302 replies to this topic

[Graham Clayton]

This topic should open the floodgates!
Could list members come up with some of the stories they
have heard about "cheating" in motor sport?

I would like to hear about some of the more creative
and sneaky ways that drivers, mechanics, team bosses
and other people have tried to "move the goalposts"
to help them.

One of my favourites was a team in the European Touring
Car Championship in the 1980's. They wanted to
get some more fuel capacity for their car. Their solution
was to run an auxiliary fuel tank which took the form of
a length of fuel hose which sat inside the tubing of
the roll cage of the car.

I have also heard that back in the 1970's, nitrous oxide
was used in NASCAR racing when drivers were making
their qualifying laps to determine grid positions for
the race. Can anyone confirm this?

Then there are the shenanigans connected with the
"ground effect" era in F1 of the late 70's and 80's.

[Rainer Nyberg]

I remember Smokey Yunick building a 7/8 scale NASCAR....

Rainer

[Wolf]

Well, I'll try to find a page I stumbled upon whilst browsing which contains heaps of such cases, both in F1 and american series. Few spring to mind- Mad Max's escapade at Monaco qualifying with pitboard, AJFoyt's (IIRC) filling onboard fire extinguisher with fuel ( ), or having bags with fuel strapped to him beneath his overall.

Not exactly a 'cheat' but Moss jumping ahead of Masten Gregory in '58 Havana GP for sports cars (again, I'll not swear on time & name of the event, but I'm fairly sure) under red flag is my favourite. And the way they settled their resulting dispute is also great (pooling prize money and splitting it two ways, although Moss held his points).

Some minutes later.... tadaa-
http://www.planet-f1...ENG?lawrence=41[p][Edited by Wolf on 01-16-2001]

[Zawed]

I remember reading (in Hilton's Berger biography?) that Ivan Capelli's (Italian?) F3 title was achieved using a sus engine. Can't remember in what way, might have been more cc than you were allowed. Coloni was the team I think.

[Alvega]

There was a rumour on the Lancia Rallie team back in the eighties, about them using lead filled exaust manifolds in theirs 037's for the technical verification sessions, that were dully replaced during the race by light weight exaust manifolds, saving in the process some 40 Kg. The process was reversed in the end of the event.

[William Dale Jr]

I remember reading about Yunick's car. It took NASCAR a while to find out, didn't it There was the other story about him when NASCAR inspected his car and, importantly, took the fuel tank out. They told him they found his car had been illegal on 20 counts. He then started the car and drove off, telling them to make it 21...

My favourite story takes place at Bathurst in 1988, the year after Reudi Eggenberger's cars were thrown out. Tom Walkinshaw, now building Holden Commodores for Holden, had built his own car and brought it out to Bathurst to race as part of the factory team alongside Larry Perkins self-built car, which was also quite a bit quicker. Walkinshaw had been making himself busy in the week leading up to the race, going around to the garages and measuring the Sierras entered for the race, checking them up against a 'standard' Sierra RS500. He claimed he'd found them to all be different and that "They all can't be right, and I only want to find out which one is right." So he protested all the local Sierras with the exception of Allan Moffat's Eggenberger-built car. Dick Johnson, builder of the world's fastest Sierras at the time, and entering three cars for this race, counter-protested the two factory Holden cars.

As the race transpired, Walkinshaw's Cammodore failed four laps into the race, while two of Johnson's three Sierras didn't last the first hour. towards the end of the race, Walkinshw issued a press release, stating that he would remove his protest from any of the Sierras if they win the race, in the interests of getting a definite result. He then got into the Larry Perkins-built Commodore and thrashed it to death, when it was running a strong third, the engine crying enough after he handed the car back to Larry.

Tony Longhurst won the race in his Sierra, so the protest was removed from his car, but the question remained over all the other Sierras and the two factory Holdens.

In the end, all the Sierras were cleared and declared legal and their results stood. However, both Factory Holden's were disqualified

[Zawed]

Lets not forget Team Toyota Europe (TTE) who were banned from the World Rally Championship in the mid/late nineties for knowingly running illegal turbos in their cars.

[SteveB2]

Another story I think is attributed to Smokey Yunick: He left the wheel openings in the fenders normal sized. The drag reduction was easily enough to put the car on pole. His competitors were laughing at him since the small openings would make quick tire changes impossible. But, as soon as qualifying was over, Smokey cut out the wheel openings to racing size. Iguess this doesn't qualify as cheating, since no matter how much the others complained, it was found to be within the rules.

