Making some decisions about racing, might get rid of the 914... might not... Options

[smg914]

QUOTE (VegasRacer @ Aug 3 2005, 05:50 AM)

QUOTE (groot @ Aug 3 2005, 06:44 AM) Always cheaper to buy someone else race car That is worth repeating in big bold letters. Always cheaper to buy someone else race car

That is some serious words of wisdom!!!!!!!!!

[VegasRacer]

This quote too (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif)

QUOTE

I highly recommend you do it. You will never regret it. In fact, if you don't do it, you will eventually regret it.

[Flat VW]

QUOTE (groot @ Aug 3 2005, 05:44 AM)

Cost to build ITB Rabbit GTI-$11k Expenses to race ITB car per weekend-$600-800 Tires, 2 sets per year if you run 8-10 weekends, yearly cost ~$1000 Being chased around and around the track by old, thrashed, MR2 Spyders and finally spinning out in the weeds---- --------PRICELESS!!!--------

J (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/w00t.gif)

[carr914]

Just Do It. I also agree about finding the limitations of your ability to do your own work. I realized early I was a driver first and foremost. I then concentrated on racing in Skip Barbers various series which are arrive and drive. I been fortunate to have raced against an Andretti, Unser, Montoya, Herta, Petty, Nadeau, etc and I can't trade those memories. After many years (well I still do a race weekend or 2 with Skip) I decided I wanted something else left after a weekend besides memories. Also having fun is more a priority now than ruthless pursuits of podiums. So now I have a 914-6 capable of A/Xing, DEs and vintage racing. I'm glad the passion of driving fast has never left me and I hope it never does.

T.C.

[jeff]

Im thinking of going the go-kart way,turn 8 on the big track at willow makes my ass try and grab the seat but i drove a 125 shifter and it felt faster...much faster!
(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smilie_pokal.gif)

[drew365]

You've been given plenty of good advice. My experience with my 914-6 is similar to Johns'. Even though my car is highly modified, it's never going to be competitive with the 911's in my class.
Now here is a perspective that no one has touched on, and I will probably get flamed by some of the 914 racers for this. One of my team mates races a 914-4. Over the last four years I've watched him and two other 914-4 guys go through numerous engine rebuilds. Usually caused by the heads. In fact his engine would come out of his car between nearly every event. I just don't think a four cylinder is up to the rigors of wheel to wheel racing. A 944 spec appears to be just as fast and much cheaper to keep together. Sorry for the blasphemy.

[Mueller]

wow...I never realized how expensive the Spec or lower level club racing could be...ouch

I can barely justify spending money on my street 914 to get it to around the block yet alone around a race track (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smile.gif)

Good luck with whatever route you take...

[ChrisFoley]

Regarding buying someone elses race car.
CAVEAT EMPTOR!
You will also be buying their mistakes. Don't buy any race car without having an experienced racer give it a thorough inspection.
A cheaper car can easily become nothing but headaches.

[andys]

Been around racing all my life, and ran a few assorted cars when the occasion arose. Cars are expensive any way you cut it IF you want to be reasonably competitive. That's big IF, as if you are content to run somewhere other than in front, well that's your deal. Many are quite ok with that, and the costs can be reasonable. Outside of that, the costs quickly escalate to the unreasonable, as you soon find yourself running against the "cost is no object" crowd. Everything SCCA seems overpriced, to me. A new D/SR rolling chassis for $40K!! Forget it!

At the last NASA event I attended at Willow Springs, I was talking with a bunch of stockcar guys with regard to a pro roadrace class they run (don't recall the designation). Basically, these guys are buying up the old ASA cars, and run a spec ZZ4 crate motor and spec tires. The motors are cheap and reliable....many don't even rebuild them; they sell them off and buy a new crate motor. Evidently, as a group buy, they get these motors for around $3K. The series pays real money! This reminds me very much of a series they ran at Willow several years ago called the Toyota Sportsman Stockcar Challenge (can you believe Toyota sponsored a stockcar class!!). I drove one of these, and they were plenty fast; 355 cu. in. iron head 2 bbl 14:1 motor made 465HP. That series also paid real money. Stockcar parts are cheap by comparison.....lots of competition amongs the vendors keeps the prices low. there's alos tons of used race parts out there.

