The story I’ve been hearing (from people with Rolison) is that they bought ~50 brand new pipes for the event delivered at the track from IAME USA West. Well the tolerances for a legal pipe were tightened up about a month ago, and supposedly some pipes from the factory were outside of those specs, which is what Norberg got. SKUSA has refunded Rolison for the order and taken the pipes back, not sure what the next move for them is going to be. Sure, Alex Vincent should know the rules, but if this is the true situation, you shouldn’t have to worry about the series importer delivering illegal equipment. It’ll be interesting to see what the press release is going to be from SKUSA. Also if RPG was cheating, they likely would have done the same thing to Garfrarar and Rivera in X30 Junior, but those two passed tech no problem.
Regarding Will Power, he got DQ’d on squish. That’s a pretty easy mistake for any engine builder to make, Alessandro De Tullio got pushed in SKUSA Winter Series Round 1 for that by .001 inches. Danny Formal was saying that cc-ing an engine is better than measuring the squish, but that’s a debate I’m not familiar enough with to say whether that’s true or not. ROK Cup USA uses cc’s instead of squish, but you guys can debate which is better if you want.
I’d have to disagree. That’s literally their job when building a motor is to check squish. If you’re that close to the legal limit it’s not hard to roll the kart down to tech and have them check it at the start of the weekend.
What’s literally their job is to build as fast of an engine as possible within the limits. That means you will be pushing as close to the limit as you can, so if you end up with a little more carbon buildup on the piston by the end of the feature than you are expecting to be reasonable, you could be too close on squish without even intending to.
Disregarding that, I’ve had multiple engine builders agree that it’s an easy mistake to make. It definitely isn’t something that warrants crucifying RPG/AVP like everyone has been wanting to do for the last 4 or 5 years.
I’m not after anyone nor did I know or care who built what. But these are smart guys at the top of their game. They should know to check squish and allow wiggle room for carbon buildup.
There is a +/- tollerance of I believe 5mm in the header “flex” section of the pipe for KA before it hits the first cone, this spec is to allow for production variance just like in the Nordberg case you stated above. Apparently someone figured out how to exploit this tollerance and was cutting pipes, taking them down to the absolute min of the spec and welding them back together and quite a number of these pipes were showing up in KA fields at big series. Per the measurements the pipes were legal, and the welding was soo well done that it was extremely difficult to tell at quick glance if they had been modified or not, but there is a secondary clause that states you can’t modify any part and it can be compared to a known OEM part and DQ’d if altered and that’s what started happening.
Our pipes (even in the old fat guy class) were more closely tech’d at Route66, MCC pro-am and then HEAVILY tech’d at Stars where I’ve never seen a pipe pulled apart and measured soo many ways to declare it “good”. That’s also why Stars started to run pipe seals in addition to engine seals.
If what you say is true then SKUSA need to issue a statement pretty sharpish. I would assume that a technical bulletin would have been issued if pipes were sold into the market that were non-compliant though prior to the event. This would be normal practise.
I don’t recall hearing about that happening in KA, I think the pipe checks at Route and Stars were pretty standard, they had been doing those checks since the start of the year.
I do remember a couple Micro/Mini drivers getting caught with cut pipes at the USPKS event at New Castle, where the parts that were cut weren’t able to be measured originally but before New Castle they figured out a way to measure them that didn’t match what it should have been.
I don’t think they realized anything had happened until Sunday when Ryan got booted. It would be smart to put something out in a day or two, but they’d need to do more research with IAME to figure out what really happened.
They found the issue and issued a refund after Ryan got a DSQ? How could they ascertain the legality issue was from the factory in that kind of time frame. If they need to do more research to find out what happened, then how can they be confident that it’s a manufacturing problem?
There is nothing more frustrating than a spec class with a spec supplier that cant meet specifications. Happens all the time down here in the club level Briggs classes. Extremely frustrating (and quite frankly, embarrassing).
I’m guessing the refund was so they could take the pipes to do more checks on. Because the pipes were bought at the track, they’re wanting to check that the pipes were for sure not modified. Remember a lot of this is piecework from what I’ve been told, so it’ll depend on what SKUSA has to say, if anything, in the coming days.
The same guy lead Tech for us most of the year at MCC and he also lead tech for both Route and Stars when they ran there. We got to know him pretty good as we usually pit right at the scale exit directly across from him. When he measured differently at the last MCC race before stars I asked why and he gave a quick explanation and moved on. When they pulled down the pipes for the top 5 at stars, pulled the caps off of them and started to measure everything in there I asked again and that’s when he told me what I reported in my post above.
Interesting. The KA pipes must have slipped under my radar then. I guess I’m not too surprised, with a spec pipe and no flex tubing any way to try and adjust the powerband could be pretty beneficial.
How about the week for Stolcermanis?? Win in KA and a 2nd in X30? Arguably the most impressive driver the whole event (Giltaire would be an easy counter argument).
Stolcermanis and Giltaire were incredibly impressive. Giltaire was the only driver at the end of the final whose tires didn’t look mangled to hell and back, you can tell he’s going places quick both literally and figuratively. Ariel Elkin and Edoardo Villa also looked nice on the TB Karts. Hannah Greenemeier going P10 in her SuperNats shifter debut was great too, and Vincenzo Sarracino from rolling off P32 in the LCQ to making the main and finishing 24th, up 40 positions between the two sessions. Lots of drivers had such strong events, probably one of the most impressive SuperNats yet.
Also a great showcase for international competition at the SuperNats. 7 countries saw the top step of the podium yesterday, out of I think 60 represented.
USA - Mini, Micro, KA Jr (after penalties)
Latvia - KA Sr
Great Britain - KA Ms, X30 Ms
Brazil - KZ Ms
France - X30 Sr
Mexico - X30 Jr
Spain - KZ
It’s not uncommon to see DQ’s for squish and/or cc’s in X30/ROK Senior. To me squish seems like a slightly more accurate measure, but both are usually combined with a head profile tool for spec classes. As @Aaron_Hachmeister_13 mentioned, these engines are being built for maximum performance. I’m not an engine builder, but I would think that accounting for carbon buildup is easier said than done. Tough deal for the engine builder as the customer always EXPECTS both maximum power and compliance, so the builder is constantly walking a tightrope.
I’m not sure I buy the RPG pipe story. I’m NOT suggesting in any way that they cheated, but I am instead surprised that they didn’t know exactly what pipe went on their top driver’s kart, and whether it was compliant. In a spec class the pipe is absolutely a variable where power can be gained or lost, just due to varying measurements within the manufacturer tolerances. It certainly muddies the waters that the tolerances for dimension T (below) have been updated to +/- 3mm in the SKUSA rulebook. It looks like the rule change took place during the October 2022 revision, but it doesn’t appear there was a separate technical bulletin as SKUSA puts out for many other updates to the technical regulations. Ultimately it is the competitor’s responsibility to ensure his/her equipment is compliant. No way around that.
EDIT: I’d also like to see exactly how dimension T is measured, as it seems like the tolerance could be exhausted (no pun intended ) just by user error. Anyone know if they have some fancy tool for measuring this??
) just by user error. Anyone know if they have some fancy tool for measuring this??