Track car? after opinions / options

[Oni]

Hey all

So in a few months i will be in the situation where i can look into getting a car specifically for track work. I currently own a 1990 mx-5 with a BD roll bar and 216,000k's. All in all its in great shape, i feel too good to risk at a track but maybe im just sentimental.Ill sum up some options below

1. Keep my MX5 and track it pretty much stock untill i learn to drive well. then get bc coilover / 6ul's / na8 brakes.Keeping the car registered and insured. Once this engine kicks it get a 1.8L and bigger diff, then turbo - this is over a 2-3 year period.

2. Sell my mx5 and make hopfully 7k. buy a cheap run about with rego and put 3rd party on it maybe 2k if im lucky. with a 5k budget keep an eye out for bargins in the next year or so and hopfully get an na8 shell and build from there.

Im quite conerned about having the car road legal, eg coilovers would have to be engineered, if i go option 1. If i go option 2 it doesnt matter at all as the car wont be registered.

What i really want.
1.8L turbo with 6 speed and good suspension / brakes. I know its a long way away but its a goal.

With 7k + 1-2k a year after am i just dreaming?

Thanks
Scott

[ForceMajeure]

Have you considered option 3, sell your car and buy an already sorted race car that's road registered?

[Guran]

Dreaming? I suspect so. If you've only got $1-2k to spend each year, plus $7k invested in your NA6, you're looking at around 3-4 track days per year (including consumables - only street tyres too), and no modifications. Motorsport is not cheap. You'll have plenty of fun though! Learning to drive a stock NA6 quickly is something that will be of enormous benefit once you eventually land your turbo NA8 dream car.

Are you comprehensively insured on the NA6? How much are you paying? Is it worth paying that much for a $7k investment? You might consider getting third party property insurance and taking extra special care when you're on the road. What you save can then be put towards your planned mods and track work.

You may well be dreaming, but don't give up on that dream!

[Charlie Brown]

Guran is spot on. Stick with your stock NA and learn how to drive that quickly.

I think Chris from MX-5 Racing indicated to me a number of years ago when he change from turbo NB's to normally aspirated NCs that he could run 3 NCs for the same price as one turbo NB over a years racing. The cost was in excess of 10 times what your budget is.

Motor racing's like that. It starts to consume big $$ when you strive to go a few tenths of a second faster per lap.

I get a great deal of pleasure (as I'm sure Guran does) from running my "almost stock" MX-5 around the track at Supersprints, bettering times set by cars with way more grunt and more so when their drivers ask if it's turboed.

[greenMachine]

What they said.

There are quite a few people running legally stock cars at club track days, and there is a stock class in the CAMS Supersprint series (NSW). These are great fun, (relatively) low budget - basically brake pads and tyres - highly competive events. Best of all they are great training, regardless of whether you go on to later run a mega-budget full blown racer. AS CB says, the driver can make all the difference, and the sooner you put your budget into track time and some tuition, the sooner you will be driving competitively.

I looked at a turbo racecar, then I saw how much these cost, and thought again.

I see you are in the South Island, and I don't know how they go about their motorsport there. I presume you have checked where you could run, the classes and so on, or were you planning on coming over to PI and Sandown?

[manga_blue]

A lot depends on what club you want to run with and what class.

The hardest fought, closest and best fun competition in the Vic MX5 club in the past few years has been in the Standard NA class, i.e. NA6s with a cat back exhaust against bog stock NA8s. Definitely go SNA if you want to start in Vic.

Who would you run with in Tas? Mini and MG car clubs at Baskerville? I'd be looking through their rules and regs very closely before deciding any mods - even wheel and tyre sizes. It's pretty common for one single wrong mod to take a car out of a class in which it would be a good contender into a class where it's outclassed by 10 secs a lap. Then you just become a mobile chicane for horrible things like stripped Datsun 120Ys on slicks with full race 2 litre motors.

[NMX516]

Don't rule out hiring a race car. You pay your money for the weekend and then hand it back at the end.. You don't have to; store it, register it, maintain it, rebuild the engine in it, find a trailer and tow car for it etc etc etc....

[deviant]

Don't rule out hiring a race car. You pay your money for the weekend and then hand it back at the end.. You don't have to; store it, register it, maintain it, rebuild the engine in it, find a trailer and tow car for it etc etc etc....

But make sure you read very very closely and full understand who is responsible for what. I have looked in to it in the past and usually if you bin the car you need to be able to buy it. If something goes bang or falls off then it can be a bit of a grey area as there would need to be an investigation in to why it happened, if it was a maintenance issue, something pre-existing or somethnig you could not control (like an oil line bursting or something) then generally the people you are hiring from should cover it. If you broke it through abuse or grabbing 2nd instead of 4th then you will be paying.

My 'race car' is a turbo NA8 with a load of other mods. I have got a folder with $35-$40K of receipts in it that span about 4 or 5 years. I have not added on to that the cost of actually entering events or fuel. There are probably heaps of other things that have cost me money that have not been captured in 'the folder'. I would love to run the car once a month but this year I have only managed 2 events and had not dríven it between October 2010 - January 2011. Even when the car is not going anywhere it costs money. Touch wood it has been reliable but again only because I pour money in to it. There is always something I want and there is always something the car needs.

The dreaded folder also does not capture time invested in to maintaining the car and organising myself to get in to events.