[Allen Brown]

My favourite was Max Mosely's claim that he waved the pit board across the timing line in Sweden in 1975. Of course he could only do it every other lap and Brambles' times would show that - alternating between too quick and too slow.

I understand that looking at the actual practice times showed that not to be the case. Pity. It was a great story.

Allen

[david_martin]

The early 80's was full of "creative" solutions to passing scrutineering in the F1 parc ferme, particularly as the non-turbo teams struggled for performance against the increasingly potent Ferrari and Renault turbo engines. Who could forget the famous Tyrrell lead balls in the fuel trick (which lead to the team being completely disqualified from the 1984 season) and the equally impressive Brabham scrutineering rear wing, which required three or four mechanics to lift (depending on whose version you subscrube to).

[f li]

I have this weird recollection of an incident where a driver showing up at his official weighin with a lead ballasted helmet. Since the allowable minimum weight of the car included the weight of the driver --- !

[Darren Galpin]

British Touring Cars are a great source for rule bending. There was the time when there were problems with the noise levels, and the RACMSA decided that they would check the noise of the top six finishers. Tim Harvey was in fifth place, so just before he got to the finishing line, he slowed down and allowed the two cars behind to pass him. Most of the cars in front then failed their noise checks, and Harvey gained valuable points, dispite his car also being illegal.....

Also, another team had the engine bay of their car sealed, so that the RACMSA could take the car away in a couple of days time and examine the engine. The team knew the car was illegal, so they cut away the bulkhead, removed the engine without breaking the seals, and then put back in a legal engine and put the car back together.

Also in NASCAR, but I can't remember who. Someone fitted an oversize fuel pipe between the fuel tank and the engine, which enabled them to carry a couple of gallons extra fuel.

[Patrick Italiano]

F1 in the eighties has seen many rules bent in such obvious ways; I recall:

filling "water tanks for brake cooling" at the end of the races.

Ride height hydraulic adjustment to have the skirts sealing the ground effect wings in 1981, when ride height had to be 5 cm off the ground.

The skirts themselves, from 1978, which were "mobile aerodinamic devices", thus to be banned as the Brabham fan, Sweden 1978.

Piquet's title 1983 with illegal fuel.

Also, in the 1987 touring cars world championship, at the first race in Monza, all BMW M3s disqualified for having a thinner roof panel which, stragely, was to be seen popping when shuting the doors.

Earlier in the 80s, Walkinshaws' Rovers in the euro championship were disqualified, but I don't recall why.

See also the homologations of touring and GT cars in the 60s.

[Darren Galpin]

Just a quick note - the Brabham fan car was never banned. Bernie Ecclestone chose not to enter it in the next race in the interest of F1 politics. This was discussed in another thread a few months ago - http://www.atlasf1.c...p?threadid=9839

[fines]

There was one NASCAR race where Jim Hurtubise (IIRC) did two victory laps, apparently to adjust a rule-bending issue with a tool he threw out the window on the backstraight. The Good Ole Boys just thought the Indy veteran was so overjoyed by his win...

[fines]

Talking of Smokey Yunick, few realise that he put an inverted wing on top of an Indy roadster - in 1962!! That's years before even Jim Hall thought of it. Also Harry Eisele tried this idea, in early 1966, strutted on top of the engine of his 'funny car'. And they say USAC was old-fashioned and luddite...

[Ray Bell]

Good fun stories... try this on:

Garry Cooke won a race at Catalina Pk in a Peugeot 203, the suspicious ones talked to scrutineers, scrutineers put a seal around the engine and made a date to be at the Cooke & Saville Motors workshop a day or two later.
Ian Cook (no relation) was helping... he tells me:
"I cut the exhaust with a hacksaw, and slipped the seal wire through the cut, that gave me room to take off the manifolds, so then there was room to take off the head, and so there was room to get the block out of the car. We went into the 203 wrecking racks and got an old standard engine, pulled it apart and then reassembled it with the seal and wire, welding up the gap in the exhaust to finish the job. The scrutineers were amazed it went so well!"

