On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Henry Frye wrote:
> Amici,
[stuff deleted]
> The weekend was a complete success. I now have spousal approval to buy a
> race car! Or do I want to build one? Decisions, decisions!
Take it from me... buy. You'll still be bleeding money from every pore,
but at least you'll start with something that passes on visual inspection
as a car...
Seriously, it'll cost you 3 times more to build a car than it would to
obtain an x racer. Of course don't think the "entry fee" (the cost of
buying the car in the first place) is all you're going to spend. No sane
racer would just jump in someone else's car and drive it without going
through everything. Think "safety" here.
Of course, we all drive Triumphs (or Triumph powered derivatives), so
we're not sane to start with...
;-)
rml
p.s. as a point of reference, my TR6 project started with two parts cars.
I've since obtained a frame - repairs needed on that too, a body shell -
about 150 hours of work there, clean-up and painting everything - tons of
hours, a race motor from a buddy in exchange for doing some work on his
motor - I gave up on the 13:1 head in favor a "more sane" 10.5:1 setup in
other words a min. of $2k on machine work, $750 (so far) on safety items
(seat, belts, roll bar) - then the "go fast goodies" that I couldn't turn
down, the Quaiffe, the 4.88 gears, the 4.30 gears, the Detroit Locker, the
WeberZ, the Tilton flywheel, figure another $3k there... In other words,
my initial $4k project car is now 3.5 other cars combined and another at
least $6k of new parts. But the Gu'vner smiles when I say "hi!". And so
does Dick Burger. Oh well. Drop me a line if you need more convincing.
On the plus side, I did start this project thinking it would take up lots
of spare time so I couldn't mope about my divorce. I was right on the
time thing, I've been in the garage every spare moment since last
September, and I started the frame repairs and rolling suspension about
18 months ago. Figure something like 75% of my total "free time" has been
spent on that project (and some time that I don't have!!!!).
FWIW, although I missed the great weekend past (at Mid-Ohio) - I did
manage to get a step closer to getting the final paint on my car this
weekend. Then it's time to fire that baby up! I can't wait.
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