Blood on the car...

[BLS]

I've read in the past that something isn't truly yours until you've bled on it It's not the first time my car has drawn blood, but it's the first time in a long while. While jigging up some of the back to remake lost measurements I decided to remove the 4 into 2 and 2 into 1 exhaust header parts. This requires pulling a spring and I promptly slipped, contacting a thinner metal body mounting part which sliced my forearm open. No stitches required, just your every day common cut.

So, work has begun. I have quite a bit to complete my original mods plus finish the new body mold. The old Citation glasswork will no longer fit. One of my customers gave me quite a bit of carbon fiber to go with the glass they gave me some years ago. All I need to do is work, work that is fairly new to me, not having dome much in the way of glass work before.

I'll just use this thread to update my progress on occasion, hopefully without further injury.

Thanks to Stevan for many things, answering my sometimes simpleton questions and for keeping this FV website going. There is a lot of really good technical info in these pages.

[FV80]

Thanks, Barry - hope your wound heals quickly and nicely. As opposed to your situation, I routinely bleed on my cars.. all over them... and the floor of the shop too .

This year is looking 'not so good' for me. SCCA has decided that it MUST add FC to the small bore open wheel group and I've reached the point where that is just no longer an acceptable risk for me.. unless there are FEW FC running . very few. I have withdrawn my registration for Sebring - there are now 16 FC and 8 FV .. plus 9 FF and 3 F5 (there were 5 F5, but 2 dropped out after the last FF signed up. We dealt with FC and FV on the test day track at the Runoffs Monday.. and things did NOT go well for the vees. It was so bad (only 2 'green flag' laps during the first session) that the Chief Steward stepped up and made a change on the fly. They separated the FC and FV group into 2 groups for about half the time each. The second session was actually a quite good session for both groups. I think both got done with no BFA at all. In the first session, at least one of the vees ended up hitting the concrete wall avoiding 3 FC that decided to slam on brakes in front of him because of a late yellow coming in to T1. It took him about THREE DAYS to get his car going again.. and a LOT of borrowed parts.

My letter to the CRB/SCCA fell on 'deaf ears' as they just forwarded my letter to the executive stewards so that the stewards would be aware of my concern.. not even a recommendation or anything to go with it.

I'll be searching around for events that do NOT include FC (or any other winged class) with FV. Don't know how much luck I'm going to have finding any.

Steve, FV80

[BLS]

I did not know that FC had been added to the mix. I cannot imagine what the thinking is on that given the disparity in speed and braking. I ran several regional's that had them in a one group all things open wheel and it was not ideal, and that with only a handful of the very fast cars. You really are required to drive with one eye on your mirrors all the time because they come up so fast.

I don't blame you for refusing that. One or two of those cars is a problem, more than that is insanity.

[FV80]

It's all about 'group count parity'.. with only 2 OW groups ..and wings in one group and small bore NONwings in the other.. the general car count per group is loaded high in the wings group (since there are some SIX classes in that group) as opposed to only THREE classes in the small bore group. That leads to an IMBALANCE in the 'numbers game' - maybe 35 cars in WINGS and 18 or so in NONwings. That's apparently TOO BIG a numbers imbalance for some people.. despite the 'obviousness' of the problems it brings about .. but the PROBLEMS are mostly shouldered by the VEES - NO ONE ELSE has to deal with those incredible closing rates .. except US. At Sebring, now the group count is more like 37/37 with the 18 FC's. If they were 'back where they BELONG' the group counts would be 53/21. Moving any other class to small bore would leave too big an imbalance too. Moving FE2 instead of FC would be about the same. I think SCCA has TWO goals now.. BALANCE the group counts and KEEP FE and FC from being in the same group. THEY interfere with each other A LOT.. *BUT*, of course, the closing rates are almost non existent between the 2, but SCCA doesn't consider CLOSING RATES .. or BRAKING CAPABILITY between classes.. only NUMBERS.

All that said, I'm pretty sure it's going to stay the way it is until there are NO MORE VEES in SCCA club racing. I hate it, but there is apparently nothing I can do about it - except look outside SCCA.

Steve

[BLS]

Sad situation when the most participated class historically and still near the top is shuffled into oblivion. I know there are regional participation issues in some area's, not helped by mixing FV with cars like FC. I like the FC and the FE cars, but they should not be on the track with FV's. FF and F500 is just barely workable IMO. Without wings, at least the corner speeds are similar.