Surfbum

Jim, didn't NASA just buy the rights to "SpecBoxster"?
Man I can't believe you just bought and modified your car only to find this out!
So sorry.

Streak

Did they say why?

Nasa is walking away from a revenue stream? The rules are written the cars are built. It's a no brainer.

This is total BS. I could have raced with Nasa once a month 30 minutes from my house. That was the plan.

Why on Earth would Nasa decide not to adopt an up and running series?

onefastviking

The Boxster in my avatar is actually an S that was built for GTS3. It does have a large rear wing and some additional aero up front to balance the car. That aero wouldn't be hard to add to a SPB, just a few $$$$.
I still don't think you would be able to beat a purpose built GTS2 car in an SPB with just some aero. With no diff, and no open suspension I am sorry to say it would be easy to build a GTS2 only car to beat the SPB.

With that being said, I can't see NASA just walking away from such a large potential revenue stream. I could see them walking away from the bad partnership they made when they originally purchased the "Spec Boxster" name, rights, etc. Once clear of this bad partnership I could see them creating a new place for the cars, I truly hope that is their plan which they are not currently not able to share completely.

But in the meantime, from their National Website, email these top officials with your thoughts. Below are email addresses for John Lindsey and Jerry Kunzman, you can email the rest from this link to NASA's internal mail server, just go to link and click on the name you want to email to.
http://www.nasaproracing.com/aboutnasa/regions.html

National Officers

Executive Director: Jerry Kunzman
jerry@drivenasa.com

Chief Divisional Director: John Lindsey
jlindsey@drivenasa.com

National Chairman: Ryan Flaherty
Director of Sponsorship: Jeremy Croiset
Business Operations Manager: Dave Ho
Vice President, Marketing: Greg Gill
National Event Manager:Will Faules

National Office
National Auto Sport Assn.
P.O. Box 2366
Napa Valley, CA 94558
Tel. 510-232-NASA (6272)
Tel. 804-591-0421
Fax. 510-277-0657

eric523

Spec Boxster is alive and well in the Porsche Owner's Club on the west coast. With the demise of the national spec boxster organization we (POC) decided to make some slight modifications to our rule set and have already started the season this year.

Our next race weekend is March 9-11 at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, NV. We welcome all NASA licensed drivers to race or Time Trial with us!

slight modifications are as follows:

Open ECU tuning - Allows for ECU chip/tuning, but must have factory rev limit in place. We did this to eliminate the policing difficulties of the ECU. Currently, I don't know that ANY of the cars have actually tuned their cars yet. We are expecting a difference of maybe 5hp for those that do, and we see that big of a difference in the output of the motors already. Improved air/fuel ratios are an added benefit to reliability. This also includes approval for the removal of the immobilizer system.

91 Octane fuel - Allows the use of 91 octane fuel only. We are on the west coast and it's all we can get at the pump.

Tires - Both square and staggered set-ups are allowed with 255/255 or 225/255 Toyo RA-1 tires.

onefastviking

Smart rule changes. Keeping the fuel at low octane keeps from any big ECU advantage gains, now you will have to be sure to police the fuel properly to make sure everyone stays withing that rule set and no one starts getting smart with the right additives matched to their ECU. - Easiest would be to use track race fuel only and sample that fuel as well as the winners for a match. It wouldn't have to be done all the time either, just when a big outlier occurs.

eric523

Yep. If you have to use 91 octane, spec spark plugs, stock rev limit, and no other engine mods, then there isn't much power to gain.

We found an illegal car on the dyno at one of our final races of the season last year. Car was using race gas, colder heat range spark plugs, and an ECU tune at a minimum. It made 197rwhp on the dyno compared to the other class leaders at 186ish. Different air/fuel curves were the first sign. Well, two qualifying sessions and two races in the weekend and I still won with 186rwhp. The horsepower difference did not decide the outcome of the race. If you take away the spark plugs and the race gas, the difference in power will be even less.

We decided it would be smart to improve the air/fuel ratios of the cars and remove the policing of the electronics that is hard and expensive to do. Checking rev limit, spark plug part numbers, and fuel is much easier.

Paul 996

Eric,

Based on your poor experiences I understand why POC/PRC went to the open ECU.

In hindsight I think that it would have been more prudent to simply clarify the language around allowing the elimination of the immobilizer and that the ECU must retain stock programming or such language.

The open ECU is just a cost escalation that could have been avoided. IMO

eric523

The issues surrounding my car, as well as another with the immobilizer removed, at the end of the season brought up some issues about the ECU in general.

1. Policing - POC has absolutely no way to police the ECU's with full confidence. The equipment to do so is cost prohibitive for the non-profit club to purchase, manage, use, and maintain. I only know of two people in the US that can accurately police these ECU's, and neither of them are on the west coast. I've heard PCA has paid for one of them to attend events on occasion but that is not a good solution for us. We do have access to a dyno from time to time, BUT my car dynoed exactly as the others and was STILL dq'd because they weren't absolutely sure it was ok and running the same program all the time, didn't have a secret switch etc.

2. Engine Safety- When analyzing the stock dyno sheets from the top running cars, it was found that all of the cars are running dangerously lean to the ''tune'' of over 15.0 at times. It is an engine builders/maintainers nightmare when seeing those kind of numbers.

