DPE Newsletter wrote ..............
ROTAX POWER VALVE BELLOWS - SAFETY WIRING
It has been quite common practice to safety wire or cable tie the Rotax power valve bellows as a precaution against it coming adrift from the piston and/or housing. Since the inception of Formula Rotax this has been interpreted and accepted as being legal to do - an approach showing good common sense.
Unfortunately certain scrutineers, who to the best of out knowledge are located only in Queensland, have decided this is now illegal.
We have taken this matter up with the AKA and both Brian Farley (Executive member Technology) and Garry Sharp (National Technical Adviser) have confirmed their belief that it should be allowable to safety wire or cable the bellows. Unfortunately an addendum will be required to 110% clarify this within the rules so that over-zealous scrutineers cannot unreasonably penalise competitors. Unfortunately the AKA system moves very slowly so for now we make the following recommendation.
"It is suggested that safety wiring or cable tying not be done until this matter is totally resolved".
"Common practice" is a piss poor excuse for contravening the regulations and is just not acceptable and would not be tolerated at any Stewards hearing - the officials of events are responsible for checking things, but by doing their jobs they are branded by DPE comment to be "over zealous" and DPE also says that these scrutineers, to DPE's knowledge, are located only in Queensland. This just proves that people up here in Qld can actually read - follow regulations - abide by the rules - a truly worthy virtue to possess that benefits everyone..
It is not the scrutineers that have decided that contravening the regulations is now illegal - it is the regulations themselves that deem the addition of such material to be illegal. DPE in their newsletter are clearly out of sync with what regulations are supposed to do - defaming the scrutineers who do their job properly is hardly an option and these scrutineers are offended by the remark.
The belief by Mr. Brian Farley and Mr. Gary Sharp - (both who hold Technical positions in AKA) is just a belief - however the Newsletter might give the impression that these two officials say it is OK, when in fact it is not - matter of fact Mr. Farley, who officiated at the Queensland Championships in his capacity as a scrutineer insisted that this very regulation be applied to a competitor for this very contravention of the rules...Mr. Farley is from NSW and his short stay in Qld was to say the least, we think, educational and a courageous exercise for him , an experience to behold, so to single out only Queensland scrutineers is also off the DPE mark.
The rules when properly read, simply state that it is not permitted to wire the bellow with anything other than the genuine part supplied with the bellows, and we simply say that until the rule is altered, if you use something else then you will be and should penalized ..not by the scrutineers who just do their checking jobs, as that is reserved for the Stewards who are responsible for issuing such penalties ...don't hold the scrutineers responsible for your actions, if your mate is breaking the rules and rumour has it that there is a performance gain in doing this exercise, then he is cheating you.
There are a lot of things we all would like to do under the "common sense" banner but if they are illegal you cannot do them ...in any case if this was such a problem how come Rotax have not fixed it ??? Maybe that should be the priority rather than blaming the officials for doing what they are supposed to do ...............check things..without fear or favour !!