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Dirt late model shock situation explained: Rules verbiage? Gray areas? Rod pressure? Thru rods? | Daily 1-24-2024

Behind the scenes in dirt late model racing, shocks have been a recent point of contention, with both national tours taking a stand. We'll explain the situation today and go deep on the technical side. Let's go!

It's Wednesday, January 24th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

At Golden Isles tonight, the late model teams will have a chance to get on track for practice in advance of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series season opener that begins on Thursday. Golden Isles will host full race programs Thursday through Saturday, with $10,000, $12,000, and $25,000 to win shows coming up. This will be our first chance to see the Lucas teams in action, following some guys already getting started at Vado for the Wild West Shootout, and last weekend's Outlaw opener at Volusia. There has been a lot of testing going on as well down south, with cars on track recently at Golden Isles and East Bay. At this moment, we are looking at probably 13 full timers, with Hudson O'Neal, Ricky Thornton Jr., Devon Moran, Tim McCreadie, Daulton Wilson, Tony Jackson Jr., Ross Robinson, Earl Pearson Jr., Daniel Adam, Max Blair, Boom Briggs, Tyler Erb, and Garrett Alberson all expected to sign on. Others are still in play, like Jonathan Davenport, who we talked about yesterday, and there is apparently some chance that Spencer Hughes and JCM could sign on if speedweeks go well. We'll see if there are any others. As we talked about yesterday as well, don't expect Brandon Overton to be in the mix for the full year. He will be in attendance this weekend though, and a year ago he won two of these three races. I'd expect healthy car counts as well all weekend, we had low 50s a year ago, and I wouldn't expect anything different in 2024. It doesn't appear as though there will be any live coverage of practice, so we'll have to keep an eye on social media and MyRacePass for any updates.

