I had a small argument with my partner on the cackle car once. His background was drag racing, lakes and salt speed racing, etc. We were building/restoring the 1971 Champion Top Fuel car. One task he gave me was to sandblast the 6-71 GM blower to remove the powdercoat coating it had from boat racing use. I knew that blast cabinet would make a mess of the the internals of this piece, So I doubled/tripled taped the top and bottom. My partner told me not to worry about it. His quote was "You should see us in the pits, we thrash between rounds and we're not in clean surgical situations. Sometimes dirt gets in there and it's okay." My come back was "Dude, were not racing. This cackle car is now doing car show stuff. It going to live a life of shiny eye candy stuff." I get my partner. He understands race more than he understands car show. Nothing wrong with that. I get Jerry. Hi Po = high performance. Adding a component to increase performance should be the goal. But these days, it seems Hi Performance means adding the eye candy factor. The bigger percentage of those kids with Japanese cars really don't go much faster, but they feel like it with that louder exhaust!
There's room for all of us.
BTW, the guy who tuned the top fuel car, never polished a thing. If it didn't make it go faster, it just meant extra work. When both he and the driver saw it, 40 years later after we restored it, the quote from each was "It sure is a lot shinier than I remember it!"
