Stohr to build a F1000

[sidney]

I think it is easier for the CRB to approve a class that has a power limitation on it using a SIR (making sure to add superstock wording, or course). If the plan is to have converted cars, then I think it is generally safer to limit the power one can develop to equivalent levels to an existing FC car. These cars were designed with these kind of power levels to begin with. Plus, the motors will run a lot longer too.

The '96 conversion Sean did is beautiful. I just hope there are more folks out there who are willing to do the same thing with a similar level of professionalism.

We just want to end up w/ an inexpensive high performance car & you don't need to do anything to the current 1 liter bike engines to acheive this.... they are fast, reliable and inexpensive as-is!

I couldn't, and didn't say it better myself!

[John Mosteller]

I sent the above engine proposal to the CRB today as no one has recomended any changes to it.I am hoping that anyone that is in favor of incoporating it in will copy it and send it along with your approval to the CRB.

Sean: Could you run it by the other members of the advisory committee and see if they approve and if so see if they will send in that the committee supports it.

Thanks,
John

[RobLav]

John,

You have some good ideas there, but with all those rules, I don't think the SIR is required. We went through all this int he rules committee, trying to keep the engines stock. The idea behind the restrictor was to keep people from spending a lot of money on engines, but people are going to spend it regardless of the rules.

I would have preferred no restrictor, rules as you wrote them, and a two year minimum age on engines.

[John Mosteller]

Rob: I am not fond of the SIR either but only see it with modifications allowed as adding to cost and disparity between built and non built.In some of my posts above I was attempting to find out the intent of the Committee and did not get any feedback so I attempted to work with what you already had accomplished.Personaly I can live with whatever the rules end up being but don't see the need to go beyond stock with the performance level of the current engines..I have been building my own engines for 30 + years and have both engine and chassis dynos.There is no way in my opinion for a stock engine to compete with a built engine if modifications are allowed whether you have an SIR or not.If you end up with a stock engine rule I will probably convert my FF and go have some fun in regionals while I finish the DSR project I am working on.One all out engine program is enough for me unless they were the same.But with one almost unlimited with SIR and one without the programs would be in opposite directions even though the starting is the same.

John

[Mike B]

John,
As you might have guessed, the proposal published in Fastrack was slightly edited from the version that was submitted to the F/SRAC. Below is an excerpt from the philosophy section of the F1000 proposal:

[SIZE=3]"In a nutshell, the intent of Formula 1000 is to create a class that offers high performance at a low cost, in an open-wheel package. It’s tempting to call Formula 1000 an open-wheel version of DSR but there are significant differences in the engine rules. While DSR permits several engine types, F1000 will only permit 1000cc 4 cylinder motorcycle engines. While DSR permits many modifications to the motorcycle engine within the displacement limit, F1000 will endeavor to keep the engine at or near stock.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]...By keeping the engines at stock preparation levels, the cost will be held relatively low, much lower than current automotive engines and reliability will be increased."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]The proposal goes on to explain that intent of the rules is to "...keep engines as close to stock as possible and at the same time, make the rules easy to enforce."[/SIZE]

It's easy to make a list of engine rules as long as your arm, but policing those rules is next to impossible (or non-existent) at any venue except the Runoffs. Likewise, a single rule that says "engine must remain stock" is equally cumbersome to enforce. That led us to the SIR, the thinking being that enforcement would be a simple go/no-go measurement. After submitting the rules, we learned that the SIR doesn't act the way we had hoped. This led to the additional engine prep rules you now see in Fastrack. Yes, they were added in haste but I thank the F/SRAC for prodding us along so we can all proceed with the class and get on track in '07. As of July 9, the CRB has received two letters regarding these rules. The discussion on Apexspeed is great and I hope everyone continues to share their thoughts and concerns (including Richard Pare ), but please compose a letter to the CRB and go on the official record. Now is the time to help shape the rules for F1000!

[JakeL]

Hi all -

I love the idea of FS/F1000, but for all those who really, really want parity, cheap engines, high performance, open wheels, and less wallet-racing than other classes, what is wrong with FSCCA?

I drive a DSR because I like to tinker, and love the bike engines, but if close competition and not being outspent is the goal, isn't the FSCCA a pretty good answer to all of the "costs too much" questions?

Put another way, if you stuck a bike engine in the back of the FSCCA, would that be the only "problem" that needs fixing?

Genuinely curious - not being a snot -

-Jake

[stonebridge20]

Interesting.............A bike engine in a F/SCCA car! Isn't that the engine that the car was origionally supposed to have in it?

Agnif

[Dave Belz]

If there was one available, I might... If there was one available with fenders, and there was a class for it where it would be competitive, I WOULD!