I did run roadrace shifter karts for better than 25 years. What this allowed me to do, was to run up front with a chance to win every time I ran..........without mortgaging my home, angry wife, etc. I could run the best and the latest equipment; though granted I did my own motor work and development. Point being, running for the potential of winning was far more satisfying to me, than running un-competitively somewhere in the lower half of the field. FWIW.

Andy

[ArtechnikA]

QUOTE (Racer Chris @ Aug 3 2005, 11:30 AM)

You will also be buying their mistakes. Don't buy any race car without having an experienced racer give it a thorough inspection.

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/agree.gif) and don't forget - a current logbook and record of good finishing positions is no guarantee of a first-rate car. there are some very talented drivers who have learned to go fast driving "unusual" cars.

rarely does a guy sell a championship car unless he already has a faster car lined up. and there is technique...

i had the opportunity to drive a friend's SOLO-II car one weekend -- my ur-GTI was down with yet another broken front wheel bearing so he let me run his (BSP?) Scirocco for a couple of runs temporarily re-classified as E-Prepared so i could get event and participation points for the year championship. the owner was v-e-r-y fast in that car - usually at least as fast or better than i was on race tires (and tired engine...). the car was CRAP! let's just say we had radically different ideas of preparation. the brakes were good - on the floor. the clutch grabbed at the top. there was about 6" play in the shifter and a half a turn in the steering. he knew it, and could drive it - somehow - and had many class wins to show for it. i found it undriveable...

[nebreitling]

awesome input guys. thanks so much.

i know the 914 pretty well now, and have a decent sized garage, and minus tire mounting and machine work, i can do 98% of the work myself, including chassis setup and alignment and such... most of the time, i even enjoy working on it. if i bang it up, parts cars and such are plentiful in the bay area. moreover, i have 914club. the type4 engine seems the week spot in the equation, but i think the motor i just built would last a season. i have a good machine shop for cyl heads.

learning to build a rotary... well, it can't be that hard.

sprint karts are also an option for me, and if i quit developing the 914, i could probably afford to have both.

[lapuwali]

My two centimes on this:

I raced bikes for a few years dog's years ago, and hung around a lot of SCCA car teams. In your first season or two, what car you have is almost entirely irrelevant. Run whatever you have and like, and simply learn. Worrying about competitiveness in the first season is, IMHO, misplaced, because unless you're really gifted, you won't be. Spend a couple of seasons learning several things: how much work it takes to run ANY racing effort, how much money it takes to run even a minimal budget effort, and racecraft. After a couple of seasons, you'll know whether you want to continue to spend the time and money to keep racing (an AMAZING percentage of people stop after only one or two seasons when they become overwhelmed by the necessary commitment), and if you decide you want to keep going, you'll have a much better idea of what class fits your budget and your desires.

Plenty of people get in and realize they don't have to win to enjoy themselves, and spend their time putting together a safe car that's easy to live with, but never push themselves or their equipment hard enough to win. You see a lot of these people at the back of Formula Ford grids, unable to spend enough to be competitive, but having a ball just driving a "real" racing car. Others decide they must win or be capable of winning to play, so they have to design their programs (and their lives) around that.

So, run the 914, as it's something you know and understand. You won't be compounding all of the other learning with having to learn a new car, too. Don't spend a lot of money or effort on car prep other than keeping it safe and drivable. After a few events, you'll have a much better idea of what direction you want to go in. Until you run those events, though, you really don't have enough data on which to base a rational decision. No one else can really tell you what you're going to want.

btw, on spec series: it's been my experience that running a *competitive* spec program is MORE expensive than running a competitive program in classes that allow a lot more latitude. You must run stock parts (not made for racing, so they often need more frequent replacement), or you must only run "approved" parts (from a small set of suppliers, with a small market, so prices are high). I've seen cases in the SCCA's own publications where someone is penalized (sometimes severely, like a DQ) for things like running an oil filter that was bought at the corner FLAPS rather than from an approved supplier (Spec Racer had this problem for quite some time). There's also a lot more squabbling in Spec and Stock classes over rules and nitpicking. Politics gets way too involved.

[jhadler]

Alot of very good advice so far...

