I beg to differ about clutches. Our clutch bodies are COMPLETELY STOCK. Stock Polaris primary & Arctic secondary. Many guys have looked at our clutches at Nationals we have won against the very best. BONE STOCK except for springs, weights & helix & none of the parts we use cost much more than the stock stuff. My last 2 clutches were $150 each off of E-bay.
Thanks ... Jay Novak -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 3:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [F500] What happened to f1000 The F1000 movement started out as a group of guys talking about taking 90s-vintage FCs and putting liter-bike engines in them to create a low-cost fast car. Once the rules started to coalesce, the builders got involved. It's not difficult to see where things went from there. It's pretty simple, though - if you can build a really fast car for $20K within a given rule set using junkyard components, Stohr, et al, can build one that's just a bit faster for $50K. You can't blame the builder, either; unless you use something like the Club Ford rules to keep out the new chassis designs, the builders have no choice but to try to build and sell into any class they can. This is my fear whenever someone talks about adding shocks, springs, independent suspension, and/or wings to our cars. You can talk all day long about 'cheap' suspension components, but unless they are TRULY spec and single-vendor, the high-$$$ version will creep in just as soon as someone with extra cash to burn loses a race by less than a couple of car lengths. Oh, and BTW, when spec parts are single-vendor, that vendor controls the price. Look at the cost of clutches, as an example. How many front-running F500s are actually running a stock Polaris, Ski-Doo, or Artic Cat clutch with no expensive mods? Yes, you can buy a $200 clutch off eBay and run it, but you won't win a well-attended national race with it. I'd bet that almost everyone who has brought home a national-race trophy with more than 5 entrants has some sort of lightweight cover and/or adjustment system on the primary, right? Now, do you really want hydraulic spring perches in this class? Multi-rate and/or keeper springs? $2K aluminum diffs that need to be rebuilt after three races? (Don't laugh - I saw a guy explode his brand-new Miata competition diff last after after only one race). Do you really want to add 4 lightened CV joints to every car (for IRS), with all of the lubing and maintenance they require? Now, assuming that you can find a consistent, reliable, inexpensive, highly-available shock, how will you avoid the use of other outboard (expensive) technologies to get around the limitations of the selected shock? With all due respect to the Legends design, you have to understand that those are SPEC CARS. They are limited enough in what can be done to them that the use of a single spec component doesn't automatically drive more cost elsewhere to make up for it. Our cars are not; we have multiple designs with a very wide range of approaches. Spec'ing a single part will simply create new design challenges that will move the cost elsewhere to get around the spec'd part....and you'll still be paying the extra $$$ for the spec'd component that is currently not in the bill of materials. Please, guys, think this through before making changes. Yes, we need to move forward if the class is to evolve and survive at the national level. I believe, however, that it will be FAR too easy to throw away the unique cost-controlling aspects of our cars that provide our bang-for-the-buck. Marshall Mauney WDC Region -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 3:31 PM Subject: [F500] What happened to f1000 <<<My take is that $20,000 formula cars became $50,000 formula cars, >>> =0 -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.11/722 - Release Date: 3/14/2007 3:38 PM -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.11/722 - Release Date: 3/14/2007 3:38 PM ________________________________ FormulaCar Magazine - A Proud Supporter of Formula 500 The Official Publication of Junior Formula Car Racing Subscribe Today! www.formulacarmag.com or 519-624-2003 _________________________________ _______________________________________________ F500 mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change options please visit: http://f500.org/mailman/listinfo/f500 *** Please, DO NOT send unsubscribe requests to the mailing list! ***
