![[Company Logo Image]](../images/Logos%20and%20Gifs/logo.gif){kind=logo}
Traction Products, Inc.
Weismann Marine, LLC.
June 23, 2006
The new offshore racing organization, the Offshore Super Series (OSS), that for all intents and purposes has replaced the APBA, has also returned to the same game that ruined APBA in the first place. The OSS has officially announced new rules for this year that bans our drives from competition. Ironically, the OSS was created by the boat racers that did not want to be forced by the APBA to run only one spec engine.
After months of threats, the OSS have left two raceboat owners holding the bag. The bag amounts to $110K for each racer to comply with the new rules. For reasons unclear to the racers and fans, the powers at be are afraid of the two Weismann equipped cats, one of them above, Peppers (it isn't even finished yet!), and the other is J.D.Byrider!
In an effort to make peace with the APBA several years ago, we removed the reasons why from our site, and we stopped bashing them. Now the gloves are off again, and we haven't even provoked this fight. The drives are the only thing at this time that are being regulated against. The same rule makers (puppets) that banned us at the end of the 1996 season are still in place today making the technical rules, they are just wearing different hats.
In 1996, we showed up with an
old overweight cat called Zerodefect, and went on to win 11 out of 11 races.
Zerodefect (later renamed Nomad for the Worlds) had our then secret drysumped #6
drives, and 3 speed semi-automatic transmissions. By the end of the season the
secret was out, and so were we. Both the drives and the gearboxes were banned,
and the only threatening boat killed off.
Then in 2000, we returned with our own Drysumped surface drive , the MKII. In our first race with the Ragamuffin cat, we lapped the entire field except for second place and won. Again we were legal by the rules to race, we were homologated by the same guy writing the rules for OSS now, and we passed tech for each race. Then couple of months before the start of the 2001 season, our new drives were banned as well as the shaft drive boats which also ran our drop transmissions. This time 6 boats were killed off- and within a few years, APBA Offshore spiraled quickly into obscurity. Some real racers like Forest Barber and Rique Ford quitting boat racing entirely, others jumped ship to SBI and the rest created OSS.
In 2001, the word got out that we had another new drysump drive underway, and quickly the rules were modified to protect against any new drives entering the picture. The rumors were true and we debuted the MKIII. The MKIII superiority has been demonstrated repeatedly with the awesome Predator Poker Run Boat, when it picked up a full 15 mph over the Weismann #6 drysump drives it had on it before!
Racers know
that the boats that have beaten them in the past we not especially great boats,
and several misguided racers bought the very same boats but never had the same
results; the Zerodefect cat changed hands twice after 1997 before it became a
pleasure boat!
The reasons why we are banned are simple.
1. We
invented the "drysump drive".
2. We have a true drysump system, complete with 2 pumps and a drysump tank.
3. Our drysump drives are more efficiently designed.
4. Our drysump system works better, because it is a true drysump drive.
5. THE NEW 'PEPPERS' CAT HAD REAL 'DRYSUMP' DRIVES GOING ON IT!
The official #6 Drysump is NOT a drysump drive at all and nobody official will stand up and tell you that!
To prove it to yourself, ask the head of the OSS Technical Committee to show you the drysump tank! Then ask him "How many pumps does it have and how it all works?" When he mumbles and can't come up with a satisfactory answer, ask him, "So what constitutes it being called a drysump drive? To press the point of his ignorance further (AND THE "ENGINEERS" THAT DESIGNED THE SYSTEM), ask "Why is the "oil pickup" located in the nose cone instead of in the rear of the drive since that's where the oil is under acceleration ??
Racers and general boaters have been getting bilked for years now by purchasing what they thought were true drysump drives. And the ruling bodies that govern the so-called racing have turned a blind eye towards the obvious crimes being perpetrated; they have been accepting sponsorship money to change the rules to inhibit competition and then they force the racers to buy the "approved" drives to be legal.
It's the racers that have been sponsoring their own racing and the ruling bodies since 1997! True sponsors sponsor the racers with product, they don't charge the racers for it. NASCAR for example is sponsored by Unical 76, and the NASCAR teams don't pay for one drop of fuel!
This is clearly Restriction of Trade and Extortion. Since this is not true open class boat racing anymore, but CLUB racing at it's worst, the real racers and honest innovative companies like ourselves are forced to stay onshore, race something else, or go run Poker Runs.
