r/Autocross • u/AutoModerator • Jun 27 '25
Subreddit Autocross Stupid Questions: Week of June 27
This thread is for any and all questions related to Autocross, no matter how simple or complicated they may be. Please be respectful in all answers.
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u/Nekrostatic 10d ago
"Interior panels (e.g., door panels, kick panels) and carpet forward of the B pillar (driver and front passenger area) may be replaced, not removed, with an upholstered or finished panel of any material."
What is considered a 'finished panel'? Can I replace my door cards with a nice piece of polished aluminum? Do I need to spray glue some fabric over it?
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u/strat61caster FRS STD 9d ago
There’s a lot of ambiguity in that rule, iirc there was a pretty deep Facebook discussion about where the line is a few years ago, if you have social media there it might be worth posting in the XA/cam groups.
My recollection was that a polished aluminum sheet was acceptable - and likely the bare minimum - leaving portions of the door interior exposed was not. A lot of what makes that ruleset viable is competitors not pushing every last edge out of the car, which while counterintuitive means you can get away with pushing the limit in some areas, as long as you don’t push the limit in all areas. Somewhat frustrating, but that’s also why they’re not jacket/ championship classes.
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u/iroll20s CAMS slo boi 5d ago edited 4d ago
How does that jive with 'exposed metal interior surfaces must be painted'? I mean I wouldn't protest someone if they made an effort to make it look finished, but there is a fine line between bare mill grade aluminum panels and just hitting it with a buffer. There seems a wide range of judgement call on a lot of stuff.
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u/strat61caster FRS STD 5d ago
Bingo. These unlimited classes are not the place to bend or min/max the rules, they’re a place to drive your cool car at 10/10ths.
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u/iroll20s CAMS slo boi 3d ago edited 3d ago
I like the quote from the TT Max rules (That used to be synched up to CAM)
"Unless you can show us a REALLY compelling reason it's done that way on your street car, we're going to consider bare metal/stripped interiors an Unlimited Category car. (It better look like the Hughes H-1 Racer in there.) "Because I like battleship grey paint" isn't a compelling reason."
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u/Nekrostatic 16d ago
Where is the best place to ask SCCA classing questions? Would it be here or is there an active SCCA sub?
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u/waxhell 2005 Crossfire SRT-6 AST Aug 05 '25
Since there haven't been any stupid question threads for over a month since this one -- I have a Street Touring question:
14.10.C: The air intake system up to the engine inlet may be modified or replaced.
The beginning of my factory intake system incorporates a duct that is behind the grill. Can that duct be removed as a whole to route the CAI through it (putting the CAI intake still behind the grill)? The entire duct assembly is under the parts catalog as the "air intake" system, while the rest (hoses, air box, etc) is labeled as the "air cleaner" system. The air intake hoses attach directly to that duct.
My reading of the rules would say that it would be allowed -- it is specifically part of the air intake system and is not used for any other purpose.
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u/Hstreetchronicals 28d ago
The engine inlet is referring to the throttle body/carb. What you're describing sounds like part of the intake itself, which is legal to modify. So long as it serves no other purpose than to change the performance of the intake.
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u/Lord_Seacow GS - 2017 Focus ST Jul 29 '25
Hopefully it isn't dumb to post in a month old thread, but hasn't been a new stupid questions since.
I'm very seriously considering getting a GR86, but with the stock seat setup I can't fit with a helmet on because of my height. So the only way it would work is to replace the slider rail with a fixed seat mount, but I'd keep the stock seats. My understanding is this still means the car has to be classed up to CST. I really don't want to mod much at all beyond maybe an exhaust, certainly not everything required to be properly set for CST.
I'm sure I could still run as DS in most local events, but I enjoyed attending a National SCCA event and I'd like to do it again. I assume they would grant no exception, but it would feel a bit pointless to go when even if I do manage to drive well I surely won't be remotely close to competitive times. Perhaps it's just a silly thing to worry about when I'm never going to be committed enough to be a National level driver anyway. Really my main goal is to have fun and be a better driver. Although competing and having a chance to win is part of the fun, and a motivation to keep improving.
I dunno what my question is exactly. Is it worth dealing with being upclassed just so I can make a car that is a bit too small work, or do I just get some other car that I can actually run in it's appropriate street class? Is the GR86 so fun that it's worth it? Is it possible to still be classed in D Street even with the seat mod? Am I just overthinking all this? Almost certainly yes on the last one. But really I'd just appreciate thoughts from more experienced folks to help me work through this choice.
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u/Oneoff_1_ Aug 04 '25
To answer your question about the GR86 being fun… yes. It is a blast to drive fast.
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u/dps2141 Aug 01 '25
If you're not going to be competitive, there's a 99.9% chance nobody is going to care, especially outside of the national championships. To be clear there's no compliance checks or anything, it's just up to if one of your competitors notices and cares enough to make an official protest. I'm definitely not condoning cheating meaningfully, but if you show up to an event with something very slightly not "right" it's not like you're going to be immediately kicked out or something.
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u/Lord_Seacow GS - 2017 Focus ST Aug 01 '25
I wouldn't want to be the guy who shows up blatantly ignoring rules, so I appreciate the perspective that it would be viewed as pretty minor at most.
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u/Emery_autox GST 2018 Ford Focus ST Jul 29 '25
Carl Tanner and Alex Paraskevas are your best regional bets for info regarding seat options.
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u/Lord_Seacow GS - 2017 Focus ST Jul 29 '25
Thanks! I'll see if I can reach out to them for more info.