As for some of the ongoing late model tech issues, the daily show on Tuesday was focused on dirt late model bodies coming out of Volusia. Specifically around that photo of Devin Moran's car. On that show I also mentioned some shock stuff that was happening, and I wanted to dive more into that today. I was alerted to this situation last week from a prominent late model person, and the Hunt the Front guys talked about it on their podcast last Friday. I would recommend checking that out, and I'm going to expand on what they said, at least in an explanatory way. There were also some interesting Facebook posts around the subject about ten days ago from various parties. There is a specific type of shock that has now had it's legality clarified under the unified rules, and verbiage has been added to both the World of Outlaws and Lucas rule books. This was an area that was previously somewhat ambiguous on the definition, and some shock manufacturers, Bilstein, Penske, and FOX I believe had developed parts that fell into that gray area. We are going to go a little quote "inside baseball" here to try and explain some of this. I'm going to say up front I am no shock expert, but I've spent some time talking to a bunch of people who are shock experts, and I'm going to attempt to pass on what I've learned. I'm going to try and present this information without bias here, as I personally don't have a stance. But I think it's an interesting illustration of this constant back-and-forth between the innovators trying to find speed in these gray areas, and those who make the rules. So via the current dirt late model rules, a type of shock called a thru rod shock is not allowed. In the unified car construction document, under Section 10, subsection I for shock absorbers, the old rules said explicitly "Thru-rod shocks are not permitted." But the definition of what was or wasn't a thru-rod shock was not specified. A normal mono-tube shock has a rod or shaft that exits one end of the body. As the shock compresses and decompresses, that rod moves in and out of the body itself. With a thru rod shock, that rod itself actually passes through both ends of the body. So here is where we get really technical. Shocks are obviously filled with oil. As the rod enters the shock body where the oil is, a problem is created. That rod itself takes up space, or volume, and it puts that oil under pressure. Think about if you were to fill a cup with water, then dump something solid in that cup, the water then moves up or possibly overflows out. That's displacement. Mono-tube shocks account for this with a gas chamber that allows for the oil pressure to be reduced as the rod takes up that space. It doesn't eliminate the problem completely, but it helps. A thru rod shock though, doesn't have this pressure problem. And it doesn't because the rod is always in the body and in the oil. In our water cup example, think about those solid objects always being there, not dumped in suddenly. The rod's displacement is always the same inside the body, so no added pressure is ever created. The rod effectively moves freely in and out of both ends of the shock body. This can be helpful in motorsports applications, because that pressure created inside a mono-tube shock actually adds some small measure of spring rate, which can create grip problems. That pressure in the body is actually trying to force the rod back out. As I've been told, the difference between the two shock types is basically nullified on a gripped up race track, but thru rod shocks work better on slicked off tracks. Not having the added spring rate changes supposedly makes the tire have a more consistent contact patch to the race track. So here is where the definition was a bit gray. On traditional thru rod shocks, you can actually see where the rod passes through the body. It's exposed. Pretty clear what that is. But some of the manufacturers were effectively capping this area, so the rod wasn't exposed. It was inside of some sort of housing, and being called thru-rod technology. But now, series have added extra verbiage to that thru-rod subsection of the book. The first says that the shaft or rod can't exit both sides of the oil volume. And the second basically says that the shaft can't pass through the main body on both ends. So this closes that loop-hole and makes some of these shocks now illegal. This verbiage was added here very recently, within the last week or two. The Hunt the Front guys talked about the added costs of having more shocks to choose from, but as I was told, these thru-rod versions are effectively the same price as traditional late model shocks. And they won't necessarily replace other types, but give teams more options. There is also some thought that tire wear will be helped by this technology, but some have pushed back against that, including the HTF guys in their video. I am in no way qualified enough to have an opinion there. As for the teching process, which was also brought up by Hunt the Front, it shouldn't be particuarly difficult, or require a tear down of the shock. It seems pretty clear from the research I've done what is and what isn't one of these pieces. In speaking to some series people, they haven't made one particular manufacturer or piece illegal, they just clarified the verbiage. And they will be on the lookout for these as the season starts. I do think though this brings up some interesting issues. We are again at an intersection where we have innovation to make speed, plus fairness, and costs all coming together. And decisions made have rippling effects. Do things like these shocks mean more cost for teams, or less? It really depends on what side you ask that question to. I know this all may have been confusing, I hope I explained it well enough. But again, another example of where teams are looking for speed within the rules. As I heard someone say once, it's not only about what the rules say, it's also about what the rules don't say. I do hope this was informative.

Out in California, there might be hope for the future of Calistoga Speedway. This has been a years long saga at this point, and even this little bit of good news doesn't guarantee anything, or give us some sort of date to wait for. But as of this week, the city of Calistoga has purchased the 70 acre fairgrounds the race track sits on from NAPA County. They got the property for the bargain basement price of $2 million. The county does retain the right to repurchase the fairgrounds if the city decides to rezone the property for other usage, or try to sell it or lease it. Via the deal, the city of Calistoga has committed to using the property as it has been in the past, for things like fairs, events, the RV park, golf course, community services, and also the race track. At this point, that's really the bulk of the information we have, and while nothing definite about the speedway was revealed, it's at least good news that the track isn't being demolished for something else. We'll see how quickly the city can get things rolling with the fairgrounds.

Around the other dirt racing podcasts this week, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Gage Green, Hoogie's Garage has Brant O'Banion and more, Dunewich on Dirt has Daniel Adam and Kelley Carlton, Turn 2 Terribles has Brad Strawser, Racing Roundup has Logan Wagner, Plum Wild has Conner New, and there are new episodes of The Dirt Reporters and the Rigsby Report from Dirt on Dirt and FloRacing, Dirt Track Confessions, and Ohio Dirt. There is also a new show on the podcasts page this week, The Hammer Lane from Joe Burrage and Paul Gower. They focus on sprint car racing around the country. To see the full list of shows and episodes, visit dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

That's it for the daily show today. Head over to dirtrackr.com/theslider and sign up for our free email newsletter. I've got a fresh piece from Pat Sullivan ready to go, that I will send out soon.

Hope you guys have a great Wednesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!