[GNC Rick]

To whom it may concern,

I've been a member of this site off and on for more than 10 years. I've been dealing with some personal problems as of late, like the last 2 years lol. Anyway, I can't believe the lack of interest , member involvement and general lack of activity or traffic on this site. Where did everyone go ? Is there another forum I don't know about. I'm greatly disappointed by this development and if anyone can shed some light on the subject, I would appreciate it. Thanks...

[trackbird]

I can usually tell when we pop up on the other forums, I'll get a ton of emails asking for accounts (and I'm good with that, it's not a complaint). We had issues with spammers and one guy who managed to hack the site years ago. Thus the issues with registrations and doing it the manual way. I haven't upgraded the board for a while and I should likely move to the latest software and see if I can find a way to approve accounts again so that we can automate things to allow people to join.

I can open up registration and try to go back to manually approving them, but we had a dozen pages per day of "junk" registrations. It was almost impossible to dig through them and sort out the good ones.

This board has been fun over the years and I've really enjoyed every minute of it. I never really found a way to make any money with it (not that it was the main goal, but I wouldn't have argued if it managed to make some money too) and I've mostly gone to just running it out of pocket to keep it online. We have a database of what is likely among the best information for racing third and fourth gen cars anywhere on the web. But the interest in the platforms seems to be dropping. I've noticed that there are so many of these cars being parted out on facebook that there won't be any left in a few years. I hate that they are worth far more in parts than they are as actual cars. Guys are actively buying $4,000 Z28's with 100k+ miles on them and stripping them, selling the engine, trans, rear, all the interior parts they can and then selling the shell for $800 to some racer or just scrapping them.

I built a house last year and I've been pretty busy. I don't manage to check in here as often as I should. I was typically around all day as I could drop in pretty regularly. I'm not really able to do that these days and I am also far less active than I have been in the past. I've considered selling the board, but I don't think I want to turn it over to anybody and I don't know that it's worth the risk of losing the information here in case someone wants to turn it into a drag racing board. I've also toyed with buying a 6th gen car and working up some tech on those as I learn to make it work. I tried growing a Corvette section and that never really got legs. Maybe we're too small and too "weird" to ever become an LS1 tech or similar. But I've always liked the "small town" feel of this board. Many of the regulars have moved on, retired from racing or just retired. I haven't run an autocross in years. I have taken a few ride alongs and I've helped some guys with car issues and setup problems through email and private messages. I can still make these cars fast, but the recipe is pretty widely known these days. And I am scheduled to go to the UMI event this summer and dust off the cobwebs. I don't know if I can remember how to drive one of these cars in anger, but it seems like a great place to find out. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I'm open to ideas and suggestions if anybody has any. I certainly like our little corner of the world and I'd be happy to share it with more members if we can find out how to get them here.