Bear
This was the post you were probably thinking about. It started out talking about the meeting of concerned racers intent on making a better rule package for mini-sprints. It got pretty involved.
Thinking about it a little more brings up memories of when we first got into racing 600cc uprights back in the late 80's. The only track we raced at was "Thunder Valley" at little Salem. I went to one of my first smoke filled room high anxiety and even higher temper rules meetings. The main concern at the time was them new sidewinder cars. We perceived them lighter and therefore faster than the upright cars and a threat to our little corner of the world.
We wanted to exclude them from competing with us. So what we did was measure the front axle to drive sprocket distance. We determined that they were in fact several inches longer than we were because of the placement of the engine. So we make a rule for minimum axle to sprocket distance. Problem solved, sidewinders outlawed, we don't have to worry about them any more.
We had indeed Drafted a rule of exclusion to prevent sidewinders from infiltrating our ranks.
Well the next year I managed to get John Godfrey to build us a Stealth Mini sprint. We got it home started putting it together and low and behold since it was a longer wheelbase than most mini sprints at the time we did not meet our rules any more for front axle placement. We had to go back to John and get him to build us another front axle with another axle reinforcement welded to the back of the original axle to make the axle measure 4" longer and make us legal for our own class.
Had we written a rule of inclusion I would not have had to had that silly axle built. One interesting bit we still have that axle, you just couldn't tear the darned thing up.
Had we written a simple less specific rule of inclusion such as.
Min weight
Min wheel size
Motor to be in front of driver's feet
We would not have had all that problem with the placement of our front axle.
Honest Dad himself
