hope to run SCCA again next year. Huge discussion where to hold in 2009 right now; Kansas, Nebraska, and Arkansas all possibles. Runoffs already set for Road America instead of HPT. Spent this year watching the NASA Championships in Ohio. Johnathan Davis (10th place) was one of only 4 Nissan's in the whole finals. Heavy rains 3 of the 4 days put 3 cars at a time into the gravel.

 

Here's a link to the Topeka Heartland Park web site showing their SCCA plans:

http://hpt.com//store/catalog/index....13a2f6e36fd295

 

apparently the decision to pull valve covers was based on a discussion on sccaforums.com and was not a big surprise to competitors. also andy doesnt exactly have a clean racing history

http://sccaforums.com/forums/thread/321869.aspx

 

Andy's last "screwup" was nearly 20 years ago. I think it's time to drop that point and move on.


pulling the valve covers was not necessarily a surprise, but Andy finding shims (that were illegal) in hiw own engine were a surprise.
I've met Andy on a couple of occasions (his home area is just west of Houston, so he runs at Houston Region events on a fairly regular basis).

Point being, he handed the engine to a Miata shop (who routinely uses shims), and the shop just did it as a matter of common practice. Andy even handed them the honda shop manual and told them not to do anything that wasn't in the manual.. unfortunately, he didn't check on that and found out the hard way the shop didn't follow that to the letter.

It's good that Andy manned up and took the blame though. It's his car and his job to compete within the rules. Whether he built the engine or not, it was his responsibility to make sure it was done within specs.

 

The shims are at the bottom of the springs, right?

This is intense. I'm going to have a motor rebuilt next year (when i get $$), and i'll be sure to get it done within the manual/rules.

 

Depends on what you're going to be doing with the car... local auto X competition? don't worry about it- just get it rebuilt well.

If you're going to nationals, expect it to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb by anyone and everyone.. If you're at nationals and someone even finds a non-factory-spec valve stem on a stock-class car, they're going to protest you over it. it's absolutely lame how the goal of winning nats now is to get everyone else disqualified.

In Andy's case, it was a simple mistake by his primarily Mazda engine builder. Mazda and many other domestic companies spec shims as standard overhaul procedure. Honda and Nissan both say to install new springs if the old ones are out of spec. The engine builder made a mistake, and now Andy's being held responsible for it.

 

And the teardown only took place on the top 5 finishers. Don't think you'll have to worry about that in a maxima

When you rebuild, SCCA allows overbore of .02" and NASA allows +1.5% displacement increase and .5 compression change w/o penalty. Build it well and use the max rules limits. Post back your costs and before/after dyno as I'm curious on your $ return.