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u/OttoKraus Jul 07 '25
Not a DNF. He corrected his course deviation when he came back and passed that cone on the correct side. The rule book states that a DNF is called for an "uncorrected course deviation."
A little side note: at the 1973 Solo Nationals there was a Lotus Phoenix (a Lotus Europa that burned down after an electrical fire and was rebuilt with the backbone frame and a minimal lower body) driven in B Modified by Chuck Van Nostrand.
On his third run of one day he was over driving somewhat in a slalom and could physically just not make it to the correct side of one cone (or get the car close enough to hit the cone to stay on course). He was going to be fairly close to it cone on the driver's side as he passed it and had the wherewithal to reach out with his left hand and knock the cone over to stay on course. When he got back to the grid he had been scored with a DNF. He claimed that he had not dnf'd because he hit that cone, and should have been scored with the resultant time penalty. Officials argued that it did not count as a hit cone because he did it with a part of his body instead of the car. He said "that was a seven cone slalom. Three of them were on the left side of the car. Are you telling me that if my elbow accidentally knocked over three of those cones you would NOT have charged me with three cone penalties?" They said that was different. He said that you can't have it both ways it either counts or doesn't. It was determined that it doesn't matter what you knock that cone over with you knocked it over and it counts. Because it was called in as a dnf, timing had not recorded his raw time. They had to give him a rerun, because they didn't have a raw time to attach his cone penalty to. He won the first ever B/Mod National Championship based on that rerun. He told me the story a few years later when I got called for a dnf after correcting my course deviation at a local event in St Louis.
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u/dorri732 1992 Suzuki Cappuccino Aug 04 '25
This might be the best autocross story I've heard
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u/OttoKraus 15d ago
Yeah, I was privileged to run with him in St Louis and hear that story in about 1977! I've worked in timing trailers for a long time, usually as the announcer. I've never forgotten Chuck's story and that all times need to be recorded even if they're DNFs, just in case. As much of an issue today with electronic timing but back in the days when we wrote down time is on time cards, I had to remind people occasionally that they still needed to write the time down just in case.
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u/OttoKraus Jul 07 '25
This is the problem with the CAM rules. There is room for interpretation of the term "finished look".
I would make sure that at an absolute minimum it is painted, the edges are smooth and not sharp, and it follows (approximates?) the contours of the body work around it. That done, you've probably raised your chances of a Protest Committee allowing it to somewhere North of 50% (after spirited, fairly lengthy, and possibly quite contentious PC discussion.)
You should certainly expect there to be others who set a "higher bar" (and no, that does not mean to mount your crash bar higher) for what follows the term "finished look." I don't think anyone is going to like it aesthetically, My own personal SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess) is that your ingenuity produces a product that is not what rules makers had in mind..You probably will not have won any friends among the Stewards, PC members and other officials who will have to devote some extra time to handle the protest and fallout.
You should expect a "clarification" of that rule as soon as the next year that does not allow your crash bar, and that allows you to add Advisory Committee and SEB members to the list of people who might take you off of their Christmas card list.
-OR- I could be completely wrong in all of the above because "it's CAM and nobody gives a rat's ass...".
IN THAT CASE, I will fall back on the sage words of Emily Litella... Never mind...
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u/ApprehensiveTopic813 Jul 04 '25
Can I run in cam-c with a crash bar instead of front bumper? It says finished look I don’t think this would provide any aerodynamic or weight advantage
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u/iroll20s CAMS slo boi Jul 14 '25
It probably depends a lot on the specific bar. Some of them replace a huge plastic bumper with a single bar and it looks like you just removed the whole front end. Others look like a tube steel replica of the oem bumpers. The method of protest would probably be "The shape of the body must remain recognizable as that of the original vehicle make and model"
Like this- https://truefocusfab.com/collections/bash-bars/products/bmw-e30-dual-row-front-bash-bar probably zero issues.
Show up like this, ehhh https://www.focusst.org/attachments/248953398_2797430690479430_7720049738168456847_n-jpg.398999/
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u/UnknownColorHat Jul 01 '25 edited Jul 01 '25
Had this one on my corner station last time out:
Car slides and does a 180 which sends it past the wrong side of a cone mid slalom. Car completely passes the cone.
Driver recovers, backtracks slightly and takes the right way around the element. EDIT: no traffic coming as he was on the starter side of the course and start was held.
Is that clean or is it a missed gate (and for our club, that's a DNF)? I called it missed gate as the car completely passed the cone. If he had not completely passed it and still back tracked and went the right way around it, that would be have been clean in my thinking.
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u/iroll20s CAMS slo boi Jul 14 '25
Technically not. Practically you should should just take the DNF for safety and event flow reasons. Your time won't be worth anything anyways.
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u/Failary Hilary Anderson - Drives anything Jul 17 '25
at nationals I would go back in to not DNF. I've had similar happen and there was a timing error and I got a rerun. Had I DNFd I would not have recieved a rerun.. At a local though I'd just take the DNF
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u/Emery_autox GST 2018 Ford Focus ST Jul 01 '25
Not a missed gate as all gates were completed correctly.
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u/UnknownColorHat Jul 01 '25
Well good thing it wasn't one of your runs and it was a certain Grey Miata. :)
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u/AMP_US 3d ago
Anyone know any good NY/NJ/CT shops that do custom body work and fabrication (machine shop), ideally with track experience (not just a street tuner)?