One of the biggest reasons they use handouts is to ease the ability to tech the motors....they can have a sample sitting there and know EXACTLY what arm, can, endbell is supposed to be one. When you allow open motors, this gets much harder, as there are quite a few choices available, so the chance of hybird sneaking in goes way up.
I had my zapper at nats.....and I used it like 3 times, all on 19t motors....never once on an MVP. If people are bringing there balancers to rebalance stocks, I have never seen it, not to mention is illegal....specifically mentioned in the rule book.
As for needing all this highend equipment.....don't know about that either. I tuned over 40 MVPs at nats, and about 30+ 19t.....and thats not counting rebuilds. I never put a single MVP on the dyno.....I did dyno a few 19t just to see what they did....and cause the racer requested it. I used my fiddlestick, alignment bar, a couple of screw drivers, lathe, my charger(motor break in), an exacto.....my zapper was used when a person requested.....didn't zap a single one of my team motors (no 19t or stocks)....
Final results....2,3, and 10th in the A main stock, 5 of the 10 in the masters A main....3 in stock pan car A main, including TQ.....and 2 people in the 19t A.
The biggest problem I have with handout motors is people end up with Rockets....and its not because they make a good motor a rocket, its just the luck of the draw a lot of time. In my opinion the best handout motors would be handwound epoxy balanced motors....not only does this remove a huge variable in the quality of the windings(typically the main reason you get a rocket motor, though it can occasionally be advanced timing on the comm), it also removes the ability to rebalance the arm at all, as you could simply denote the amount of epoxy blobs on the arm during the marking process.
Snowbirds had this right halfway, as they had epoxy balanced motors this year, but still no handwinding......and before you say "handwound stockers are illegal".....go read the rules, they are not.....only 19t motors have to be machine wound.
And using a new motor won't work either, as it will only make it more unfair.....as less experienced tuners will be attempting to tune something they know nothing about while they are trying to handle everything else on their car and driving, while the experienced will more than likely get it right and quicker.....and there will be NO resources for a person to get on the net and looks for tips on the motor......and the BIGGEST issue is the Team advantage.....you can't tell me orion, reedy, or trinity is going to make a motor and then not to touch it all till the race starts....sorry, teams look for the leg up always. Look no further than snowbirds with the new ultrabird 19t....had not been released.....trinity guys were instantly fast with it, while the rest of us were still figuring it out.....guess who won and got tq??? Trinity.....
In the end, there are always plenty of motor guys at national events.....and its not hard to get one of them to tune your motor up, all you gotta do is ask.....over half the motors I did were for non-team guys who just asked and I did it at no charge.
And besides...tuning a motor isn't as hard as people make it out to be, they sell a great book on this site to show you the ropes and a quick search on the net will bring up additional info, not to mention what you can find here. Just takes a little patience and effort to learn to tune a motor....
Or maybe you can go use those brushless motors that are supposed to be 10 turns, yet they can turn laps barely faster than a stock motor....
Later EddieO