[TQ29m]

I had every intention of staying out of this, but at my age, my weakness wins. As far as I'm concerned, the TQ's have had the best engine rules anywhere, they allow you to think out of the box, and experiment, I'm the guy that simply hates stock classes, and likes to try different things. I've been kinda off base the past couple of years, and haven't tended to my car as I should have, and it has shown, finally got myself primed to quit looking at the same thing, and found the motor had a cylinder going down, one or both of the exh valves are leaking on one cylinder, which would make it run bad. I'm glad Terry has positioned himself so the current engines can still run for a year or so, letting the Honda's go to 917cc will tell pretty quick how reliable they will be, for the money spent. That being said, the 4 valve motors are still in the hunt, thankfully, there isn't much difference in the way they run with the Honda, taking everything into consideration, and if a racer has enough savy to build one, it doesn't need to be any more expensive to run one, I started running one in 2005, and when we were running almost every race, it was easy to keep on top of it, and I felt that for the money I had invested in the engine program, we were getting a good return on our money, in fact, that little Yamaha made me some good money, and will be rebuilt, and back in for next year. For me, having my own machine shop, building either one is cheap, the Yamaha is very inexpensive, no need for special rods, valves, cams, head work and the like, and good, low mileage engines are CHEEP, plus you can use everything you get, but it does require some research, and the ability to be able to actually build an engine, to me, that's where the fun begins, being able to do most of it yourself, then testing it against the rest. I'm glad to see a set of engine rules out this soon, it will give everyone a chance to decide what/which way to go, and hopefully make good decisions. Good luck next year, hope I'm able to be there with you! Bob