Larry Colen wrote:
The engine mods that I'm allowed on the 1.6 liter motor are: Change the air filter Remove the catalytic converter Change the exhaust from the cat back
Oops, less than I thought, there.
I'm allowed to put in a specific Limited Slip Differential (not to confuse it with LakeShore Drive).
Not being a Spec Miata guy, I totally forgot the "diff wars". :-)
I'm allowed to run 15" wheels up to 7" wide that weigh at least 13 lbs. In our region we have the 205-50-15 Toyo RA-1 spec tire (decent performance, excellent life for a race tire, keeps nearly full grip until the cord is showing)
Ooooh, I didn't know about the wheel weight rule. We /love/ the RA-1, especially compared to the Hoosiers.
I'm allowed to strip the interior, I'm required to have a roll cage that meets certain specs, race seats, race belts, fire extinguisher or fire system, kill switch.
Yeah, I ignored all the safety stuff.
I'm allowed to run a fiberglass hardtop (several seconds a lap in aerodynamics).
Over 2 seconds a lap at Road Atlanta, according to the E Production guys.
One very nice thing about the class is the factory support. You can buy parts from Mazdaspeed at dealer cost.
Mazda is *the* *bomb* for amateur racers. We've had two RX-7 race cars (still have one) and both my brother and I have Miata street cars and we've rented a Miata to race. We love the rotary in a lot of ways, but a 302 makes a /lot/ more torque and a good bit more horsepower, with less cash injected. That may be where our remaining RX-7 ends up (300-400 HP 302 with T-5 or T-56 tranny ... about twice the going rate for a 12A rebuild with a T-5, three times with a T-56).
The racing is amazingly close. The last race I ran with the SCCA the qualifying times of the guy 2 places in front of me and the guy behind me differed by about .060 seconds, that works out to about 8 feet on a three mile track for two rows of the grid in mid pack.
The reason that we don't run Spec Miata is that, in the southeast, at least, they tend to tear up a lot of bodywork and a nontrivial number of cars. The first SM race we ever saw, 54 cars took the green flag ... two came back banana shaped on flatbeds, two came back unscathed, and the other fifty came back with bodywork damage ranging from a couple of hundred bucks to several thousand. They've gotten better, but they still bash up a lot more cars than ITA. :-) At the 2005 ARRC, I watched (from about ten feet away) one SM literally punt another at turn 12 of Road Atlanta such that the puntee got over six feet of air and speared the driver's left (outside) concrete wall at over 100 MPH and 40 degrees of yaw. Killed the timing loop, but only battered the driver.
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