Another was the well-known Bob Jane Camaro 7-litre gearbox, which I was told was out of a Ford. When I wrote up this car recently I got the full story.
They fabricated out of steel plate a new and more robust housing, then had a gearset made up to suit. The housing had a serious sandblast job done on it to make it look like a casting... everyone knew there was something going on, but nobody ever protested.

Bruce McPhee turned up at Bathurst with his XU1 looking for extra fuel capacity... he was in the surplus business, remember? He fitted a 3-gallon fuel filter - completely legal!

Those Eggenberger Sierras in the 86 race were disqualified for having the inner rear wheel wells too close together, giving Brock his ninth win.

Someone else can tell a really good one, about the car he prepared for one driver... I recall him telling me that every time he pulled another cheat out of the car that it went quicker!

Same culprit (the man prior to this mechanic) built Formula Ford engines, offset ground the crankpins to the side to get the same effect as putting the piston pins off to the side... a greater degree of effort at the start of the firing stroke... except once he ground all four, they were just a little bit out of timing sequence with the cam, so he had to make offset dowels (or was it keys?) for the cam drive, and he was back to square one!

Doesn't always work, you see!

[Graham Clayton]

Ray's story about Bruce McPhee reminds me of when he took
the rules to their literal meaning in the 1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500 at Bathurst.

Under the rules, the co-driver of the car had to drive at least one lap in the race.
McPhee got his co-driver Barry Mulholland to drive
EXACTLY 1 lap, before he took over the car and drove
to victory.

Eventually the rules were changed to have a greater
sharing of driving time between driver and co-driver

[Ray Bell]

That was actually what Bruce did every year until they allowed drivers to go the whole distance (1969, I think), retreat to the pits for a quick leak and back into the car...

1963 he had Graham Ryan as co-driver in a Cortina GT, and he was a bit miffed (!) at Ryan doing a heap of laps in practice in readiness for his single lap in the race.

When the race went to 1000km in 1973 (after Brock's solo win, and two for Moffat), there were more complex rules about hours in the car and so on, with co-drivers compulsory.

[AyePirate]

A few notes

I think AJ didn't exactly have fuel
strapped to his leg, in was a tank of nitrous
to run in a hidden boost system.

My favorite Yunick story:

He's being chewed out by scrutineers,
who state that his car had 12 rules violations.
He said, "Make that 13" and drove off in
the offending car. His fuel tank was still
sitting on the garage floor.

[Ray Bell]

A Bruce McPhee story about a different kind of cheating:

After the 'Big Stoush' of WW2, Bruce took a trip to Darwin to an auction of surplus war materials, buying three trucks. To return to Sydney (Wyong, actually), he put a turntable on the first and mounted the front axle of the other to this, then had an 'A' bar from the second to the third.
In some states this was legal, in others you needed a driver in the third truck....
NSW was one of the latter states, and he was rumbling along, having covered over 2000 miles when a policeman pulled him up:
"You know you need a driver in the third truck, don't you?"
Bruce, thinking quickly, and probably in no mood to be told he has to make other arrangements for the final few hundred miles, retorted: "What? Where's he gone?"
After a short period of allowing the copper to be genuinely concerned about the missing driver, Bruce agreed to make other arrangements...

Not a patch on the Eldred Norman seven-trucks-at-a-time story, is it?

[William Dale Jr]

Just over six months after AJ had badly broke both legs at Road America when his car was launched over a fence, he put his car on the front row for the 1991 Indy 500. Now, I heard somewhere that the car was illegal, but for some reason, wasn't. Does anyone know for sure?

[ry6]

I heard of a local team who raced a Lotus 23 which was "underweight" for the formula it raced in. So they filled the tyres with water and then took it to scrutineering where it made the required weight.
For the race the water was removed and the 23 went on its winning way.

I know of a man who used to race an Anglia in the 1000 cc class in saloon car events. He was quite clever with glass fibre and made up a little mould off the 1000 cc block which showed 105E (I think that was the casting badge). He then fitted a 1340 cc engine to the car and glued the 105E over the 109E. He was wasting his time really as he could have merely fitted the Consul 315 crankshaft and rods to do the trick I think. It's a long time ago and I cannot remember if he was caught out.

