CHEATING.

[Oldfart]

If the rules allow it, or don't exclude things, then it can hardly be cheating can it?
Aiming at nobody in particular, if the rules specifically say a given cubic capacity (as does Formula Ford) and you then run a greater capacity, that is cheating. If it says minimum weight, and you run lighter.., control camshaft and you use something else...
If the class is "Allcomers" there weren't a lot of rules!
Using a shell which mysteriously went through a "workshop fire" so it could then be given a light sandblast and minimal paint, with the approval of the tech stewards, now where does that sit? I always thought it was strange that the car intended for "Production Racing" had absolutely nothing in it when it caught fire No interior, no wiring, no suspension at all....

[928]

A little story from the UK. touring car race at siverstone grand prix round and someone protested frank gardiner's SCA freight camaro.
Frank's response was memorial as he said to his mechanic take the f'ing homo books up in the wheelbarrow. So a barrow with six ,I think 3 inch thick manuals went up to the scrutineers. these were the FIA homologation manuals for Camaro's. Frank said they can rad them 'cause I have races to win. Was the car legal?

[Grant Sprague]

A couple of great quotes.

One by Douglas Bader (WW2 Fighter Pilot)
"Rules are for the guidance of wise men & the obedience of fools"

Unknown
"May the best cheat win"

Another funny little story I heard of Harry Firth (the king of bending rules to breaking point) from the 70's after he left Ford & went to HDT. He put in a complaint about illegal parts being used on the falcons. When he was questioned about how he would know about those parts. He replied I put them on!"

Also in the days of the Cortina GT, to qualify the cars to be production cars all parts had to be listed in the factory parts catalogue & available in the local dealer. So Harry would re write the Ford parts catalogue & make a few available to certain people.
A couple of days before the race a crate would arrive at the local ford dealers that no one but Harry was allowed to open. If the scrutineers questioned the parts used on his car, he would pull out his special parts catalogue & then take them down to the dealer & crack open the crate showing that the parts were available at the Ford dealer. Not cheating but cutting it very close.

This reminds me of the british touring cars , when working in London the local BMW agent was down the road near chiswick , if you went to the parts Dept & bought [behind the sceens] a new cyl head across the counter and got a bonafide recceipt , it was deemed legal , imagine driving your balls off & a 110kg waker drives past you in a straight line , then after the race he gets on podium.. I remember doing escort sports ?????????? had to drive 101% if I had the chance again I would have stayed home , other classes were a bit cleaner , but same ole same old you start winning & people look at u side ways & that opens an other can of worms , some forget about the experience some take to race meetings lol

[Greg Mackie]

It was over 50 years ago when I first experienced 'rule-bending', in Appendix J.

At Warwick Farm,1963, I was in the same race [in my daily-driver VW Beetle] as George Reynolds,[VW Beetle]. In the first practice session I felt quite pleased to be staying with George, until we hit the main straight....he 'powered' away!

On speaking to Jack Bono [Jack built my engine], he said George probably had a "low top gear". As Appendix J rules didn't allow altered gear ratios, I decided to have a chat to George about this.

When I asked about the "low top", George grabbed a VW parts book and opened it at a pre-marked page. There it was in black & white....1:1 fourth gear, part # and all! When I wanted to write down the part #, George closed the book, and said "They only made one set".

Edit....George Reynolds sponsor was Volkswagen Australia.

[Rod Grimwood]

Jac in relation to the rear end configuration of Fahey Escort, Car I have (for last 30 years) is the same and had a lot of people wondering for years 'how can you have a leaf spring with that set up, it will bind up etc.' The 'rules' said suspension could be modified but you had to maintain the original mounting points, it said nothing about what they had to be made of.

Was classic the look on couple of the faces the day we dropped them out and gave them to boys to look at, they just flopped around.
Made out of real light f/glass and I kept them painted a nice mat black, and ran in slipper/roller for bit extra movement.

Jac off topic a little but what was arse end in the Cortina as it was pretty good out of corners.

