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OK, the 1983 story, as described in Performance Car's season preview by Art Markus- there's about a page of this stuff(!), so I'll just do highlights...
Basically, the results of the 1983 championship had not been decided at the beginning of '84- the RAC wished to hold a tribunal to enquire into the legality of the cars, but Tom Walkinshaw had gone to the High Court for a legal injunction preventing the MSA from doing this- as the article comments, 'Remember, this is not to decide whether or not the Rovers transgress the Group A rule book, but merely to decide whether the RAC MSA is entitled to reconsider the matter'
Walkinshaw's argument was that an RACMSA Court of Enquiry in August '83 had found the cars legal, and that the matter should end there. Frank Sytner however, wasn't satisfied by this and had protested the cars again during 1983- the RAC MSA hearing for this second protest promptly found the cars illegal....
The issue of contention was the valve rockers in the engine- in a production Rover, the engine used hydraulic valve lifters. These were replaced in the race engines by solid ones, TWR using rockers with a screw adjustment to provide the required valve clearance, sourced from Swedish company BAHCO. Apparently, Sytner and his lawyers canvassed Volvo dealers until they found the source of the component in question
The other issue, which seemed to have died down in early '84 was around bodyshells- this was the story that led to TWR being nicknamed 'Third World Racing' by some humourist at the time.
Apparently, in order to fit the maximum 11" wide wheel/tyre combination inside the production wheelarch, TWR had moved the top mounting for the shock absorber inwards and upwards on a modified inner wheelarch. The rules, of course, stated that the suspension pickup points should remain standard.
Allegedly, Austin Rover got around this by issuing factory drawings describing this as a 'reinforced' standard bodyshell specification supplied for certain African markets- not that anyone had apparently ever seen one of these 'Third-World-spec' bodyshells anywhere but on a Group A race car....
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