Rob

[KzKiwi]

Earlier in this thread Rainer mentioned that Smokey Yunick ran a 7/8 scale version of a NASCAR stockcar. It appears that this was a trick that was cottoned on to by more than one team. Once they recognized what was going on, NASCAR officials apparently produced wonderfully accurate templates of each car - in effect a "NO GO" gauge. It became another part of the scrutineering requirements that the competitiors had to pass.

In order to beat the template check, cars then began appearing with full scale body shells that had been dipped in acid...or they just stamped all new full size body panels made of lighter gauge metals, even aluminium. Now you know what a srcutineer is up to when you see him walking around the pits with a magnet in his hand...

Have you heard the one about using dental cement to reprofile an engines cylinder head combustion chambers in order to achieve a higher compression ratio and inprove flame propogation? By the end of the race the dental cement has been burnt away, the engines back within legal limits and you could look forward to an engine teardown with complete confidence - which was necessary as you had won the race by streaking away from the rest of the grid in the early stages of the race before "easing" back in the latter stages in order to "conserve" the car and tyres.

Sometimes things ain't what they seem.

[Graham Clayton]

William Dale mentioned the story about Smokey Yunicka and the detachable fuel tank.

The incident happened at the 1968 Daytona 500, when Yunick
entered a Chevrolet Chevelle for Gordy Johncock.
NASCAR technical director Bill Gazaway went over the car with a fine tooth comb. He found 9 major cheats:

1) frames "unlike other Chevelles"
2) rocker panels cut away for exhaust pipe clearance
3) raised floor allowing higher driveshaft tunnel (siiting car lower on track)
4) improperly located A-frames
5) improperly located fule cell vent line
6) non-standard doorhandles (reducing drag)
7) screw jacks allowing weight adjustments to be made in pit stops without opening the boot lid
8) improper front track
9) non-removable doors

The fuel tank had been removed and drained, when
Yunick said "Better make that 10", and drove off.

The regulations said that fuel tube could be no more than 11 foor long. There was nothing said about its bore size.
So the fuel tube was a 2 inch wide bore pipe, and the fuel
line along held 6 gallons.

Speaking of fuel, there was the practice in F1 during the
mid 80's of teams chilling their fuel to shrink its volume,
packing greater value into their strictly proscribed single tanks. After completing the warm up, the cars would take their grid positions.
At a hot venue like Rio, ambient temperature would warm the fuel in that single central tank, causing it to expand.
It was common practice for filler funnels to be locked on to the tank necks during that long wait on the grid, ostensibly to catch and contain expansion leakage.
At least one major team (not named!) used double-skinned funnels, containing a small volume of fuel between the skins and, as the car stood there on the grid, far from boiling off expanding fuel, it was actually being topped up illegally to compensate for the litres used in the warm-up
lap.

[Ray Bell]

Apparently the AHRA and/or the NHRA only ever checked the bore and stroke of the front cylinders...
Someone did a trade making cranks with three stroked throws.

[Ray Bell]

I've brought this up to the top so Barry can tell us about cheating and making BMWs slower...

[Joe Fan]

I am now just reading this very interesting thread. I also remember hearing a story where Darrell Waltrip found that his car got faster when the bumper fell off his car so they intentionally rigged it where it would come off easy with little contact. I don't know it is true or not but I heard it somewhere on TV a few year ago.

[Mike Argetsinger]

From this week's National Speedsport News, in the "Looking Back-stories that made headlines in NSSN" column - 25 years ago -dated March 3, 1976.

' A.J. Foyt, upset with NASCAR over the assesment of a $1,000 fine, said he didn't know when - if at all - he would race in a NASCAR Winston Cup Series event. "I had planned to run the Atlanta 500, but I doubt that will happen unless NASCAR makes amends," said Foyt. Foyt was mad about the way NASCAR officials went about collecting the fine, which was levied for a nitrous oxide bottle found on his Chevrolet after he won the pole for the Daytona 500. Foyt said he was unaware of the fine until, "I received the prize money, which was accompanied by an invoice for the fine. The fine was deducted from the prize money," said Foyt. '

Now that is a great story - on so many levels!