[Carlo]

A northern character once visited the south to run in the long distance series with his Commodore. The series in those days was restricted to cars complying with the South Island production race series regulations.
We were at Teretonga and he withdrew after testing because of gearbox failure, keen to see him compete we offered a loan of our spare one but he declined saying that his driveshaft would not fit it, not a problem, we offered our spare driveshaft and he countered with the info that our gearbox would not fit his clutch so we offered our spare unit and the counter was that this would not fit his flywheel so I went and had a wee look and had to report to our team that he was correct for none of our stuff would fit on the back of a NASCAR engine.

[Jizim]

Remember one B&H when Craig Pullmans XC Falcon (unluckily) was parked right next to Ray Williams XC Falcon aand Craigs was about 3 inches lower....ha. Graig came 4th I recall and when the "stips" wanted to check his engine he told them in the only way Craig knows.....to rack off and hopped and drove home. I will always remember when my mate and engine builder Rodney Downs co drove with the late Trevor McLean in a Commodore and Ian " Mother" Ivers whom used to be mine and Rodney's boss at Engine Rebuilders was the Technical Stewart at the time........asked Rodney to take the fuel pump off the front engine cover....so to enable them to "see" and check that they didnt "cheat" by putting a double row timing chain in as opposed to the single row (feking unreliable ) standard timing chain in.....Rodney just told Ian not much point because the had double row chain....consequently was disqualified from the results. Now this is one area that is feking stupid because it is only a reliability enhancement not a performance enhancement. Also putting air down the fuel filler so to expand the tank quantity was another.....BUT you had to remember to leave the spare wheel in there or you blew the shit out of the tank. And lastly...my old Group A Mustang...(ex Pinepac) and my old Group A Toyota . I modified the rods on the Toyota and put fully floating (wait for it) Vauxhall Wyvern gudgeon pins into the rods and put buttons on the ends to hold it all in bore....removed the piddly 5/16 Big End bolts and put SPS Air NZ Hi Strength 3/8 bolts in because I got pissed off breaking conrods....(these Toyota's ...when you change Pistons...you have to heat the rod with oxy/acct torch to enable the piston pins (gudgeons) to be pressed in.....and thats where they broke!..... The Mustang full non cheating engine was another joke....could only rev it to 6700 RPM because it too had 5/16 rod bolts and a cast iron crank that used to fail regularly by breaking at the front pulley/harmonic balancer. Fek it....out they went for a set of Carillos with 3/8th bolt ...a steel crank which I internally balanced with Mallory metal plus a couple of other tricks that I wont mention here because they are damn brilliant and almost undetectable to most.....(a bottle of Jack Daniels has been known to loosen my tongue...)....then I was able to rev to 7500 RPM and run 1/1000 of a sec quicker than Dick Johnson's Green Mustang at Puke. I personally think that these were necessary developments for reliabilty and very cost effective...(although we did get an advantage from it).. Cheating? Nah not really?
Regards to all. Tony Rutherford. (interesting topic all the same)

[Jac Mac]

Jac in relation to the rear end configuration of Fahey Escort, Car I have (for last 30 years) is the same and had a lot of people wondering for years 'how can you have a leaf spring with that set up, it will bind up etc.' The 'rules' said suspension could be modified but you had to maintain the original mounting points, it said nothing about what they had to be made of.

Was classic the look on couple of the faces the day we dropped them out and gave them to boys to look at, they just flopped around.
Made out of real light f/glass and I kept them painted a nice mat black, and ran in slipper/roller for bit extra movement.

Jac off topic a little but what was arse end in the Cortina as it was pretty good out of corners.

Which one, MKII had the 4 link & coil overs plus the 'lazy leaf' described above, Mk IV had 4link & Coil overs, was the better of the two out of corners, actually remember having an 'unofficial' test drive w/out the front shocks, tried to do a drop clutch start, swear it damn near did a wheelstand followed by a nasty smell from the clutch! That car needed more work in the front re anti dive etc.

[Grant Sprague]

LOL Bob was good on the single leaf , got the [that car] to handle not 2 bad ,,, BUT not quite good enough lol heheh , long story but a good one Re the leaf spring I had [ better get this right ] we sold a championship winning car to a local [no names does not matter] after a yr or two I decided to build an other , BUT still using the original format , full springs & no coil overs . rear]... , Some how new rules crept in [but bent ones] as they do , I was determined to keep things the way they should be , the rule changes that people interpreted to be legal were only to suit the people that actually could not drive as quick as some others .

