well said oz 
, i think i expressed the same view earlier, about 18 pages ago and some are still going on. as i have said you should be able to race your era without all this twoing and froing if you are prepared not to twist the rules to suite your personal case, in other words, race to the spirit of your class and era and not for the mantel piece, i will get beaten by everyone in my class, but my bikes will be a true representation of class and era! after reading the MOM's i cant see where the problem is, i have pre 78 and evo bikes as produced and i will rock to scurtineering and pass whitout any prob's.
Trev, you've side-swiped a really significant point there.
Here's two things to think about:
1. We're talking about dirt bikes that are a
minimum of a quarter of a century old. LOTs of parts are unavailable/unreasonably expensive, and if we were to strictly enforce period parts, it would increase the costs like crazy - this would drive most people out of the sport.
Imagine what a set of crappy old Mulhollands would be worth if we were forced to run period shocks, for example.
Similarly, inagine the drama if we had to run period tyres or hand grips or air-filters.
Now, you might say "But nobody cares about things like grips, it would be stupid to enforce only period grips" - and you'd be right.
But where do you draw the line? Everybody has their own limits to what is acceptable and what isn't. I know people who won't even consider fitting non-original grips to their bikes, while I know others that are happy to push every rule to its limit.
Most of us fit somewhere between those two extremes,
but we all have different opinions - and
that's why we're at 20 pages.
2. Most of us are keen to go as fast and be as competitive as we can, legally. The curse of every historic racing category is knowing whether to allow new technology of not - and once you've decided whether its acceptable or not, the next challenge is working out how to write a rule that adequately reflects this decision.
As an example, look at modern style 'fat bars'. Personally, I hate the look of them on Evo and earlier bikes and would not be the slightest bit upset if the were banned. So let's assume that we're going to write a rule that prohibits them. How do you write that rule?
If you simply say "Handlebars without cross-braces are not allowed" then you rule out the old school solid alloy bars which plenty of people use and clearly are a period part.
If you say "Handlebars must be 7/8" in diameter" then you rule out the bikes that came with 1" bars standard.
Etc.
And that's the other reason we're at 20 pages.
Not many of us really want the rules changed. But everyone wants the rules to be clear and easily understood so that the playing field is level.No matter what your opinion on what the rules
should clearly say, if we could achieve this, it would be a huge step foward.