[Frank de Jong]

Just a few things which spring to mind (nice touring car thread this appears to be ;)
Formula 3 racing : many tricks were pulled by making the air restrictor "leak" (Patrick Bardinon in Zolder 78); without the restrictor, the cars had something like 50 extra HP. Another one was Brian Henton, at March in 1974. March used engines with in the book "The story of March" are referred to as "Bentford". Since the pressure of the Toyota-Nova engines increased, "Bentford" presented near the end of the season a revolutionary engine, which "had a new camshaft." Brian went out in the first practice session, and found out the engine pulled easily 7000 rpm, about 1000 rpm more than usual. He climbed out of the car, amd remarked that he had not been out of fourth gear but had been 2 seconds under the lap record... They checked the engine and air restrictor but found nothing unusual. Now March and Henton had the championship within reach, no spare unit so had to use the illegal engine anyway. Despite a spin, Henton won by a ridiculus margin. The engine was sent back, and March was furious but got away with it. Does anyone know where Bentord stands for?
Touring cars
On the subject of homologation (building enough cars to satisfy FIA rules) there are many issues. Sometimes, cars were not built in sufficient numbers or "disappeared" (italian companies spring to mind). Mr. Walkinshaw homologated a "Tropical" version of the Rover 3500, with more space for wider tires, which gave a new meaning for TWR: Third World racing! Ford did something, which was in fact legal: the Capri RS of 1971 had leaf springs for its rear axle. Now leaf springs were at that time hardly suited for racing. Now adding secondary springs was legal, so Ford's Braungart added coil "help-spings", and replaced the leaf springs by plastic strips, still the "main springs". Ford got away with it, and won the european championship twice.
Formula 2
After the introduction of a minimum ground clearance and fixed skirts in F2 (early 80's), the main goal became to lower the car as much as possible without being illegal. In F1, the famous "hydrolics" were used, Maurer however had another solution: its springs could be locked, so when the car hit a bump or dived, this position could be fixed and kept as long as necessary. After the finish, the springs were released and the car had its legal rideheight agian.

[Rob29]

my favouite cheat was the Scuderia CentoSud team in 1961 allegedly ran 2.5 litre engines in the F1 Pau GP.

[fines]

In 1980, a rule in F2 was introduced that connected the size of the ground-effect skirts with the height of the driver's seat. Naturally, the constructors responded by seating the driver lower, by means of a hollow in the chassis. This caused some anxiety amongst the drivers, who feared a transition from uncle to aunty status!

[Falcadore]

I love the one about the Toyota Celica GT4 World Rally Championship. At the time power was being controlled by the regulators by limiting the amount of air getting at the turbo chrager with a restrictor plate. What Toyota Team Europe had done was that when the engine was turned on the restrictor was pulled away from the turbo charger allowing more air in. With the engine of the restrictor sat in place looking absolutely legal. I think it was either harlie Whiting or Max Mosely who called it the most ingenoues bit of cheating they'd seen in 30 years. Heh. TTE's penalty was correspondingly huge

[Buford]

Just over six months after AJ had badly broke both legs at Road America when his car was launched over a fence, he put his car on the front row for the 1991 Indy 500. Now, I heard somewhere that the car was illegal, but for some reason, wasn't. Does anyone know for sure?
-----------------------------------------

USAC let him run cheater boost. Also he had cheater tires. Something about mounting tires only allowed on one side on the other side. I guess that gave him more stagger or softer compound or something. I forget what the advantage was.

Another Foyt trick many years ago was to fill his fire extinguisher bottles up with extra fuel.

One great cheat was the year in the Daytona 500 when Gary Nelson (now the Nascar Inspector chief) mounted the rear bumper to come off during the race which for some reason made the car go 2 MPH a lap faster. They won.

[Graham Clayton]

Originally posted by f li
I have this weird recollection of an incident where a driver showing up at his official weighin with a lead ballasted helmet. Since the allowable minimum weight of the car included the weight of the driver --- !

HI F Li,

The driver in question was NASCAR driver David Pearson. He admitted leaving a lead filled helmet that weighed an extra 50 pounds in the car when it was being weighed, and then wearing his "normal" helmet in the actual race.

[ZOOOM]

Back in the sixties, in the US, we ran a series that used Camaeo's, Mustangs, Javlin's, etc.
Rodger Penske was running Camaro's. At the beginning of the season his cars showed up with vynal tops.
Everybody was trying to find out what advantage Penske had found in using the tops. Turns out that Penske had acid dipped the bodies so well that the tops had developed holes. The vynal covered Penske's folly.

