cheating stories

In reply to friedgreencorrado: And I'm sure from there on out, he was the first one those he beat accidentally put in the wall.

In reply to friedgreencorrado:

There was a Run-Off's where a Showroom Stock competitor has his plastic rear bumper cover nearly pulled off from contact. The metal underneath was swiss-cheesed with holes the factory did't put there. And then there were Mitsu's with boost controls linked to interior heater adjusters.

A few years back, one autocrosser lost a national championship because his car lacked some interior insulation. It wasn't intentional and it wasn't performance enhancing but it was protested by a jack-hole competitor.

And there was a guy screaming bloody murder about those who removed exterior badges and put them in the glove box. The glove box insertion was to satisfy those complaining against illegal weight reduction. It was never considered to be an aerodynamic advantage, just a cosmetic change. Someone claimed otherwise.

Ahh, showroom stock of the late 80's and early 90's. When the goal was to finish 6th. Why? Because the top 5 went to impound.....

Watching the turbo cars and their creativity was certainly amusing.

In reply to NGTD:

I come from a rally bacground so I've heard about this abit.

It required no tools to install, it's the tightening of the jubilee clips that opened it up.

Also it wasn't caught due to out accelerating others, it was known they had more power just not known how, the restrictior was periodically checked. One of the mechanics (apparently his first time working an event) used a rag to hold it while it was removed.

The spring sprung and took the rag, or a single thread depending on story. Scrutineers saw it and put the whole unit in a bucket of water, saw bubbles and the please explain moment started.

Yeah hiding switches and boost control was always good, heater controls, ash tray, sun visor.

I remember a comment from a commentator with the sierra or skyline at bathurst in aus. It was a cloudy day but everyttime they came down the straight they would lower the visor.

Many years ago a well-known SOLO2 competitor fabricated "tow package" documentation to justify the different final drive on his Honda.

Not really small-time, but a favorite--Documented from the book, “The Unfair Advantage”: Acid-Dipped "Trans-Am' Camaro

For 1968 Roger and Mark had a “body-in-white” acid dipped and prepared an all new 1968 car, adding the weight back in choice areas to balance the car and make the minimum weight. In its debut at Daytona it suffered cracked cylinder heads and lost to a Mustang. Vince Piggins, Mr. Camaro at Chevrolet, strongly suggested that Penske enter two cars at Sebring, the second TransAm of the year, which would be a 12-hour event within an event. Not having time to prepare a second car, Mark retrieved “The Lightweight” which had gone back to Godsall, for a one-race partnership. Roger and Mark fooled the tech inspectors by putting 1968 grille and taillights on the 1967 car and painting both cars identically. Then they sent the legal 1968 car to tech twice, once with Number 15 and once with Number 16, this worked so well that they repeated the process in qualifying and “The Lightweight” actually qualified them both. We know this because Mark put it into his book, “The Unfair Advantage”.

FWIW, a hammer and 24-grit apparently makes for "as-cast" looking surfaces on your massaged parts...

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the 'adding lightness' and the hidden switches.

oldsaw wrote: And there was a guy screaming bloody murder about those who removed exterior badges and put them in the glove box. The glove box insertion was to satisfy those complaining against illegal weight reduction. It was never considered to be an aerodynamic advantage, just a cosmetic change. Someone claimed otherwise.

That actually opens up another thing to discuss..I had a buddy running ITA that was DQ'd once because his RX-4 was missing a heater core (even 20yrs ago, finding one that didn't leak was pretty much impossible). Same thing as you mention..no advantage, but some whiny shiny happy person found something in the GCR that allowed the protest.

He reinstalled his leaky one, but blocked off the hoses. Tech declared it legal.

Aside to yamaha..IIRC, he really didn't have much problem with contact afterwards. Seems that enforcing those rules is actually a little easier than chasing down the technical stuff.

In Yamaha KT100 kart racing, clever people would fly-cut a recess about 1/2 way down the spark plug threads, about 3-4mm high and 4-6 deep. A corresponding volume would be made up by setting the squish height and combustion chamber volume considerably tighter/smaller than the rules dictated.

When the combustion chamber volume was checked post-race w/ a burette and fluid poured into the plug hole, the missing material in the recess made it all work out. When the plug was installed however, the area was obstructed with a subsequent increase in compression ratio.

