in the passed you have allways taken your bike up to the tech area "naked". now with the oil pan as a requirement how are the officials going to inforce that? is the "pit out guy" going to have to watch each bike go out on the track and if he doesn't have one stop him? or are you going to have to go thru tech twice? i'm an official and i haven't even heard exactly how it is going to be handled. any suggestions?
Just a thought, but my fluid retaining lowers have Dzus fasteners as well as normal screws holding them to the mounts. What about taking the screws out before going to tech so the lowers could be easily removed and reinstalled, while being inspected at the same time? And for guys that don't have the fasteners, take some tools to tech with you and remove the lowers while the official inspects the rest of the bike. Either way it's only one trip to tech and all bases are covered. Whaddya think?
Removing lowers in tech would make for some seriously long lines and result in people missing practice. Since we look at our job as being to get people onto the racetrack this wouldn't be the best thing to have happen. For now we are going to enforce it on the track and in the ppaddock by keeping track of those without lowers and making sure they know that they are required. We will also have the officials wandering through the paddock checking and talking to the riders. When we run across someone who has been warned a couple of times we will start to meatball them (it's easy to keep track of the miscreants because the vast majority of riders cooperate and follow the rules). This will also be how we enforce it once we get to the point where we are sure everyone has had a chance to come into compliance. With some cooperation from the riders we'll never get to the point where we require the lowers to be brought to tech - and this would be best for everyone. If this doesn't work then we'll move on to the next logical step and require everything be brought to tech.
Well if it comes to that, bring the lower with you when you check in you brain bucket and leathers. That way you don't have to take things apart in tech.
That would be the most likely worst case scenario. At this point though we're trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone - it's already a huge pain to do tech as it is and I'd rather not make it harder on you guys.
In this case, less is better, since I do the majority of events by myself anyway. I couldn't imagine trying to take my bike, lower fairing and riding gear to tech without help. If you want a good laugh every now and then, come watch me in the paddock after a hot session when my adrenaline is pumping and I'm trying to get off my bike in full gear and put it up on the stand. Some days it's easier just to lean it up against my trailer and lay down for a while.
I just hope that adding another modification to some already really crappy mods I have seen on some bikes does not create a dangerous track situation...nothing like dodging a roasting pan that just fell off of someones racebike.
i have a'96 f3 and it's a chore getting the lower off siiting on the stand much less rolling on the track.i'm sure everything will work out.
Just a quick tech question... Are we required to safety wire the bolts on the brake lines? I realize that the rule book states that all pressurized lines should be wired, but the bike that I recently purchased does not have them wired and the bike has been raced in WERA since about 1988.... I may do it anyhow, but am mainly curious... Thanks!
Aw geeeezz, and all the extra time I spent drilling and wiring those darn things...well, at least I have piece of mind ;-)
LOL - We like people to wire everything but with the way the brake system is set up you can easily tell if they are loose. We had a couple of instances where people drilled too close to the fluid passages and they failed (a bad thing). It was one of those rules where the chances of someone doing it wrong outweighed the chances of that particular bolt coming loose.