The cars were strictly allowed only certain sized fuel tanks, but Penske's cars seemed to be able to go a little further than everybody else. I watched them at Meadowdale and they had this big tank on stilts for refueling. They had a bigger TANK than anyone else, but the tank in the car was the correct size.
They would have gotten away with it except it was a VERY hot day and the Penske refueling tank began to sweat!
The tank had a double wall construction that was filled with dry ice. Cooling the fuel to about 20 degrees made the fuel much more dense and allowed more fuel to be put in the car's tank. Of course as the gas warmed up it expanded, but the car had burned off more fuel than that which had expanded!

IIRC Penske was repremanded but nothing was done as it was not covered in the rule book. It soon was banned....
ZOOOM

[RStock]

Junior Johnson was once caught during an inspection with a locked rear-end . When he was asked about it he said " Hell , I've been running that thing so long now , I forgot it was illegal ." That rear-end is still on display with some other parts confiscated by NASCAR .

Not really cheating , but years ago when I was a young pit crew gopher , before every race our driver would give me one dollar . More than enough money in those days to buy two cokes at the concession . One was for me , the other I was to pour out and fill with beer for the driver during pitstops and red flag periods .

[john ruston]

All the above confirm that Todays Historic Racing mirrors actual history.

[f1steveuk]

I have been told that someone in the FIA Thoroughbred GP series has a DFL and not a DFV, so an extra 500cc.

Also a common fix to restricted fuel capacity was huge bore fuel pipes from front to rear of the car, some with nearly six inch dia' pipes, where 1/2 inch would do...............

Cheating? As Chapman said, the unfair advantage!

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by f1steveuk
.....Cheating? As Chapman said, the unfair advantage!

Chapman? Did he say that?

The dry ice thing was regular stuff at the Bathurst race. It wasn't illegal there either.

[fuzzi]

Lord de Clifford entered his MG for the Mille Miglia in 1932. The car had been prepared by the MG works at Abingdon and was to the same specification as it had won the TT in Norman Black's hands in the previous year. To save wear he towed the MG out to Italy behind his Lagonda 3-litre and being a sensible fellow he had signed up with Alfa Romeo to provide him with pre-race inspection and in race service. So they took the car along to scruitineering and he was told that his engine was too noisy and he must fit a silencer. Back to Milan and the nice people at the works said "No problem we'll make you up a fishtail."
"But what about the back pressure on the supercharged engine?" He asked. The reply was simple the fishtail slipped loosely over the tail of the exhaust and was secured by a bolt held in place with a piece of wire. Well and good, but the wire was about 2feet long and was attached to the head of the bolt so that after the start all his passenger had to do was pull the wire out came the bolt and the fishtail would fall off.
That's the way a proper racing department worked in the 1930s.;)

[Pat Clarke]

Much much closer to home, let's consider the hard work required to make a Kawasaki H1B 500cc triple perfectly stock for the Castrol 6 hour race at Amaroo Park.

The ‘Mach 3’ was fast, unreliable and drank fuel.
The race requires standard bikes only, and afterwards this bike was cleared by a very suspicious group of scrutineers.

Breaking rear spokes were fixed by building new wheels from spares, using different clearance bearings and stainless spokes.

Wobbles were controlled by replacing the rubber engine mount bushes with new ones machined from black Delrin

Engine peakiness was softened by offset boring the cylinders by 1mm to max oversize (“It seized in practice sir, we had to put new pistons in it. What do you mean by ‘DeSaxe’ sir”?) This softened the exhaust port timing and kept some fuel mixture inside the engine. The bottom of the cylinders was skimmed and thin gaskets fitted. This softened the exhaust port timing even more as well as closing the squish clearance and raising the compression ratio. The pistons were not shortened, even though the tolerances would have allowed a little to be skimmed. Pace wasn’t the aim, rideability and fuel consumption were.

Wearing through the centre exhaust pipe would cause the centre cylinder to run lean and seize, so it was acid stripped, peened at the wear point, filled with nickel bronze, filed, linished and re-chromed. When the pipes were refitted, the mounting brackets were ‘adjusted’ with a big hammer to tuck them in tighter.

The rear shocks were useless, though the stiff springs (for pillion use) were okay. This was fixed by removing the bottom bushing, drilling a small hole up into the base of the shock and the original fish oil pumped out. After a good flushing, the shocks were immersed in a bucket of Shell Tellus hydraulic oil and pumped till the bubbles stopped. The drillings were filled with silver solder and the shocks reassembled.

