After the photo BS was over, we went upstairs to the conferrence room for a 1 hourish meeting. First the SF guys got up and told us how they would be operating the testing etc. Then the mP guys took opur questions and had to deal with the MSRP debacle etc.

The big items that came up in the meeting were, what happens if the engine stalls during it's mandatory 6 minutes of idling? It was decided their would be a hefty points penatlty for a motor that stalled, and it would have to eventually make 6 full minutes.

Russ Flagle wanted the 20 minute tuning period changed to 30 minutes becasue 20 was not enough to do much, including lash the valves which several competitors including ICH needed to do, due to the fact their engines had been apart after their dyno time back home.

And then we argued about the MSRP pricing for the rest of the time.... 5 of the 6 competitors were under the asumption that the cost of the MP supplied parts (heads, block, valve covers and crank) were NOT part of the MSRP total price. We believed this for several reasons but the biggest one was a LIST Mp emailed us detailing ALL the parts to be tabulated in the overall MSRP, and thsoe items were NOT on the list. Hence why 5 of the 6 competitors used very expensive aluminum heads, and several of us including myself and the winner took the more expensive wide MP valve covers becasue we did not think it would count against us.

In the end there was NO budging MP on the parts cost even though anyone with half a brain and could read all the emails we had printed out could se that the MP parts costs should not have been included but.... it's their game. They had to give us SOMETHING in exchange for their mishandling of the MSRP., so they did give us the 30 minute tuning period.

Also one other thing I brought up was about how would we do the power pulls, would it be 3 back to back to back, just like E'masters, with no time in between? (which is really hard on motors) And they were flexible here and debated overnight and agreed to give us 2 up to 2 minutes of idle cool down between power pulls if we wanted.

Also we talked alot about the enginemasters shortcomings because several of the SuperFlow dyno operators participated in the early Emasters contests and they knew what a disaster it was, and how badly Parkhurst ran them. And the one dyno operator even brought up the moparts fried starter wire before we could even mention it. And so it was determined that if something happened externally to a motor that was either Superflow's fault or like a plug wire melting on a header tube or a small leak, or in ich's case a freeze plug flying out of their Hemi in a previous challenge, etc. as long as it was EXTERNAL, we could fix it and keep making pulls without penalty. If their was an internal failure, bent pushrod etc, the motor was done, no repairs. Basically they wanted to se our motors run, and not have problems, and not scatter all over the floor, and they would make concessions as we went along to help us.

So that was the big stuff that came out of the Monday afternoon meeting.... it was clearly obvious other than arguing about the MSRp, that the MP tech guys were not out to screw us, they were going to be pretty leniant and help us as much as they could to have a good fair fun contest. There was not going to be any scenes like Scott Parkhurst yelling at DRAM about asking for too much when the starter wire fried. LOL This was a much more laid back easy going contest. I don't think you could have a stodgy uptight contest with Harold Bettes running the Superflow show, that guy is a bundle of energy and quite the prankster.