Originally Posted by Maximo

Another thing to add is that there is a really big difference between how these different engine brands tune...Yours and Franks best success and most familiarity are with OS engines and there is no question in my mind that if we would have gotten you into a couple sets of modified Speeds instead of those Nova's we would not be having this conversation here today. Just consider how much turmoil there was over OS switching to the short needle carb ? that change alone caused thousands of racers all sorts of hell... Everyone could tune the old carb in their sleep, yet the new short needle for some was as difficult as cracking the Enigma code. And the reality is that there was nothing at all wrong with the short needle design, it actually is very easy to tune once you knew the procedure it needed.... Now jumping over to a modified Nova from a stock OS is going to require a much bigger change in tuning procedure then OS changing their needle required..OS and Nova tune very differently and offer very different tuning cues to work from...Biggest difference is that Nova's are very picky on idle speed, they tend to drop their idle speed once they fully heat saturate, and often times they take nearly 10 minutes of actual track time to fully saturate..so what happens most often is the idle speed gets set too early and when the engine fully heats up the idle becomes too low to be stable and the engine starts cutting out... Issue is with the proper hot idle gap the engine will sound lean and racy when you fire it up cold, and will sound lean and racy on the track for the first few laps till it gets some heat..... This big warmup phase and tune shift often tricks you into making needle changes that really aren't needed....OS do not do this, they act much differently and the idle speed does not move as much from cold to hot and if anything the idle speed will climb slightly with heat.... With a Nova I find it very important to check the idle stability after a qualifier when the engine is fully heat soaked... Basically after the qualifier have your pit guy put your car on pit lane and you let it idle without blipping the trigger.. Just let the car sit there and count how long it can sit and idle unaided by any trigger play. From your results here make the appropriate adjustments to idle speed..as if the engine wont idle now you cannot trust it to idle in the main........ And this is the classic issue we seen ... guys would have their engines tuned aces for the shorter qualifiers, but about when they get to their first refuel in the main they started having flameouts from a low idle speed... Basically the qualifier was too short to notice their idle was too low .... Anyways checking and setting the idle speed after a qualifier prevents all this ..

Anyways because of these big differences in tuning procedure between the different engine brands I do find it best to modify the engines people are used to running and tuning.. Going from a stock Speed to a modified Speed is going to be far less of a change in procedure then going from a stock Speed to a modified Novarossi..And likewise, going from a stock Novaorssi to a modified Novarossi will be a far smaller procedure change then swapping from a stock Novarossi to a modified Speed....And to recap look how much turmoil OS changing their needle caused for everyone....