Good mourning Steve, been awhile. Don't get me wrong I couldn't care less which engine it comes down to. If pro Gas became the engine of choice, and thats what everyone had, I'd be happy with that. My point is, NO engines are ever taken out of the mix when new ones come in, its getting just like the 2 cy world in Sprint. How many engine choices do we need?
Last month at our Badger Sprint 4 cy meeting, I brought up installing LO classes, I run the meeting, I ask the questions and I try hard to not let any personal views come through. It was 34 to 0 to not have them. Limited didn't fly here either, and I did push on that. Its clear here that racers want large classes to race against over anything else.
I understand some people will complain abut the cost of an engine, much of that cost is the price of the engine and cost of the cam, the work that you, my kid or anyone else does is basically the same on any of the engines from there. When a Animal goes out of here, most times I don't see it back for 2 seasons. The only thing really needing replacement is springs which we do often for people at the track, on their kart.
Not sure why you chose gas and only stating my opinion here but I think Alky is a main reason the engines last as long as they do. Alky takes a bunch of temp out of the head, which is good but the big thing, again IMHO is Alky is such a clean fuel there is almost no carbon build up. Don't have to worry about blowing the pop up or head depth rule, the carbon doesn't run past the rings and valves losing seal.
When talking about costs, to me engines are low on the list, by far travel, gas, motorhome trailer maintenance are by far the largest followed by chassis and tires. Those costs are what they are, we don't mind paying them IF the racing is good when we get to the track. When we have 4 or 5 engine choices, then throw in the different wt classes, I just don't see a racer base, big enough to support all those choices.
I'm ok if you add Pro Gas but get rid of some of the others. Out here CES only offers WKA BP Animal, were not as big as WKA anymore (but were growing) and you know that any 4 cy guy that shows up is going to be in one of the 3 wt classes, bring some lead and chose a class. We all race each other.