[quote=“OriginalSterm” post=79530]
Some people pay a little more per engine (including me), some pay a lot less, everyone has as level of a playing field as possible power-wise.[/quote]
A sole sourced motor would not save money and we will never get the price of a professionally built motor below $6K with OEM quality parts. Parts and machine work alone are near $4K and a builder’s time is not without value. It easily takes me 80 hours or so to properly balance and blueprint and engine. I could slap one together in the afternoon given a full bucket of parts, but that would not guarantee any high level of performance or reliability. If we used one builder, and wanted all of the engines to perform the same, that would cost even more and would require custom machining in the cylinder head. There is enough variation in cylinder head castings to cause a ~3WHP variance in output with all other things remaining equal. I’m not talking about the AMC (spanish) head, but variation in the 885 BMW castings. Sole sourcing motors is an extreme response to decrease a barely noticeable performance spread, would take us down the exact same road that led to six SM’s DQ at their most recent national championship race, and not a good solution for what really isn’t a problem. The reality is that the front runners are already within 3WHP, sole sourced motors wouldn’t decrease the spread, teardown at regional events would add cost and discourage participation, and the dyno is a good enough tech method to enforce rules.
On the most part, guys that run up front do spend the time and money to make sure their equipment is in tip top shape. This means starting with properly built motors then refreshing on a routine basis. The idea that you can build a motor and expect output to remain consistent over 3 or 4 seasons simply isn’t true. Lapping the valves, replace the seals, checking guides and bearings for wear, and replacing the rings is something to consider on a seasonal basis and really not that difficult. If you don’t want to do these things, you might find yourself moving slowly back in the pack after a season or two. If you want to have a front running motor, spend the time and money to have a front running motor. Spec E30 racing is comparatively very economical, but nobody ever said it was cheap.
Those that don’t take the time and money to build a motor should not expect their motor to perform like a motor built to the highest extent of the rules. There are anomalies and claims of front running junkyard motors, but this is not the norm and I’m skeptical. I think we can all agree that it’s unreasonable to expect a junkyard motor to run like a pro built motor. Some folks have good luck with shade tree builds and some folks don’t. If you want a fast motor, build a fast motor. That’s really all there is to it.
Reference tech, I will never get behind teardown and will likely just refuse teardown unless I’m on the podium at a national championship event. The latter will likely never happen even if I have a 10 WHP advantage over the field. In my opinion, teardowns are both cost and time prohibitive for guys like me that race on a restricted budget and more restricted schedule. I build my own motors, have built many for others and confident my motors can and do run up front. The idea of routine teardowns at regional events is ludicrous and a solution to problem we simply don’t have. Racers that spend the time to prep their equipment are already extremely close in car performance and making sure their valves are the right color, pistons are the right weight, and they don’t have any illegal coatings on their bearings will do nothing but increase expense and discourage folks.
At the EC Nats, I stuck around to see how post race tech would proceed. I imagined a finely tuned operation with E30 expert inspectors; rather, what I saw was inspectors had no idea what they were looking at, compared components to pictures, and really had no idea what modifications cause a performance advantage. Neither of the cars that were DQd had any unfair advantage or a modified part that would increase performance any appreciable level and I have plenty of time on the dyno to be very confident in this statement. I haven’t seen the plots, but heard that all three cars had very close numbers on the dyno.
Steve Devinney made a point that a racer could tune his car to perform well on the track and then maker lower numbers on the dyno by making DME inputs adjust to the conditions experienced on the track and adjust differently to the conditions on the dyno. Easy to do with some ingenuity and custom wiring, it’s also easy to detect if armed with a voltmeter and a good understanding of how e30 fuel and ignition systems function.
To sum all of that up, I believe that legal pro-built motors will all perform with a 3WHP window given equal fuel and ignition systems, sole sourcing a motor would just add cost, and that the real problem is that tech inspectors don’t know what they are doing.