I own a VD RF95, in the pacific NW... If I'm going to be a one car class, it might as well be in FS or F1000 with a few really cool new features for a fraction of the cost of an F/SR-SCCA.

Then again, I could just tool around with the (neglected) Pinto until it siezes up completely, and buy a sailboat

Dave

[S Lathrop]

Why a spec car?

Does a spec car really save money? Remember the manufacturer makes a profit on the car, as does the local dealer as does the sanctioning body. Does the word monopoly mean any thing?

Look at the price range of good servicable equipment available for FC vs FSCCA. The only thing about spec classes is the price of entry and who gets the money. There are no cheap spec cars unless some one is subsidizing the class.

If all the cars are the same then the best atlhete wins. In a spec class you would not see the old masters remain competitive as long as they can when car setup and experience becomes more improtant.

In testing a set of FSCCA shocks, I found enough variation that if I could dyno enough shocks to find the variations I wanted, I could get the unfair advantage that spec cars are suspose to eliminate.

I can also get an unfair advantage by doing more testing than any body else. Driving the car arround a track is truely expensive. In the Indy Lights series we use to do 30 days of testing per year. That is 100 to 150 miles per day, 2 to 3 sets of tires and track rental. Now that is spending money. In racing spec cars that is the way to get the unfair advantage.

Maybe spec racing is best suited to those who want to race in a class where every one is dumbed down to the same level.

I make a good living working for drivers who have only driven spec cars. They have not learned some of basics of car setup. When you get to a series that costs $500,000 to $1,000,000 per year to race you should at least know what it feels like to make a shock, spring, ARB, ride or rake change and how such a change affects the car. This is one of the reasons the foreign drivers do better than American drivers.

May be spec cars are ideal for people who do not want to work too hard at getting their kicks from driving race cars.

Spec cars help keep me employed. I love them.

Steve

[roadrace27]

Wish he would build a Continental with a Zetec.

That would be nice!

[roadrace27]

Does a spec car really save money?

I can also get an unfair advantage by doing more testing than any body else. Driving the car arround a track is truely expensive. In the Indy Lights series we use to do 30 days of testing per year. That is 100 to 150 miles per day, 2 to 3 sets of tires and track rental. Now that is spending money. In racing spec cars that is the way to get the unfair advantage.
Steve

This is a little off-topic but if I had a choice between spending the same amount of money per year and getting more track time or a fancy new set of shocks...I would go for more track time!

And if you spend the money on fancy shocks instead...don't you have to test them too?

[S Lathrop]

And if you spend the money on fancy shocks instead...don't you have to test them too?[/quote]

Still off topic!

The sad part of the fancy shock question is that they are not necessary. They are a substitute for really doing your home work. Given testing time and some in house development, I could probably take a basic Bistein shock (as I use for years) and develope a class/chassis /tire specific valving that would be perfectly suitable for my cars. As it is we seldom change the shock settings once we get the shocks set. We do most of our tuning with springs, ARBs and rake changes.

As a manufacturer I have tried to supply my customers with the information that aleviates the necessity of spending money unnecessairly. Witness how often my customers have to buy new cars to stay at the front of the pack.

If you are on your own or your chassis manufacturer only builds cars, then you may have to spend more.

Burried in most car designs is some flaw that makes getting a good setup difficult. The RT41 probably had the fewest limitations to its performance. The Swift Atlantics have had a suspension layout that assures that the car will push. The front Mono-shock cars have a similar problem. Sometimes a spec tire is not consistant or the front/rear performance potential is out of balance. In that case you have to discover the best way to finess you way arround a design flaw that otherwise could easily be fixed. The neat thing about open design classes is that you can make the necessary changes to get the car to perform as you want.

We have been modifying some of our earlier cars to make the shocks perform better. This has cost the customer a fraction of what a new set of fancy shocks would have cost.

[Rennie Clayton]

At the risk of letting the cat out of the bag, let me just state that non-adjustable dampers are probably the best-kept speed secret in racing. Non-adjustable dampers actually have many advantages: primarily and significantly, they are lighter. With less thermal mass, they retain less heat. They are less bulky, so can be packaged tighter. You can still valve them any way you want, and achieve the same damping curve as an unobtanium 5-way. They are cheap to own and rebuild! What's not to love?

