Balance and manners, date-of-rank, and other unadulterated bullshit

[JHertzman@domain.elided]

Come on, Will - - -  relax.

I took it that Greg Hermann was talking about ideas, not personalities. I 
didn't see it as the kind of personal invective which has bubbled up 
occasionally in the past.

The paragraph I had quoted started with a sentence that "Balance is of prime 
importance in obtaining a smooth running valve train". It did mention 
everything- valves, springs, retainers, keepers, followers, the works. The 
camshafts and sprockets were at the end of the list. It was not talking about 
flash readings on the dyno, but about smoothness. Much of the focus at the 
time was on endurance racing, on little things which added up to surviving.

Elders- sigh.. Greg does say that the recipients of advice "should take a 
hard look at the economic motivations and/or the technical qualifications of 
the suggester!!" That seems fair. If Greg was racing Alfas in '71, as he 
says, and sometimes finished first, second or third in class and earned 
points towards a SCCA national championship, he sent in his verified results 
sheets to ARI and got checks back in the mail- not huge ones, but very 
helpful ones. If he was one of the six who won a National Championship in the 
first year of this program he was given a new 2600 Spider. The primary author 
of the CRH had proposed this program to his immediate boss, Arturo Reitz, the 
head of ARI. His own title was Director, US Engineering Office, Alfa Romeo 
Inc. His economic motivation, if it can be called that, is that he got to 
work on unpaid overtime fifty-two weekends a year, plus evenings. It wasn't 
exactly a "profit center operation".

I don't doubt that some of the ideas in and around Alfa's racer support 
program and the CRH struck some well qualified engineers as kind of comical 
overkill at that time, and may still do so. There have often been degrees of 
attention to detail which become more matters of taste, or of art, than of 
rigorous engineering. Perhaps more in Italy than in some other cultures, 
perhaps more in some companies than in others, perhaps more in some cities 
than in others. Perhaps more in the past than in the present. Miller's 
Indianapolis cars had levels of finish which would be impossible to justify 
to an accountant as necessary or even relevant for winning races, but his 
cars did win races. It was perhaps a subjective, even subrational thing, 
doing absolutely as well as you can rather than doing quite well enough. With 
some people it may be polishing things which don't need to be polished, with 
others it may be balancing things which don't need to be balanced. In either 
case every part is examined, handled, thought about, and treated with care. 
In the right hands, it pays off. Sometimes.

The CRH is an archaic document, now, one I find an interesting whiff of the 
past. The company which existed then is gone. The kind of racing it supported 
is gone. Most of the people who made the company what it was are gone. The 
survivors are worth listening to, the records worth reading. They are all 
worth remembering, and arguing about. Amiably, more or less.

Cheers,

John H.
Raleigh, N.C.

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