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One guy with spacers behind his wheels said, "So THAT'S where I left them". We've found alternators with the pulley free to rotate on the shaft, and gutted engine ancillary cases (you have to remove ALL of a system if removal is permitted, so taking out the air conditioner means also removing the larger radiators, oil coolers etc often fitted - but if you leave what looks like an air-conditioning system, you can leave the big radiator too, right? "Now I know why my air-conditioning sucks!")
Formula Vee tells you things like "all internal engine parts must be installed in factory orientation", "you must use a gasket between the cylinder barrel bases and the crankcase", and "the exhaust may not exit more than 3" behind the bodywork" (I'm paraphrasing because my GCR is in the basement and I'm too lazy to go get it, but the facts are right). Also, dimensions are specified for the cars, with maximum length limited - so the length from nose to exhaust outlet on a Vee is specified within a small range, and the exhaust can't project more than 3" beyond the rear of the "bodywork". And, "NO, THAT PIE PLATE TAPED TO THE GEARBOX IS NOT BODYWORK!"
There are also rules permitting you to do something within a range of measurement / intensity / depth or whatever, if you want to. In here are rules like "you can remove up to 0.050" from the bases of the cylinder barrels and from the undersurface of the cylinder heads" if you wish. For the mechanically inexperienced, this can help in a few ways. First, it will raise the compression ratio a little. It will also allow you to more precisely control the angle of the cylinder relative to the crank (this is an example of "blueprinting" - or making each spec as close to exactly what it should be as possible. If the cylinders are all exactly perpendicular to the crank, it may be good for 0.003 hp at 6000 RPM (yes, 6000! When you do a Vee motor right, you can get the sucker to turn over 6 grand even with the single solex specified in the rules!). It also changes the pushrod/rocker arm geometry and some other stuff a tiny bit.
Now it gets interesting! There's a little arrow cast into the top of air-cooled VW pistons, and it's there to point to the flywheel so you know the "factory orientation" referred to above. If you measure the position of the wrist pin in a VW piston, it's not perfectly centered, but offset a tiny bit (hard to see with the naked eye). This is done because offsetting the pin changes where in the crank cycle the piston reaches top dead center and how long it stays there. But an offset toward the power side apparently increases engine noise and decreases durability a little bit, so the factory orientation in old Beetles was toward the quieter / longer lasting / whatever instead of toward the power.
If you mill 0.050" from the top of the pistons, THE ARROW DISAPPEARS! Now you can install the pistons backwards for a little more power (and yes the fraction of a horsepower does matter in a spec class where the cars are pretty equal and innovation in engine building is NOT encouraged). But you can't detect this without a tear-down and measurement. And because a tear-down can only be initiated by a protesting competitor after posting a bond (which you get back if you're right about the cheating you think we'll find), and because almost everybody does things like this, virtually nobody protests it. In fact, common cheating schemes have made the rules evolve away form restriction toward flexibility (and increased expense, the very reason spec classes were created - to minimize the cost of being competitive).
In vintage racing, it's even funnier (assuming your sense of humor is a little sick). In clubs like VSCCA, you're limited to the "proper" engine size. One of our more inventive members with a BMC-powered Lotus 7 Series 1 (948 cc Austin-Healey Sprite / MG Midget engine) got a 1275cc block and built a KILLER (like SCCA regional racing level) 1293. The 948 blocks have "950" cast into them, along with removable tappet covers. He had recesses milled into the block so he could epoxy tappet covers on the side. He also had the "1275" milled off and used POR-15 putty to form the numerals 9, 5, and 0 on the block. He was unaware of or chose to ignore the other differences between the two.
When caught, he claimed that he thought it was a 950 when he bought it at the junkyard and sent it to his engine builder without tearing it down first because he couldn't get the tappet covers off. And besides, he only had legal things done to it ("Well, you're allowed to bore .020" over and 1293's only twenty over 1275, so what I did was legal...").
He was told he had to get rid of the motor and get a proper 948. So he did the same thing to a 1098!
The excuses for on-track behavior are also a riot. Leaving the course at the beginning of a carousel and returning after it by crossing the grass is often followed by "I was disoriented by the spin".
"You know you re-entered the track afer your spin before the corner workers gave you the signal?" "I had to go to the bathroom."
"You pased under the yellow." "Well, I was ahead of him until I slowed to make sure the track was clear, so I should have been in front anyway."
It's AMAZING! The reports of the Appeals Board in Sports Car are worth the cost of dues even if you're not a racer - it appears Steve Martin was a racer, 'cause they all use his school of defense - "EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME!"
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