The operating room

Of all the rooms in our house, my favorite is the garage (of course it is...) The garage is freakishly deep for a late 50's house. You can easily fit two cars nose to tail on each side with plenty of room to spare. That basically makes it a four car garage. It's really well lit with several large flourescent lights, plenty of power outlets and a small side area with a workbench and room for shelves. After meeting one of my neighbors, it turns out that the 2nd owner of the house was a sprint car racer, and had his shop in the back of the garage. Cool huh? I did a little poking around and found a gas line from the main part of the house to the back of the garage for gas heat. It's my dream shop!!

Time for a tour...

This is the garage at the start of the project before the blue car arrived. I've got a lot of stuff piled up in the foreground, but I can actually park another car next to the Volvo.















Here's a lame "pan" of the rear part of the garage I'm too lazy to actually stitch them together - the shop is over to the left





Here's the workbench area of the shop (obscured in the first picture above)



So, that's where all the work will happen. Plenty of room right? We'll see...

Old Blue

The "Race" Car:

So I've bought two junker Neons with the hopes of one day combining them into one reasonably serviceable race car. They're both 1994 1/2 Neon ACR Sedans. One (The Blue Car - aka: Blue) has already seen significant duty as a race car since day one. The other (The White Car - aka: Whitey) is a thoroughly beaten street car - exhibiting all manner of wear & tear. But...and this is important...the chassis is straight and relatively rust free. It's important because The Blue Car is rust free, but is anything but straight.
Unfortunately, in September of 2006, Blue was involved in a significant front end collision and is now about a foot shorter than it's supposed to be. Details are cloudy, but apparently a different driver and a slow/stationary Miata were involved.

The basic plan is to take all of the go-fast parts off of Blue and put them on/in Whitey. Blue's engine was already transplanted to Greg's new race car by this spring. All that's left is the roll cage, and race prepped suspension. The doors and various other mechanical parts will be removed and stockpiled as spares, and the rest will head to the scrap yard.

Here are a few "before" shots - defintely looking very used up.


And the interior - the seat's already been removed, but the roll cage has yet to be cut out.

The Neons cometh

So, what kind of car do you race when you have no budget? Well, there are lower budget classes called "Spec" classes that take the focus away from the car and money spent on it, and move it over to the driver. These classes are tightly restricted and generally use a low(er) cost car, and stock parts to keep the costs down.


Sounds good, but all spec classes are NOT created equal. The two viable classes at my local track are Spec Miata, and Spec Neon. The average cost of an entry level, race prepped car for Spec Miata is around $10,000. Conversely, the cost of a similarly equipped Spec Neon is more like $3500 - $4000. Guess which class I chose?


Unfortunately, with my super-tight budget even a bargain price like $3500 might as well be a million. I needed another option - enter "The Project"


When I took my Driver's School to get my competition license, I got a LOT of help from a guy by the name of Greg. He rented his newly built Neon to me so that I'd have something to drive, and flat out let me borrow all of his personal safety gear. Race suit, helmet, gloves, the works. Borrowing that gear saved me close to $700.00. I can definitely say that without his help, I would still be trying to figure out how to get started.

I mentioned Greg's "newly built" car - that's important. You don't generally build up a new race car without a damn good reason. Unfortunately, Greg had a very good reason. His old Neon met a stationary Miata at about 60mph. The chassis is now about a foot shorter than it originally was and is basically useless.
Greg's original plan was to get a junk car with a good chassis and transfer his race engine and all the other the race goodies over to it. He bought the junk car, but before he got started swapping, he found a new race car that would require very little prep to get it on the track. He decided that was a better plan.

That left two junk Neons that needed a LOT of work to combine them in to one functioning race car. Perfect for someone with more mechanical ability and time, than money (read: Me). Greg and I worked out a very reasonable price, and they now both live in my garage.

Next Post: The Operating Room

You're gonna what?

I'm stupid - simple as that. Not sure how long I've been this way, but it's at least long enough that I don't notice it anymore. Here's why:
Somewhere during the course of my 35th year on this planet, I decided it would be a fantastic idea to become a race car driver - it sounds fun right? Don't get me wrong, it's a blast - probably the most fun I've had in my life. What it's not however, is inexpensive.

There's a rule in racing: Never race something you can't afford to push off a cliff. Wise words to be sure, but it quickly puts a damper on the fun when you realize that even a basic race car will cost thousands of dollars, and can potentially cost several thousand more in parts and maintenance over a race season.

So why am I stupid? The list is fairly long, but here are the highlights:

• 1. I'm 35 - I really should've taken this up while I was in my 20's. That's when you're supposed goof off and make silly mistakes.
  
• 2. My wife and I just bought a new house. We're in that lovely phase known as "house poor"
  
• 3. We just had a kid. Our son Zachary to be specific. Time to act like an adult...You know...don't do anything stupid, like buy a race car.
  
• 4. We've decided to have my wife stay home with Zach. It's the best thing for him, but her paychecks are sorely missed.
  

As you can imagine, all of the above has us stretched kind of thin

Perfect! Let's go racing!!

So here's my plan: I'm still going to go racing, but I'm going to do it on as tight a budget as humanly possible. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I figure my total budget will be less than some guys will spend on tires. The idea behind this Blog is part diary as I build up my car, and also a way to show my succeses and failures in keeping costs down. At some point I'll put together a spreadsheet adding up all my costs and savings for this project - hopefully it will be proof that racing doesn't have to be outrageously expensive. That, and my favorite, spreadsheet making, fool - Rachel would be VERY proud of me...