Ok. I've been reading this thread with interest because the ITA car I'm buying should have the wiring harness replaced to prevent electrical gremlins according to the current owner. The options I see for doing this are:
1) Get a used harness from a junk yard and use in its entirety. This harness may not be in much better shape than the one I have. This appears to be legal.
2) Get a used harness and go through it and repair or replace bad wires and connectors. Seems like this may be legal if I use the same color wires and connectors. It's not legal if I use different color wires and "radio shack" connectors.
3) Get a new harness. This assumes that I actually can get a new harness. This is gonna run a few hundred bucks I figure. This appears to be legal.
4) Fabricate my own harness. This will be very time consuming, but could result in a much more efficient and clean harness at the end. This could be fairly cheap or could be costly depending on the parts used. This is not legal.
5) Go through the harness in the car and repair or replace wires and connectors as needed. This is pretty much the same as #2 and may or may not be legal depending on the color of the wires and the connectors used.
Have I missed anything? Nothing like a case study.
I'm going to do what makes the most sense and is the easiest to accomplish. I've got better things to do than spend time building a harness so #4 is out (not to say that somebody else wouldn't do this, but I won't). #2 and #3 seem to be the best options. I'll see if I can find a new harness and if it's not too, too expensive that's probably what I'll do. If it's too expensive or I can't get one, then it's #2. I'll repair or replace parts on the donor harness as needed. And I won't be worrying about wire color or connector type. If some a-hole wants to protest the color of my wires because I got one spot closer to the plastic trophy than them, so be it. What comes around, goes around.
I'll be at the back of the pack this year anyways, so I don't think I'll have any problems. Hopefully I'll move up towards the front, though, as my driving skills catch up with the car.
I'm a newb at this, but it seems to me the intent of IT is to provide a class where it's relatively easy and has a comparatively low cost to go racing. At least, I think this is why a lot of people are attracted to IT. So, it seems rules should keep this philosophy in mind. Any rule change that makes things simpler and/or cheaper would seem like a good thing to me. I like simple and I defintely like cheap. Note that simpler and cheaper don't necessarily equate to slower.
I personally think the rule should be changed so that somebody can repair/replace their wiring harness in whatever manner suits them best without the possibility of them being illegal. There may be some case out there where somebody has band-aided their wiring harness all they can and no new or used ones are available. Their only option may be to build their own. I think they should be able to do that. If this means some rich dude can go out and spend $5k on gold-plated mil spec connectors, such is life. Wish I could do that. There's always going to be somebody who can spend butt loads of money on their car. I don't think a rule can be limited by these people if it makes life easier for a majority of the people. Especially if the competitive advantage afforded to the rich people is not that great.
Seems like IT rules should be geared towards making racing as cheap and easy as possible while maintaining as level a playing field as possible. I'm still learning, but from the discussions I've seen here I would guestion whether this was taken into account when some of the rules were written. People with more money are always going to be able to build faster cars. That's just a fact of life. I don't know that attempting to write the rules to keep this from happening is very beneficial.
I don't know if this has added anything to the discussion, but it kept me busy at work for a while
. I'll go back to lurking now.
David
A big, stinky cheater?