3. Performance- On the same weekend that we dynoed the lot of cars, there was a car found illegal for a number of items. ECU tune that had a radically richer air/fuel curve, spark plugs that were out of spec, and race fuel at a minimum. This car had a dyno number of 197rwhp on a dyno jet. Other cars, found to be legal, dynoed from 186-193rwhp on the same dyno. The illegal car was being piloted by a former Daytona Prototype driver from the Grand-Am series, and I still out qualified the car, and won the race. So, with all of those illegal items, the illegal car at best made 5 more HP, and it did not change the final outcome of the race. Take away the race gas and other spark plugs, and is it even a real advantage? There was a larger gap in HP between the legal cars already based on mileage and rebuild specs.

By opening the ECU tune, given the stock rev limit, pump gas, spec plugs, and no other mods allowed, we are removing the policing, the cheating accusations, the headache, and there may be a few cars with a 0-5hp advantage over those that decide to tune their car. It's not mandatory, the cars will run safer air/fuel ratios if tuned, and the organization has less to worry about and monitor.

When simply looked at, maybe it could be seen as uneccessary escalation. But in detail when looking at the results, I can see the other side of it. It is uneccessary policing efforts and headache over such a small amount of actual HP to be made and does increase the reliability of the car. As a volunteer non-profit organization, it doesn't make sense to really spend the time, money, and effort to police the 10-15 car fields. The better and more consistant driver will still win the races. I do not expect everyone to run out and tune their car immediately, or at all. There isn't much power to be made given the other restrictions.


All my opinion of course...and I don't speak on behalf of the POC.

J richard

Personally I think leaving ecu sealed is the way to go. However a good option in the rules would be to require any cars with open ecu's to provide yearly dyno pulls on pump gas to confirm no monkey business

996cats

Hi Paul,

Just for the record, PRC is not joining POC in allowing the monkeying of ECU's. We understand where POC is coming from, but POC is a different animal. Their organization and race schedule is so outstanding that they have a full schedule independent of any other sanctioning body. In NorCal, we have an equally full schedule when we combine 10+ races in PRC with 4+ races with PCA. At this point in time it doesn't make sense for us to open up the can of worms with PCA on ECU programming.

It probably is in everyone's best interests to review each sanctioning body as it's own, i.e. PRC, POC, NASA, PCA, etc. Since our Spec Box group is part of PRC as a run group embedded in NASA, we have a home for our cars.

Bill P.

Streak

I don't see PCA bending in any way on the ECU thing. In fact they announced that beginning this year a team from Germany will be teaching the PCA CR scrutes more about ECU stuff and bringing in some better technology for the scrutes to use.

Bill, can you post a link to PRC rules are are the identical to what were the Nasa rules? I'm putting together a spreadsheet so we can see what the differences are and determine the best "change" for Nasa to reach a comfort level. I'm not advocating anything at this point, just compiling the data. I have zero affiliation with any sanctioning bodies other than membership in PCA and NASA.

I'll try to get it together in the next day or so as time permits.

eric523

But what constitutes a ''sealed'' ECU? If you buy a car with 130k miles, do you know for certain that the ECU hasn't been tampered with at some point before you bought it? If you buy a used ECU from a dismantler, do you know for a fact that it hasn't been modified by a previous owner? I'm sure there is a couple of them out there with tuning that the owners don't even know about. A new ECU from Porsche is something ridiculous like $5k, so that's not an option to purchase.
We talked about having a ''sealed'' ECU with a tamper proof label on the boxes but then it costs everyone money to do. If the tuning is open, only those that wish to do do spend the money.

As far as dyno sheets go, it did not appear that the powers that be were satisfied with my dyno sheets to prove the ECU was untampered with. Unfortunately, the national spec Boxster administrators I reached out to did not support me either. So the dyno runs and sheet weren't worth anything, especially when they feel that there are ways of changing the maps in the car externally.

onefastviking

Personally, I agree with you Eric, but I'm picking my battles carefully, the current rules are stock ECU.
Your point of who knows what is in the ECU is valid, but that CAN be checked, and also that really wasn't the purpose of you changing your ECU to begin with.

Truth is that those that want to cheat via an ECU will do it thru the ECU or externally, the rules really don't matter. Better to spec the gas, and plugs, do the ECU also if you must, then test the gas and check the plugs. If you don't have proper fuel, timing, and spark an ECU won't help but a couple hp at best.

The immobilizer is a whole new issue but also not a battle worth fighting for me, or maybe I should say not a battle worth fracturing the class into different groups over, IMHO.

Carrera51

Interesting about the cars seem to naturally run lean. I guess they were tuned that way out of the box for emissions and fuel economy standards.

J richard

Eric,

Agreed that if it is a reflash that does not involve opening the ecu case it can ily be read electronically. Swapping out chips however is pretty simple the swedges on the case have to be pried open. To be honest I have not looked at the boxsters box in detail but on my other cars Bosch puts at least one tag over the seam. On the cup car (mines an 00) there is one paper seal over the seam and another inspection seal over the pin connector. Obviously that's the way the factory monitors it.
I can show you the factory seals on the cup car ecu.