Anyone know how well the reproduction knock-offs from Corvette USA judge?

[James W.]

Re: Anyone know how well the reproduction knock-offs from Corvette USA judge?

I just looked at my judging sheets from the 2014 Nat'l. Convention. My '64 convertible which had the early Western Wheel/K-H knock-offs installed and a genuine 1964 K-H ink stamped dated wheel as spare. I too had no correct wheel weights on the road wheels except the stick-on type and none on the original spare since they were hard to find. Out of the 30 originality points possible I received a 9 point deduction with only a note saying "No wheel weights and spare wheel is original".

James

My experience with these is even with real ones you might get some deducts for wheel weights, which are impossible to find. So I left them all off and I tried to take a position that my wheels were perfectly balanced, so I didn’t need wheel weights. Unfortunately, the judge that day, (who will go unnamed in this thread - even though he just posted) had just sold me the wheels, so my plea wasn’t particularly successful…

[Gary B.]

Re: Anyone know how well the reproduction knock-offs from Corvette USA judge?

… when I have had my '64s and '66 with KOs judged in the past at Regionals and Nationals, the exterior judges look at the spare, where you can see a date, and used that to judge all the others where you can't see a date. Thus if the spare wheel is properly dated within the 6 month window, they are all deemed to be OK wrt the date…

Michael,

I believe you that the judges did that, but I don’t believe that’s how judging of those items should be done. For example, if I have an original non-DOT spare on my ‘66, the judges shouldn’t blindly conclude that my bias ply tires on the car are not repros. Because they will be repros. IMO, you got generous (some might use a different adjective) judges, who did not exercise due diligence.

Gary

[Michael J.]

Re: Anyone know how well the reproduction knock-offs from Corvette USA judge?

Maybe you can tell me how the judges are going to know what date a KO wheel is when it is mounted on the car? Tires are easy, you can see the DOT or non-DOT mounted or on a spare and they are judged accordingly individually and the spare is not used as a proxy for all tires, for wheels you are not able to know the date, so tell me how you would do it.

[Gary B.]

Re: Anyone know how well the reproduction knock-offs from Corvette USA judge?

Michael,

I should have been more precise in my wording. My criticism was with the idea that if the spare wheel is correct, then the other four wheels are in some way correct. Had you said the judges examined the spare and found it to be worthy of no deduction, and then they examined the other four wheels and also found no reason to take a deduction, then that’s perfectly acceptable. But there can be no assumed carry-over of correctness, i.e., date or other factors from spare to road wheels. The latter is what I thought you were describing the judges had done by virtue of the statement about the date on the spare, and they “used that to judge all the others where you can't see a date”.

Gary

[Michael J.]

Re: Anyone know how well the reproduction knock-offs from Corvette USA judge?

This is what I stated: "IIRC, when I have had my '64s and '66 with KOs judged in the past at Regionals and Nationals, the exterior judges look at the spare, where you can see a date, and used that to judge all the others where you can't see a date. Thus if the spare wheel is properly dated within the 6 month window, they are all deemed to be OK wrt the date." This is exactly what happened on 3 of my cars at the regionals and nationals. The spare wheel had a correct date, they could not see the other wheels dates, all wheels conformed to what is TFP, so all wheels had no deductions for the two sections of Optional Wheels on the judging sheet. Thus it is possible to have a '66 dated wheel mounted on a '65, but as long as the other configuration components are TFP for a '65, there will be no deduction if it is a mounted road wheel. So the assumption of TFP for date is carried over from the spare if all the rest of the wheel is TFP for that year, how else could you judge a mounted KO wheel for date? CDCIF is how they are judged.