My opinion would be to keep the 914 as a street car, and buy a Spec Miata. The SM classes are the largest, and most competitive in many parts of the country. Aslo, they're cheap to get into, and cheap to repair and/or replace. Especially compared to a 914. Karts are another option, and they are an absolute blast and a half to drive. But they can be pretty punishing on the body. The most compliant component of the whole chassis is your spine... (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/blink.gif)

And replacing fenders on a SM car is going to be loads cheaper than on a 914, much less replacing the whole body if someone stuffs you into a tire wall. IT and Spec classes tend to swap paint a little more often because their cars are generally considered "disposable".

Buying someone else's race car is a double edged sword as someone else mentioned. You get all the work that they've done, but you get all their mistakes too. For cars like the Spec Miata, there are a host of builders that will sell a fully built SM car for under $10k.

Two old addages that I think are very appropriate...

"If you can't afford a good Ferrarri, you sure can't afford a bad one."

-and-

"Don't take your car to the track unless you're prepared to walk away from it...".

Oh, and one more for good measure...

"No amount of money can turn a pig into a racehorse.... But you can make one hellofa fast pig!. "

-Josh2

[John]

I'll just throw in my $0.02.

From my short lived wheel to wheel experience (I stick to DE events with PCA, BMWCCA, and AUDI Clubs), the best advice I can give you is to:

Read the rule book!!!


then read it again BEFORE spending any money.

Try racing with the PCA to try it out with your existing car to make sure that wheel to wheel racing is really something you want to do. (I do not)

If I did want to do the racing thing, I would probably go spec racing as the cars are much more closely matched.

Again it's just my opinion.

[flesburg]

1. Have you ever personally driven a car on a racetrack?

2. If not, contact you area car clubs. Start with PCA in your region, then BMW, then Audi's Quattro club, or even Corvette, or Mustang club.

3. Find out if they run Drivers Education events. And if they are conducted like PCA's DE events.

4. Sign up for a DE event (preferably with a PCA group), and do it. Depending on the region, you may or may not even have to join the PCA. In some regions that "need" more drivers, like Kansas City, I do not think membership is required. You will normally get something like a 2 day event, with INSTRUCTION, and probably 4 driving sessions each day (8 total) and they are 20 to 25 minutes long. Enough track time to satisfy, and way more hours of practice that you will get in 10 or 20 autocrosses! Cheapest bang you can get for the buck.

5. Do one or two DE events, and then you will know a lot more about yourself, and about your car. And then you can make an intelligent decision.

6. I started doing DE events in 1986 and have done 5 or 6 or 7 events each year since then, so lots of track hours. We get lots of hours of driving at speeds that are even higher than you can run in a "race", develop your own skill level, time yourself and run against the "clock", and get in 4 hours of high speed driving in a weekend. (burn a lot of gas, melt a lot of tires, and use a lot of pads).

7. I like the DE events better than Club Racing (in PCA) for a lot of reasons.
a. I get a lot of track time, maybe 4 hours on on track time in a weekend, at speeds very often faster than you can drive in a race.
b. I can instruct with various groups, and share knowledge.
c. I can learn and further develop my skills.
d. In the DE groups, we generally do not have "insane mega buck cars" with "egomaniac drivers" who will not believe that a 914 can run with them, and who will put their own life, and their car, and your life and your car "on the line" to prove it. If we get someone like that we send them home. The SCCA does not do that, you learn to live with it.

8. After you have done some DE work, if you want to be a race car driver, get a Go Cart, and move up through their classes. Then in a few years, if you want to, move up to spec racing or ? All of the best sports race car drivers started there. Michael did it. Kimi did it. Danica did it.
The only difference is that , they started when they were 10 years old. There are literally enough groups in carts (from slow to fast cars) to keep some people involved for years, and all for SMALL $ compared to full size cars.

9. Make sure you enjoy it, and have fun! Get your wife or "significant other" involved. Get you kids involved. You can have a life time of enjoyment with cars and race tracks. My son and I have been doing this together for 18 or 19 YEARS!!! Would be even better if my wife was involved, and "hooked" on the sport, because she would "help" budget money for it. Because it is costly. So you know, with fees, fuel, tires, motel bills, etc. (NO MONEY FOR THE CAR), I figure it costs $1000 per weekend to do a DE event. (that is 2 drivers). One driver will cost more than half of that.