With regards to fancy dampers, you have to get into the stratosphere anyway to start to see reliable across the board improvements in performance. For instance, a perfectly configured set of Steve's Bilsteins will be outperfomed by a perfectly configured set of new TSD's every time. This has nothing at all to do with whether you have zero external adjustability or 5-ways, but is a question of superior technology, approaches to damping, painstaking detail work to reduce hysteresis, etc. These are typically even things that you would have a hard time picking up on a shock dyno, although the driver can certainly tell a qualitative difference on track. It's a philosophical technology issue, the same way that hydraulic dampers are superior for our application to friction dampers. Even then, you're only looking at a thin marginal improvement, and you'd make up more lap time by carrying 1mph more in the braking zones to be honest.

Bottom line: look back to the fundamentals for real speed improvements. Put the pig on a treadmill before resorting to lip stick...


Cheers,
Rennie

[markbakhit]

F-1000 engines should have the excact same ruling as DSR engines. Restricting engines in F-1000 will not lower costs. There will just be more time on the Dyno and lots of development costs to squeeze every inch of power out of these machines. When Nascar added restrictors, (to slow them down and run even on a superspeedway), their engine budget almost doubled becasue of development. I don't know about you guys, but I love these bike engines and that is why I was in DSR. I wanted all the power I could get, and even more. I thought all racers did....

DSR engines mostly failed because of oiling, cooling, or preperation issues. I do not know many casses when a DSR engine let go becasue it had reached it's service life. When everything is right, these engines run forever. The reason DSR cost is out of control, is not becasue of the engine cost, it is from all of the development costs to keep up with the huge gains that have been made in composites, aero, and downfource. A top line DSR engine isnt even half the price of an Atlantic engine and a DSR can almost run as fast.

If we leave the engine rules in F-1000 the same as in DSR, people that leave DSR will have a place to go and vice versa. we might be able to switch over and add a body, remove body and race in two classes. Or, when you get fed up with one class, you can just go to the other and gripe there.....
cheers

mark

[RussMcB]

From a low budget racer's point of view, one very attractive aspect of F1000 was to be able to use relatively cheap, low mileage engines from crashed bikes (as my two local racer friends have done). If someone chooses this route and the rules include an SIR, then they may only be at a slight power disadvantage. If they run a stock engine against DSR engine rules, they would be much further off the pace, right?

[carnut169]

Oh yes.
Look at the classified section on the Sports Racer site- its not uncommon to see adds like "no expense spared, $14,000 engine"... I picked up a stock 04 for $2500 w/ 0 miles. Huge difference.

Funny thing is that power-wise it not all that huge of a difference. From another post that $10k nets about 20hp!?!

[Lee Stohr]

yes, $10K gets you 20hp. It also gets you Carrillo rods, so maybe you won't throw a rod through the block on a downshift overrev. It also gets you an oil system and clutch assembly that works in a car. If your brand of engine has known cam chain weakness, or cam tensioner problems, those would be replaced with aftermarket parts.
It gets you a re-built engine with all new bearings, valves, valve springs, etc. It gets dynoed with your ECU and fuel system so you know it will work when you put it in the car. Alternator and counterbalance shaft might be removed so the engine rev's faster.
I feel it's false economy to restrict the engines to all stock internals, but that's the way it is going to be initially. I think that small changes to the rules will be made over the next few years to allow known weak parts to be replaced.

To be fair, stock bike engines have been run in cars with no problems. Usually stiffer clutch springs and some pan baffling are all that's needed to get going. The stock Japanese bike engines are pretty robust. But let's not ignore all we've learned in DSR.

[Rennie Clayton]

Three years ago, I spent $20k to upgrade an existing well-built engine to get an 8% power increase for my Atlantic, and reduced longevity. Spending $14k for a complete engine / transmission and getting a 12% power increase over stock, along with better longevity doesn't seem to silly to me - it's a bargain by comparison.

Like Lee said, going all stock is false economy, as the parts will have to handle the same stresses - but they'll be weaker than if you'd built the engine with proper components. So they'll be much more fragile.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, I guess.


Cheers,
Rennie

[Dave Belz]

Not everyone has the $14k or $20k to spend on the 8 - 20% increase in power. Some people are willing to live with some amount of risk, that at an 8 - 20% power deficit, not all of the stock "weaknesses" will fail. At $2,500 per replacement even if there is a failure, I doupt that it would tak 5 - 8 repeat occurances for the message to sink in.

If you want to outspend me by more than a 5:1 margin, go ahead and race in DSR (I know, several of you are - and have heard from me on occasion, looking for a way to join in...). I'll just keep working with what I have, budgeting my upgrades, rehabs and replacements over time so that I can continue to run for more than just a single year. I was excited by the prospect of increased performance without increasing my budget. I was excited by the prospect that I might actually be able to add a few 'toys' and still stay within my financial limits. I was excited by the prospect of being able to race against another car in my class. But if the cost of entry into the class is 2/3 the cost of a DSR, then I can no more afford to join F1000 than I can DSR (Lee, let me know when you have a half price sale!).

