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To help with the inspection read the forum on the LeMons site. Lemons tech- Common tech failures.
I figured I'd post some of the most common tech failures we've seen, at least on the west coast. These are in no particular order.1. 360 degree welds on the cage. Often on the main hoop to halo or down bars and the door bars to the main hoop, two very difficult places to get a complete weld. One car at Phoenix had only tack welds on the door bars....1a. Please read the roll cage rules- We are seeing a bunch of cars without backstays and main hoop diagonals. At Pointless there was quite a few teams struggling to get their cages fixed before the race started. Also, two of the recent rollovers were cages that were found lacking and were fixed the night before the race. Re-read the cage rules and get it right.2. Poorly installed harnesses. Mostly the belts aren't wrapped correctly, look at a diagram, when finished the loose end of the belt should be pointed away from the driver and only one bar of the 3 bar clip should be visible, again, look at a diagram online or the one that comes with your harness set. On clip-in belts, you need to install a locking cotter-pin or safety wire. All bolts/eyebolts must have strong mounting points, either the stock,welded in and reinforced seatbelt mounts or backed up with washers as per the rules. Lap belts must be at the right angle to restrain the driver, we've seen quite a few belts that were mounted too far forward to do any good, the belts must lay on the drivers hip-bones and pull both down and back to be effective. Same with sub-belts, the belt must pull down and back, we will fail a sub-belt that runs over the front of the bottom seat cushion and back to the lap belts. All parts of the harness should be away from sharp protrusions that will fray the belt and cannot be mounted so that the webbing of the harness is clamped between the metal of the car and the belt bracket, that will also cause fraying. If you have HANS-specific belts then everybody on your team MUST use a HANS, these belts are not safe without the use of a HANS. 3. Poorly installed seats. Loose, sloppy seats will fail tech. The seat must not be able to fail in a rear-end impact. That means that there has to be something structural within 6" of the back of the seat, that includes your shortest driver. A back brace is highly recommended. This rule also includes in-date FIA seats, there is no difference in the rules by type of seat, all must not be able to fail rearward.4. Disconnect Switch. The switch must cut off all power to the engine, that usually means that the alternator circuit has to be cut as well as battery power. The switch also has to be reachable and marked.5. Electrical clean up. Most of you have managed to cover the + terminal on your battery, but not on the back of your disconnect switch or elsewhere there is 12 volt power. If I see an uncovered terminal or bare wire, I will make you cover it. 6. Loose stuff. Zip-ties are you friends, get everything tied down. This falls under the de-scuzzification part of the rules. 7. Fire extinguisher, geez, you'd think that the rules are written in Sanskrit. Metal brackets that are through-bolted, done. Why do we still see so many plastic brackets held on with one screw? 8. Windshields: We've seen a bunch of totally spider-webbed broken windshields lately. We failed them and the teams had to scramble for a windshield Friday night. A few small cracks/ chips are ok, beyond that, get it fixed. 9. Oil leaks- we cannot let the track get oiled down and a car that leaves a trail of oil through tech is going to be told to fix it.These are what I've seen most often: there are, of course, many others, from missing bars in the roll cage tofuel tanks and lines being very poorly done..
