On Wed, 10 Oct 2001, Mike Rose wrote:
> Well, Jack, I am in exactly the same situation that you are in. I really want
> to go vintage racing but I couldn't find a car for a reasonable amount of
> money. You can always check www.race-cars.com and see what is available
> there, but they all seem to be really expensive.
Mike - you are about to learn an important lesson:
It is cheaper to buy than it is to build.
Bob's axiom - it is _way cheaper_ to buy than to build.
> So, I decided to build my own car. I have purchased a '62 TR4 for $500 and I
> am going to build it into a race car. I have calculated that I will have
> about half the cost involved in buying an existing race car and everything
> will be new and (more importantly) I will know for sure exactly what
> components have been used and exactly how they have been installed (I have a
> bit of a problem trusting my life to others). Besides, building the car will
> be much of the fun and I am sure that I will get an enormous amount of
> satisfaction knowing that I built it.
If your goal is to build - then your plan has merit.
If your plan is to race, then you may need to re-think your plan. Unless
you have a lot of spare time and you don't plan to race for "a while".
> I will be more than happy to help you in any way that I can. The FOT mailing
> list people have been extremely helpful and they answer any questions that I
> might have (I just hope that they don't begin to get tired of me asking dumb
> questions).
>
> Mike Rose
I don't wish to disuade you from your choice. I just want to point out
from personal experience that it is easy to underestimate the effort and
$$$ needed for a "project". Case in point - I thought I could build an
autocrosser for less than $10k. I stopped counting at $10k and I didn't
even have the car assembled or painted. I have no idea what the final
numbers are, because I'm still building it! I was also way off on the time
estimate by a factor or 2 or so. My one year rebuild took more like 2.25
years - but I had a lot of fun out in the garage!
As far as support for your project - a lot of us here have been there done
that - so we can probably offer "wisdom", whatever that is.
Good luck!
rml
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