If somebody has to race with motor that's short on power, go ahead and spend the money, then give it (the motor) to me! I'll take it! I personally don't see anything wrong with that idea either, but I doubt that I'll find too many takers... I'll do your telephone answering system voice over for you... It'll sound real pro... honest...

Dave

[Charles Warner]

Not everyone has the $14k or $20k to spend on the 8 - 20% increase in power. Some people are willing to live with some amount of risk, that at an 8 - 20% power deficit, not all of the stock "weaknesses" will fail. At $2,500 per replacement even if there is a failure, I doupt that it would tak 5 - 8 repeat occurances for the message to sink in.

If you want to outspend me by more than a 5:1 margin, go ahead and race in DSR (I know, several of you are - and have heard from me on occasion, looking for a way to join in...). I'll just keep working with what I have, budgeting my upgrades, rehabs and replacements over time so that I can continue to run for more than just a single year. I was excited by the prospect of increased performance without increasing my budget. I was excited by the prospect that I might actually be able to add a few 'toys' and still stay within my financial limits. I was excited by the prospect of being able to race against another car in my class. But if the cost of entry into the class is 2/3 the cost of a DSR, then I can no more afford to join F1000 than I can DSR (Lee, let me know when you have a half price sale!).
Dave

Well put. Now, please send it to the CRB.

[carnut169]

yes, $10K gets you 20hp. It also gets you Carrillo rods, so maybe you won't throw a rod through the block on a downshift overrev. It also gets you an oil system and clutch assembly that works in a car. If your brand of engine has known cam chain weakness, or cam tensioner problems, those would be replaced with aftermarket parts.
It gets you a re-built engine with all new bearings, valves, valve springs, etc. It gets dynoed with your ECU and fuel system so you know it will work when you put it in the car. Alternator and counterbalance shaft might be removed so the engine rev's faster.
I feel it's false economy to restrict the engines to all stock internals, but that's the way it is going to be initially. I think that small changes to the rules will be made over the next few years to allow known weak parts to be replaced.

To be fair, stock bike engines have been run in cars with no problems. Usually stiffer clutch springs and some pan baffling are all that's needed to get going. The stock Japanese bike engines are pretty robust. But let's not ignore all we've learned in DSR.

FWIW the company I purchsed my motor from (Crutchfield) said they have never seen a GSXR throw a stock rod, even w/ over revs. Not to say its not possible, but they sell the 1000s in large numbers to Modlight owers http://www.crutchfieldracing.com/.

Lee- when are we going to start seeing teaser pics of your F1000?

[John]

I have run FC and DSR.

The boost in power for a Modified motor over a stock one is about 20%, but you also really do get an increase in longevity.

Cars are not bikes we run the engines really hard at full throttle. Areas of failure are -

The clutch basket there is no rubber in the driveline (like in the rear drive cog of a bike), and the shock of shifting will eventually take out the clutch basket. You then have a real mess to clean up because the engine is running fine and the gears do a really nice job of grinding up all the bits of aluminum that come from the cluch and it goes all over the oiling system. ps: you need to use the clutch with a bike motor, if you want it to last a while. Especially on downshifts..

Rods - I have seen rods come out of several engines, including mine... actually it came out the front back and the bottom. Most of the failures we see are from oiling problems. (mine was, and I have the data to proove it) Change the oil regularly and run a dry sump and you will be fine. You can choose to run a wet pan and many guys do but. Once you have purchased a set of rods you are done no more new rod bolts after every rebuild

Valves - On some motors the revs we run beat the valves to death, aftermarket valves are not a problem. This may have been a problem on the ZX10 more than the current motors. Street bikes are designed to run at 5k rpm with the odd blast to 10k, not all the time at 10k.

Just the Rods, Valves, and Clutch Basket are large portion of a rebuild, and if I were running a F1000 I would probably put them in even in a resticted motor unless I was told no.

We see very few failed motors in DSR now if they are installed properly, and they last a lot longer then the Elite FC motor I had for less $.

Just some info from someone who is interested in the class.

Oh yes, The power on the FC motor at 145 is at the crank, as Lee pointed out 160 is at the chain. We are over 180 on our motor at the chain on my DSR. The FC motor still has to get through the tranny and diff to get the equivalent power output.

The mechanical Grip on my Carbir was much better than the grip on my DSR in my opinion.

Cheers,

John

[VehDyn]

C'mon Lee. Let's see the pictures, artists renderings, back of napkin, etc.

Thanks.

Ken