The WKA now does the check with a threaded insert.

Knurled wrote: FWIW, a hammer and 24-grit apparently makes for "as-cast" looking surfaces on your massaged parts...

I can do better than that

When I was racing mini stock, I ran a 4G32 and the exhaust manifold was very restrictive at the outlet. I built a jig for the mill and took it out to 2" with a boring head. After I ported the rest of it (and did a bit of experimentation), I put it back on the jig with a gasket, poured it full of sulfuric acid, and let it stew for half a day. It looked as-cast when I was done.

Same car, in my second year, I was determined to catch the cheating Mustangs and Pintos. I built a really strong motor, with cam, modded carb, electronic ignition, and super high compression. This was a stock class, but tech was fairly light, so as long as it was close racing and not a lot of complaints, there was no teardown. First night I won the feature, and lapped the field twice. Not so much because of the motor, but because I'd had the chance to run a few hundred practice laps preseason, and was in mid season form. I thought for sure the new tech guy would disqualify me. He was the guy that I worked with on the cam. I pulled it after that, and he only lasted a few weeks. The next guy had a thing for milled heads. He never caught on that I left the head stock, but machined most of the dish out of the pistons, and .100" off the block. Running a 30 year old Mitsu motor amongst a field of 2.3 Fords made doing that kind of thing possible.

When I moved up to street stock, I built new jigs and did the same thing with the intakes and exhaust manifolds. I had some real fast limited small blocks

In reply to Zomby Woof:

You magnificent bastard!

Running a Mopar in a field of Chevy's has it's advantages too....all the Tech guys were also Chevy guys. They didn't know the difference between a 318 and a W-2 headed 340 and torsion bars looked nothing like a coil spring. That was one fast Hobby stock '73 Barracuda and it went around corners really, really good too. This was on an 1/8 mile clay oval in Hawaii back in the mid '80's

That car also tended to salute when going past the stars and stripes.......but that's a whole 'nother story

Ok let's see if i can get this tablet thing to work.

I remember my dad telling me a story when he was a builder, racer and scrutineer/ tech. Before they would have a scrut with the car for tear down.

A formula ford race required everyone to present heads for inspection, one of dads mates was cheating big time and he knew he was goin to get busted. While wondering what to do about it my dad turned up with his legal head, he borrowed this head and off to inspection.

Had the head checked out and got told its illegal and would be having a hearing in an hour. Meanwhile my dad packed up both cars with only one head and headed home. Hearing came and charges were laid down, thrown out of the season and a couple of grand fine back when our land cost 20 grand it now worth nearly a million, his reply 'that's not my head, mine is dowled to the block' of course they wanted to check this and the car wasn't there.

It settled that the inspectors would visit the car home to check. They turned up sat the head on the car and saw it was true it dowles stopped the head sitting down properly. Charges thrown out...

Had they checked my dad's car sitting next to it, or even checked the original head sitting on the seat of the car it would have been easy

I think I am going to class the bmw in SSM just for fun locally(as it is most like a miata), if I win, I'll protest myself......because there's no money in solo2, I see it as just fun. Plus it'll need tested for challenge readiness eventually.

modernbeat wrote: I believe the beloved Sam Strano was cheating when he won his 2010 SCCA F-Stock championship. The Shelby he competed with in earlier years was allowed some extra performance advantages due to a few TSBs issued JUST for the Shelbys. It was reported that Sam illegally used two Shelby only TSBs that year to upgrade his non-Shelby Mustang. One allowed some suspension slotting and the other allowed the carbon-fiber clutch disks. Neither one is a big deal for most classes, but they both offer significant advantages in Stock class autocrossing. Sam mentioned them a few times online until it was mentioned they were illegal.

This would be a good example of SCCA Solo going too far. Strano's car at that point was probably extremely close to a Shelby anyways, short of getting Carol to autograph his dashboard. I doubt it would have had any performance gain on a real Shelby with the same TSB's.

The worst I've heard of is the aforementioned Tow-Package.

Mtn, I don't think so. For Solo class the new Coyote engine had some advantages over the older Mod motor, but the stock suspension on the Ford left much to be desired compared to the Shelby. The additional suspension advantages and lack of rear wheel spin from those parts is a huge advantage over the other Fords, and the Coyote was a light advantage over the other Shelbys in the class.

