A few people including myself with best intentions Hi-jacked another thread that is why I am starting this discussion. To bring you up to speed I suggested someting different was needed for NAMBA which has a stock class that no longer has manufactured equipment that is availiable. IMPBA has no official class for "Sport" D (.45OB) Before making any official proposals I would like feedback from IMPBA & NAMBA members who run tunnels and would a class with the same rules work for clubs on both sides. Locally in the Southeast we are running it now and growing.
The rules are very simple. Namba "B" or IMPBA "D" motor with non tunned muffler. Any lower or powerhead. Non tunned means no tunned chamber or reflective wave pipe.
For discussion all we need to define is the name? Stock/Sport/Outlaw 40 which one works best. IMO stock and sport already denote NAMBA and IMPBA current affiliations. Outlaw or Superstock can work also or ????
I am a NAMBA and IMPBA member and would like to start the ball rolling in both organizations if there is interest and also please anyone opposed please speak up. Don't just think this is going to happen. I have no problem starting the proposal but I need to know people will vote and are in favor of a new class in both organizations. IF nothing goes beyond this thread we will still run this class locally. Hope James Clegg and Chris Wittrig will weigh in also.
Mic
Lots of good perspectives in this tread and I absolutely agree that neither NAMBA nor IMPBA based on my own participation in both need any additional classes.
I didn't start running boats until 1999 and had the benefit of running outboards in NAMBA 19 which had no problem putting together stout entry counts for each and every stock and mod tunnel classes from .21 through .67 including outboard mono and outboard hydro. District 9 was in pretty good shape and I honestly had no perspective of what the other districts had for entry counts. It was an awesome time because Outbound and Inboard ran different weekends and each had no problem filling the day both Saturday and Sunday. When K&B hit the skids I was the first one in the district with the Irwin CMB EVO because we wanted to learn what it was going to take to continue beyond the risk that K&B would never get back to the point where parts were readily available. The NAMBA OPC classes were my favorite because the competition level was much, much better than the mod classes...it was more a drivers race than who could find the right combo without falling off the pipe.
As many expected, people started to hedge how to stay in the hobby without necessarily keeping with what they preferred to run. Several people started to go toward inboard and the gas classes eventually started to show up and the performance of those engines got better and better. Now electric is in play in almost every hull classification available. The result is significant reductions in participation for outboard and the eventual combination of inboard and outboard in the west coast districts. Some outboard loyalists who may not have been able to buy themselves into other classes had a few classes they could run and some of those eventually became discouraged having to wait so long between heats and it costs so much to travel to races that it simply did not make sense anymore.
Everybody knows...times have changed and the composition of the hobby is much different now than it was 10 years ago. That's natural. My friend Don "Green Lantern" Ferrette is absolutely right about the dwindling numbers causing the creation of "open" classes beyond the .21 class. Sadly, that's not just outboard. Mono and Hydro in IMPBA 12 are in the same boat (pun intended).
Speaking from a personal perspective I absolutely agree with Mick. Contrary to what others may be thinking, I actually think OPC should be replaced with Super Stock as opposed to creating new classes. This is just a reconstitution of the same intent of OPC to meet the current reality of the materials available on the market. Basically, muffler classes and pipe classes - .21, .45 and maybe even change NAMBA X to be .46+. Bring your 101 with a muffler. Why not? Any flywheel, any carb, any lower unit. Folks, that's not to say it would somehow resurrect the outboard classes, but what it creates is options that may allow people to mix and match some stuff they had and/or can get their hands on to participate in a class that from what I've seen at the WTC tends to have closer competition and less finicky setups especially for newcomers or those who don't want to drop a ton of money just to barely stay on the lead lap.
Nothing says any or every district in NAMBA or IMPBA would or ever will have enough boats to justify putting any one of these classes on the entry form. The option, though, gets created without unnecessarily adding more class definitions. Hey, nobody has proposed that OPC or Sport classes get removed from the rules, so why not a change?
In several ways we seem to be doing this to ourselves. How we choose to create classes or combines classes runs the risk of forcing other classes to become obsolete weakening any possible chance of a resurgence. Be honest, how many people think for one minute that if somebody suddenly bought the K&B marine production assets or a manufacturer decided to create a .45 and/or .67 outboard complete in the box ready to bold on the boat and each inboard, outboard, and gas class on their entry form consistently had 7 boats per class that somebody would be willing to throw away a class allowing an OPC outboard class that could bring 10 boats to come back?
Nothing lost if the rules are changed and specialty events such as the WTC, as well as our friends in NAMBA D3 who have a lot of outboard, will only benefit.