The largest tank in Kawasaki’s inventory was assisted with some compressed air, then had the fuel tap cut off inside to allow access to all the fuel. A small hole was drilled in the neck of the filler where it protruded into the tank to ensure the tank was fully filled. Along with the ‘adjusted’ cylinders (no porting or polishing!) and rejetting the carburettors, this resulted in the only Mach 3 that could comfortably exceed 60 minutes on track and therefore meant only 5 stops rather than 6 or even 7. Frozen fuel was tried, but it was found that moisture condensed in the fuel and caused carburation difficulties. The dry ice rig was used, so the opposition thought that chilled fuel was being used.

Castrol supplied some oil for the injector system that came from an unmarked bottle, but smelled a bit like castor.

Final issue was that the forks bottomed under brakes at ‘Stop corner’ causing the bike to ground as it was tipped in. Stronger springs could not be fitted, and the original fix was to fit some internal spacers incorrectly (“Sorry sir, I’ll kick that bloody apprentice’s a*se”) but that had caused the disqualification of the BMWs, so something else had to be done. The answer was to drop some dry ice into the fork before the cap was fitted. Some experimentation found that, from memory, two spoonfuls in each leg got the desired spring stiffness, and a good rising rate. (“Gee sir, the pressure really built up under racing conditions”)

Dunlop K81s (TT100s) gave the grip and there were no wheel changes during the race.

The result of all this ‘standardisation’ was a class win and an overall top 5 finish, the only Mach 3 to finish ahead of a swarm of Yamaha RD350s, and well ahead of many 750s and open bikes. The bike was featured on the cover of Two Wheels magazine the following month with a very complimentary road test inside.

Not that I would know anything about it, of course =]

Pat

[Jerome]

I heard this story about James Hunt, who took a journalist (Keith Botsford? Or was it Mike Doodson?) to the pits to show him something. Or rather: to let him smell something. I don't know if it were the McLarens or the Williams cars, at any rate, it was during the time that this team or another was dominating F1.

Hunt instructed Botsford/Doodson to stand directly behind the exhausts of the dominating F1-car. The car was started, drove away. Hunt and Botsford/Doodson stood there for seconds, completely high and dizzy by the strange emissions by the engine smoke. 'Wonderfull, isn't it?', Hunt said. On which the hack said: 'No way that could have been normal racingfuel.'

[RS2000]

Originally posted by fuzzi

That's the way a proper racing department worked in the 1930s.;)

That's the way most club rally people worked in the late 80s...until scrutineers learned to look for loosely-held-in wire wool etc.

[kayemod]

Originally posted by f1steveuk


Cheating? As Chapman said, the unfair advantage!

I don't believe he ever said that, and if he did he would surely have been referring to someone else. As far as I know there's just one instance where ACBC was guilty of some fairly mild cheating, and that only concerned marginal windscreen dimensions at LeMans. As the persons fooled were French scrutineers, most English people would have said that didn't count. Colin Chapman may have been guilty of sharp business practices at times, even blatant dishonesty on some occasions, but he was only ever interested in beating the rest by being cleverer than them, building faster cars, or as he so often was, being better at interpreting the rules, that was what drove him. If a Lotus had won by cheating in some way, he'd have derived no satisfaction from that, it's just the way he was. So quite a few faults certainly, as has been well recorded, but not deliberate cheating on the track.

[MPea3]

My personal favorite was that we were required to run track gas, and they'd test it afterward. We ran some nitromethane in the oil, and built the engines just a tad loose. Routing a hose form the crankcase to the intake of the carburettor made the thing run like a spot-assed ape. It stunk and would water your eyes when it went past, but the gas always tested as legal.

[llmaurice]

A bit too modern I know but surely the cheat of all time (legalised by the Flammini Group) is that In World Superbike , Ducati currently run 1200cc motors whilst all the Jap fours must be 1000cc max.
Coupled with the "control " tyres developed by Pirelli specially for Ducati and not really suited to the power delivery of the fours the Italian machines seem destined to win this years Championship .
Originally Ducati kept ahead by only allowing the big four to run 750cc fours against their homologated specials but lost the championship when Honda played them at their own game and produced a 1000 V twin to beat their then 1000cc motors .
This tends to make the French rules for Le Mans seem almost fair !