Life is very interesting .... I LOVE simplicity , if it might be cheating , U pay the price sooner or later it comes out in the wash .........cause & effect is my favourite saying ........ natures laws cant escape that ...... an other example was at Ruapuna we took a car down to do a north south challenge only to get sealed up & dismantled back in the north island BECAUSE we were a little quicker , the guy that complained [a friend] spent so much $$$$ could not believe we were quicker [other competitor], I knew he was going towards pot hole changing down to 3rd & putting foot on brakes .. well this is the sort of shit some of us had to put up with , an other time was !!![well im going to ramble on here , Wonder why we cant be bothered any more ......... moral of this story ...... look straight ahead with out having to look over yr shoulder ........ regards to what others did or do they pay or will pay the price ......no escaping that .......

[jimdigris]

Cheating was the norm in European touring car racing in the 80s, everybody did it and they mostly turned a blind eye. Gricey was astounded how rampant it was when he went there in 86, but there was none better than Walkinshaw. If he couldnt get FIA to change the rules to his liking as with the Jaguar's V12 heads, then he just did it anyway. 2 of his Rovers were found to be 100mm wider than a road going car, which must have been one hell of an engineering feat, but they were allowed to run the entire ETTC season with no penalty. It was reported in Auto Action that during post race scrutineering after Monza that the Rovers heads were said to be completely different to that of the homologated heads seen on the Rovers at Wellington, yet FIA did nothing. I remember Brocky saying after Monza that there is something going on when a 3.5 litre pulls out from behind a 5 litre V8 and just blows it away down the straight

[928]

making the rovers wider was easy. just a big hammer and time it was only the wheel arches so that wider tyres could be fitted.
dear tom wonderfull man did a special head for the volvo there were only three one on each car and one for the scrutineers to compare against

[Russ Cunningham]

problem is that cars that I have built and prepared won enough races to satisfy me. you have won?

You seem to be proud of being dishonest. It's individuals such as yourself with no driving ability that cheat because it's the only way you can win. Ultimately in this short life, you 928 are a loser. Thank Christ none of my friends are in this category.

[928]

You seem to be proud of being dishonest. It's individuals such as yourself with no driving ability that cheat because it's the only way you can win. Ultimately in this short life, you 928 are a loser. Thank Christ none of my friends are in this category.

who said anything about driving.
just thought of another level playing field for you russ.
Jumper Jarier getting his nickname at monaco gp. Drove up though the grid just before the race start to be at the line when the flag dropped. when asked why he replied " the race starts at the line and i got there at flag drop, besides who is going to penalise a fenchman in france".

[Greg Mackie]

You seem to be proud of being dishonest. It's individuals such as yourself with no driving ability that cheat because it's the only way you can win. Ultimately in this short life, you 928 are a loser. Thank Christ none of my friends are in this category.

I'm with you, Russ.

[928]

I'm with you, Russ.

Just where did I state that I had cheated.

[John McKechnie]

Herald today---A Kiwi boatbuilder who has been thrown out of the America's Cup regatta for cheating insists that he did not put lead in the boat..
Suitable addition to this thread to read and think about when such a nasty smear word as cheating is used.
A reputation is all you have in this life.

[928]

Herald today---A Kiwi boatbuilder who has been thrown out of the America's Cup regatta for cheating insists that he did not put lead in the boat..
Suitable addition to this thread to read and think about when such a nasty smear word as cheating is used.
A reputation is all you have in this life.

Well said John

[Oldfart]

Herald today---A Kiwi boatbuilder who has been thrown out of the America's Cup regatta for cheating insists that he did not put lead in the boat..
Suitable addition to this thread to read and think about when such a nasty smear word as cheating is used.
A reputation is all you have in this life.

Scapegoat?

[Greg Mackie]

Just where did I state that I had cheated.

Who said you did?....not me.

I don't even know who you are.

[928]

Who said you did?....not me.

I don't even know who you are.

well side stepped greg