Re-Sealing 1250

[art1]

I am curious what people think about the Inex policy that demands racers send in their older sealed motors to have them re-sealed at the owners expense. I feel that this punishes the lower budget teams and it will not end one of the biggest drawbacks of racing in this series, competing against illegal motors. If engine builders can remove the engine seals, modify the engine and re-seal it, I'm not sure that having the older motors sent in to INEX at the owners expense will fix the problem. What about the purple seals and the new seals? Are they tamper proof?
  INEX showed up at the Waterford Speedbowl in CT this fall and teched the top cars after the race and according to our INEX Tech inspector "three of them were found to have motor issues". A few of them were back racing the next week.  My question for 600 is why did they stop at the top four? If they had gone deeper into the field they would have found plenty more and why were the teams who were supposedly not within the rules allowed to race again? I also believe that last fall, they caught a lot of people by surprise and next year it won’t be as easy as visiting a track once.
  Did other racers witness similar situations when INEX visited their home track?
  The only way 600 is going to solve the cheating problem is to consistently tech everybody after every race, even if this is done randomly over the several races. Forcing racers to take the time, remove a motor and send it to Charlotte at their own expense, will solve nothing. Why can't the INEX tech officials perform the tech at the track?  The only way to resolve this issue is to check the cars  as they come off the track. Just because I send a motor down to Charlotte, doesn't mean that it will be the motor that is in my car at the start of the race season.
 I do not want to imply that every successful racer in this series has an illegal motor.  I know there are plenty of racers who are successful because of their hard work and dedication.  I wrote this because I'm surprised that more people aren't talking about the motor issue and I was wondering what other opinions Legends drivers had on this subject. What's your opinion?

Art Marrero

[justfreaky]

Art,

Plenty of recent topics on the new seals. Pro and con... Regardless; Has to be done.
This site has no ties to INEX or USLC (no longer 600 Racing. Hasn't been for years.)

Steve

[IraceLegends77]

Art,

Your preaching to the choir. This is what a lot of us have been saying for a while. I sometime think they forget that there are races outside the Charlotte area but your right tech is the ultimate answer.

[VMS Motorsports]

There's not a lot of talk about it because it was announced over a year ago, so most of the talk is done with.
They will not catch the majority of the cheating without a full teardown anyway.
It is what it is I guess.
Just glad I do my own work and run open motors

[legends13]

you all are missing the point. The old seals are very easy to open and reseal, with no evidence of it happening. The new seals are much harder to do that. Yes, the new seals can be opened up, and resealed. However, when this is done, it messes up the anodizing and is detectable upon inspection. Phase 1 of the engine "fix" is getting rid of all old seals. Phase 2, will be implementing a protest rule for seals. This rule will likely be the tech official cuts of the existing front engine seal, and reseals with a new, different color/type/etc... seal. The old seal will be sent to USLC and checked for evidence of tampering. If it is suspected to have been tampered with, then the side seal will also be taken and checked in the same manner. If this is also found to be tampered with, then the engine will be taken and shipped to USLC.

Of course, this is the basic idea, and process will likely change, but you get the idea.

This keeps the tech guy honest, because he never has a full set of seals at 1 time, and it allows for a fair method of protest that doesn't stop a competitor from racing because his engine was protested and taken to USLC just to check...

[IraceLegends77]

I can't wait to see them take the first motor. That is going to be a very entertaining night. 

[knoxracing]

This new rule will appear in the 21014 rule book. I have not read the rule word for word, but I can tell you from the meetings I had it will most likely cost $100.00 to protest a seal. The seal will be removed and sent to USLC. It will be detected if this seal has been opened. The penalty will be large nas this was the point of the reseal. I can tell you it is detectable when the seals have been tampered with. Time will tell how this works.

[racerrad8]

I can't wait to see them take the first motor. That is going to be a very entertaining night. 

It has happened to me three times after winning the world finals over the years. They pull my motor, take it for inspection and then tell me it is worn out. I then tell them to put it back together  the way it was and I can usually get another year out of it.

The first time the inspected the same engine twice as it was fairly new winning the first finals and subsequently won the following year too. I was hoping for the forth last year, but coming to the white flag it dumped the rods out of it and went out in a ball of fire...

I really did not care, I knew they were all legal and since it was going into the off season I wasn't concerned about the time frame either. We will have to see what happens at the Saturday night events...

Randy - RPM

[IraceLegends77]

I know they found a illegal seal in NC and they wanted to take the motor. The motor was not illegal but the seal had been tampered with. The guy told them they can keep the illegal part (the seal) and since the motor was correct he got away with it. I'm sure they will take that loophole out of the rule book that we will get in July....LOL

[slack11]

I just see this turning into a fiasco..... I just forsee a seal being sent to NC, they saying it was tampered with, and the motor owner saying it was not.... If a motor has some age on it, the seal may be all scratched, a little beaten up, the wire could be fraying or pulling out of the seal, etc....  Is there really a dead safe way to tell these have been tampered with?  Just see it as a band-aid to the larger problem... Cut the seals off and do real tech........

[legends13]

yes, there is pretty much a dead set way of telling. My understanding is that the anodizing on the seal, inside where the wire goes, gets messed up.

This is also why the protest will involve both seals if needed. They will check 1, and if an issue is observed, they will check the second seal. benefit of the doubt says 1 might be messed up. But if both are messed up, it is very likely that they were tampered with.

[VMS Motorsports]

Personally, I think going away from the single, rock hard spec tire is what caused a lot of this problem...when you cant put the HP to the ground, it didn't matter what you did to your motor.
Don't say that they didn't have a choice, there are more tire manufacturers than BFG.

There will always be sealed motors in Legends racing, so the "taking off the seals" argument is useless. They make so much $$ selling motors, it would be suicide to take the seals off

This is just one of the things we will have to see how it plays out.
Sure, it sucks that you had to send your motor in last year (or still have to if you procrastinated), but at least USLC is trying something somewhat inexpensive, I'll give them a little credit there.

[IraceLegends77]

yes, there is pretty much a dead set way of telling. My understanding is that the anodizing on the seal, inside where the wire goes, gets messed up.

This is also why the protest will involve both seals if needed. They will check 1, and if an issue is observed, they will check the second seal. benefit of the doubt says 1 might be messed up. But if both are messed up, it is very likely that they were tampered with.

Nothing personal but we have heard this same song and dance before with the last set of seals. I even saw a dealer get protested and he refused to give up anything and nothing was done about it. The real answer that Slack11 keeps saying "tech" real tech.

[knoxracing]

This is why we now have a seal claim rule. When there was an engine protest or claim rule racers were using it in a malicious way to disrupt another competitors season (like in a point situation), so USLC decoded since the motors were sealed there would be no need to protest engines. Then came the seal tampering. The seals were able to be removed and work performed and resealed without truly being able to tell for sure. On to the current seals, if the current seal is opened and work is done and it RESEALED it is detectable. This is why we now have a seal protest rule. Someone else mentioned scratched or a seal with a tattered cable, this will still be able to be checked as it was not opened. Once the new seal is opened USLC can identify this has been done. A temp seal will be installed until the protested seal is checked by USLC. This is the tech you are asking about.

[legends13]

Jim, the Federals are not really any softer than the BFG's. The side wall is, but the tread itself is not. (maybe marginally, but that is all) i don't see the tire being an issue. The ONLY bad thing about federals, is that they are single ply sidewall, and get cut easier.

I don't run dirt, but I have to imagine the AR tire is 1000% better then the bfg.