[unofficialf3000]

I'm sure many remember that in 2002 Piquet Sports flouted SudAm F3 testing restrictions, running Nelson "Nelsinho" Piquet's Dallara with Interserie style wheel covers, supposedly making it a sports prototype... :

[Doug Nye]

Kayemod - re Chunky - I would go along with what you say. He explored the written regulations to the full, and to listen to him explaining the true (limited) meaning of the English language as published by the governing body was itself to enjoy an Oscar-winning performance. When he finally got burned by their out-interpreting his interpretation of their wing regulations with the Type 88 I remember his genuine disillusion as he took himself off to Cape Kennedy to witness a regulation-free launch of NASA's latest space shot.

DCN

[Doug Nye]

Originally posted by Pat Clarke
Much much closer to home, let's consider the hard work required to make a Kawasaki H1B 500cc triple perfectly stock for the Castrol 6 hour race at Amaroo Park.

The ‘Mach 3’ was fast, unreliable and drank fuel.
The race requires standard bikes only, and afterwards this bike was cleared by a very suspicious group of scrutineers.

Breaking rear spokes were fixed by building new wheels from spares, using different clearance bearings and stainless spokes.

Wobbles were controlled by replacing the rubber engine mount bushes with new ones machined from black Delrin

Engine peakiness was softened by offset boring the cylinders by 1mm to max oversize (“It seized in practice sir, we had to put new pistons in it. What do you mean by ‘DeSaxe’ sir”?) This softened the exhaust port timing and kept some fuel mixture inside the engine. The bottom of the cylinders was skimmed and thin gaskets fitted. This softened the exhaust port timing even more as well as closing the squish clearance and raising the compression ratio. The pistons were not shortened, even though the tolerances would have allowed a little to be skimmed. Pace wasn’t the aim, rideability and fuel consumption were.

Wearing through the centre exhaust pipe would cause the centre cylinder to run lean and seize, so it was acid stripped, peened at the wear point, filled with nickel bronze, filed, linished and re-chromed. When the pipes were refitted, the mounting brackets were ‘adjusted’ with a big hammer to tuck them in tighter.

The rear shocks were useless, though the stiff springs (for pillion use) were okay. This was fixed by removing the bottom bushing, drilling a small hole up into the base of the shock and the original fish oil pumped out. After a good flushing, the shocks were immersed in a bucket of Shell Tellus hydraulic oil and pumped till the bubbles stopped. The drillings were filled with silver solder and the shocks reassembled.

The largest tank in Kawasaki’s inventory was assisted with some compressed air, then had the fuel tap cut off inside to allow access to all the fuel. A small hole was drilled in the neck of the filler where it protruded into the tank to ensure the tank was fully filled. Along with the ‘adjusted’ cylinders (no porting or polishing!) and rejetting the carburettors, this resulted in the only Mach 3 that could comfortably exceed 60 minutes on track and therefore meant only 5 stops rather than 6 or even 7. Frozen fuel was tried, but it was found that moisture condensed in the fuel and caused carburation difficulties. The dry ice rig was used, so the opposition thought that chilled fuel was being used.

Castrol supplied some oil for the injector system that came from an unmarked bottle, but smelled a bit like castor.

Final issue was that the forks bottomed under brakes at ‘Stop corner’ causing the bike to ground as it was tipped in. Stronger springs could not be fitted, and the original fix was to fit some internal spacers incorrectly (“Sorry sir, I’ll kick that bloody apprentice’s a*se”) but that had caused the disqualification of the BMWs, so something else had to be done. The answer was to drop some dry ice into the fork before the cap was fitted. Some experimentation found that, from memory, two spoonfuls in each leg got the desired spring stiffness, and a good rising rate. (“Gee sir, the pressure really built up under racing conditions”)

Dunlop K81s (TT100s) gave the grip and there were no wheel changes during the race.

The result of all this ‘standardisation’ was a class win and an overall top 5 finish, the only Mach 3 to finish ahead of a swarm of Yamaha RD350s, and well ahead of many 750s and open bikes. The bike was featured on the cover of Two Wheels magazine the following month with a very complimentary road test inside.

Not that I would know anything about it, of course =]

Pat

Just a BRILLIANT post!

DCN