Originally Posted by darnall:
THe scariest thing about a heavy weight rule to me is how guys choose to get the car heavy enough. You still have a lot of cars that still use a tank/bladder set-up thats between 16/25 gallons, especially the converted midgets or the guys that were forced into adhereing to a tank/bladder rule some years ago....a guy with a 19 gallon fuel cell shows up somewhere and finds out hes 50 pounds to light so what does he do? 9 times out of 10 hes going to put an extra 8-12 gallons of unneeded fuel in that tank...it's quick, it's easy and can be done at the track....now you have 12 gallons of useless combustible fluid out on that racetrack just waiting to find a chance to catch on fire. That scares the crap out of me if one guy does it but if 25% of the field does it just imagine how much more fire fuel is rolling around out there. And the heavier that tank/bladder is the easier it gets ripped off the car in a crash.
I do not own a lightning sprint, but I occasionally drive one and I promote an open midget series that allows them to compete so I really don't have a dog in this fight. The last time I drove a LS was thanks to Mr openwheel44. He had a purpose built car that didn't have any trick or titanium stuff on it, pretty basic set-up. I weigh 225# and we still had to add about 30-40 pounds of lead to get up to the 900# minimum weight for a non wing race (925# winged) so for the life of me I can't figure out how a person could safely get many of these cars up to 975 or 1000#.
645 w/o and 670 pounds w wing is light for a 1000 cc sprint! With fuel and ready to go we way about 775 lbs. w wing. We do use a bladder and heavy tube midget chassis. He probably does have a Bailey lightweight chassis.
We use fuel to tighten the car up 1 to 2 gals at the most. Midgets were designed to start off with up to 30 gal of fuel in the back and the tanks stay on pretty good. If he has a converted midget or fuel bladder he aint going to be too light.
!!!!The thing to worry about is does your fuel pump turn off by itself!!!!!