[trackbird]

I was at a friends house yesterday (440 miles from home) to look at a 3rd gen shell that I can get for a great price. It's not a real desirable car for anything other than a track car. Let me try to explain (since it was dark and we were using a flashlight, I didn't think to try taking pics).

It's a '84-ish Berlinetta. It has the 85 mph speedo with the kmh scale on the other side (the double needle setup). It has idiot lights for temp, oil presure and voltage. The seats are blue vinyl and ripped. The car was purchased for the 6,000 mile goodwrench 350 that was in it, the engine and the automatic are gone (not that I care about the auto, there aren't many things that are worse than an early 700R-4). The body is straight and seem solid, there is slight damage to the fender lip on the front drivers side 1/4 panel. The rubber nose is chipped up (looks like it hit something and popped the paint off), but it's otherwise solid and not torn up. It has a rear and all the suspension is there. Some of the wiring under the hood is stripped and wrapped in electrical tape (I was told that was the distributor wiring), the Y-pipe is still in the car, manifolds are in the hatch, etc.

The bottom line is that this is a fairly straight body in an unloveable car (there is no saving that interior) and it's a hardtop. I'd be starting from scratch, gutting the interior, wiring the car, installing a manual (I've done 5 and 6 speed swaps already), getting it caged, building a motor, etc. The problem is, it's hard to decide to put a 305 back in it since I'll be building from scratch, same for a 5 speed. It's not much more to put a 6 speed in there while I'm already doing it. That would rule out CMC, but maybe I just need a track car anyway, I'll find a class for it later and just do HPDE stuff for a while.

So, do I drag this heap home and likely put $12,000 in it or go buy something that runs?

[marka]

Howdy,

Kevin, I have $18k into a "free" car that I'm building for CP autox, and its still in piles around the house & I haven't yet bought anything for it with an electrical wire or fluid hose attached (i.e. no plumbing, electrical, or driver controls).

I don't regret doing that, as I've learned a _lot_ building the car this far and eventually will probably finish it. The next time I lose my mind, it'll go faster thanks to everything we learned on this car just so far.

Sounds to me like you need to decide what you want to do. Do you want to race? Then pick a class and look for a good to very good used car for sale. Only fix stuff that bothers you safety wise and run it for a year then decide where to go. As long as you pick your class reasonably well, you won't lose a ton of money if you don't wad the car up badly even if you decide its not for you.

On the other hand, do you want to have a fast car that's exactly what you want and will be satisfied impressing the squids at track days? Then build it. As you've already learned, you'll lose your shirt financially but it sounds like you have the luxury for that to not necessarily be your primary concern if you don't want it to be.

I'll say this though as a former racer... There are two categories of people. Racers and Everyone else. You can be totally happy in the "Everyone else" camp, as long as you don't need to know that you're fast.

Mark
(edit: autox counts as "racers" if you read the rulebook before you modify your car... :-)

This post has been edited by marka: Nov 27 2006, 04:42 AM