FSP_ZX2 wrote: Many years ago a well-known SOLO2 competitor fabricated "tow package" documentation to justify the different final drive on his Honda.

One of your challenge pro drivers was on the receiving end of that and came in second to said Honda. He was not the one who protested though.

When I was racing in IMSA in the 80's, we ran GTO class. As independents we had no chance of beating the Audis, so we went into the parts bin and came back with a very blatent 426ci SBC that was a beast. Still couldn't keep up with Hans Stuck, but had some fun. Car owner came up with quite a few clever ideas, but always ran totally legal when we thought we had a chance. Beat two F40's at Watkins Glen, that was pretty good.

While not actually cheating, carefully reading all the rules can gain you an advantage.

In some endurance racing I was involved in the pit stop rules were:

No one in the car while fueling.
No work on the car while fueling.
One person to do fueling and one to stand by with fire extinguisher.
No more than 4 people(including driver) over the wall at any time.

Most teams would come in and stop, driver would get out, fueler and extinguisher person would go over the wall, and when fueling was finished the rest of the crew would go over the wall to check and work on the car.

In the picture taken during a fueling and driver change stop notice:

Drivers exchanging info with the relief driver ready to jump in as soon as fueling is finished.
One mechanic checking under the hood after he had looked at the tires.
Fueler putting gas in and I am the guy (not over the pit wall) with the fire extinguisher.

This let us complete a driver change/gas stop ~1 minute faster than the other teams which when you are running 2 minute laps is a big advantage. Yes, we were protested but the scruitneer (at rear of car in reflective vest) said we were legal.

I never was protested for this, but I ran a golf tee in the vaccum line of the boost actuator on the Ion Redline I had......granted it made Cooper S's, GTI's, and SRT4's cry on a local level anyways, but it had a different effect on the car than one might think.......+3psi boost in the final 500rpm of the rev range, torque management/boost cut was disabled in 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th gears, the actuator didn't dump the boost each shift(slightly more responsive), and the rev limiter went from a soft cut at 6400rpm to a hard cut at 6500.....

As far as drag racing was concerned, the car ran identical times and pretty much identical horsepower and torque without regard to tee or no tee, but the car ended up even faster around an solo2 course. One larger course event I beat a few R-comp cars in G-stock while on star specs.......They were less than amused, but couldn't find a thing wrong aside from the hurst shifter..... I somewhat miss that car, because I'm a firm believer it'd be a national threat on hoosiers in G-stock.

I remember the Penske dipped Camaros. I recall that they qualified, drove behind a building where it went into trailer while an identical, undipped car emerged to go to scrutineering. Probably an urban legend, but it made me chuckle.

The fuel-supply story that I remember from Smokey was that there was no regulation for the fuel filler hose in NASCAR at the time. So he ran a huge hose around the inside of his trunk and held a few extra gallons. The story goes that officials impounded his tank, so he drove the car from the track to his shop on the fuel-filler hose alone to grab a new tank. Again, probably a legend, but it sure is funny.

I don't know if you could call it cheating, but when Audi entered TransAm with the Quattro, they had a HUGE advantage in the rain. (duh!) It is said that team members did a rain dance before the race, hoping to attract the clouds. Several races were run in the wet and Audi dominated.

There were stories about Sam Posey dipping the Challenger, Tech Inspector leaned on the roof and crumpled it. Could be a rumor.

I remember a car talk show where Posey was talking to another driver (don't recall who) about the old Trans Am days. One driver said: "Sure, we kept a little under the seat, why; where'd you keep yours?"

Agast and feigned shock that anyone would suggest cheating, he finally mombled "Under the dash."

Don't crash don't crash don't crash don't crash ....

Bilmar Engines and Marvin Palmer, may he RIP. Glory days of SSGT and Firehawk racing. There were right motors and then there were "right" motors

I've heard of narrow poly bushings in the center with bits of stock rubber stuck on either side in Showroom stock and stock autocross. Also acid dipping the brazing all seams on a Mustang bodyshell for A sedan. The braze gets sucked into the joint so isn't visible like a seam weld. Once painted it looks stock.