Quote:
Originally Posted by CSG Mike
Even that can be gamed. Spec dampers are virtually impossible to enforce, and can be designed to "degrade differently" if you know what I mean.
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Claimer rule at big events, cough up the money and you buy the fast guys dampers. 16 nuts and they're yours, bring a spare set of stock suspension to get you home. If the cost of the claim is the same as retail for the dampers it's more expensive than getting your own rebuilt, theoretically the person getting bought out hasn't lost anything (except maybe a fresh rebuild) and gets to buy a fresh set.
Edit: I think I'd prefer that over a sealed/spec/regularly dyno'd damper. Much cheaper overall on the sport to regulate than paying for damper dyno time, allows freedom to pick Koni, Bilstein, or alternative (like OE). And despite what you may think (oh no the top 3 cars are going to have their dampers stolen every big event!) claims are rare. As a kid when someone claimed an engine there were whispers coast to coast of what happened. Before everyone put everything online so it was literal word of mouth.
Yes someone with big pockets can go out and get dyno time and custom rebuilds and dyno a hundred dampers to find the best set, but when the risk exists that all that effort will be wiped out it keeps people from pushing the envelope too far beyond the costs.
And of course if anything is found illegal during teardown (i.e. slotted bolt holes or perches at the wrong height) the claimer gets refunded and the parts either confiscated, branded, etc. as any other tech inspection failure.
Edit 2: Yes this doesn't prevent people from blowing thousands of dollars, it just raises the risk in the risk-reward equation and typically keeps people from going bonkers. For example, claim is ~$900 enough for a set of new Koni Yellow or Bilstein B6's, but that probably wouldn't prevent me from paying ~$600 to send a set of Bilsteins to Poway to have a custom valving done on them. If I do well and get claimed I suck up the loss and repeat the process, cost of doing well in the class. But it would probably prevent 99% of competitors from going out and paying someone like FCM for a fancy rebuild because at that point the returns are minimal.
Vendors will likely put together packages like a matched set of Koni Yellows for $200 more than off the shelf, but I don't think that's a bad thing.