Lemons quesiton > Bernice

autox19

autox19

True Classic
I have a friend who ran a lexus in one of the lemons races. When my cousin approached him with a question on cost, here is the result he got.

"The Lex build log shows the work, I can send you a .xls of what it takes to field a Lemons effort. It takes 3-4k to field a good car, even though the cost of the car itself is $500. you can sell stuff off the car to recover cost (I sold the three cats off the lex getting $140 or so). Brakes, wheels, tires and safety gear doesn't count towards the $500 either. Each event takes about $750 per driver to keep a car going, including race fees, gas etc."

Considering you were EXTREMELY competitive, I was wondering what the "actual" cost of the X you ran?

Odie
 
hm

Well - in general, getting a Lemons car to the track for the first time will probably run you between $3500-$5000 all-in. This means everything - fuel cell, cage, racing seat harness, suits for drivers, radios, diesel to haul it there, tires, brakes, fluids, list goes on, and on, and on.

Further, we've got probably >500hrs into this car as well (that's probably low), in terms of time fabricating, fixing what broke, undoing our fabrication cuz we didn't know what we were doing, etc. If you value the time, it's a crazy amount of money - especially because on this car, we do everything ourselves - and we're not a racing shop...just a bunch of schmoes. The only things we pay for are things we cannot do ourselves (ie. decking cylinder heads or re-boring blocks). As Bernice has posted up here on x-web, she spun our flywheel down, me and Pel fabricated the intake manifold from scratch. We've scrounged parts from fellow x-webbers, but many times they're swaps or trades.

It's frankly impossible to say how much actual $ we've got in it at this point (real dollars or psuedo dollars).

I will tell you, however, it's a *fraction* of what it would cost to run a fully prepped SCCA car. But running "$500 race cars" is not cheap.
 
The difference is...

you are very dedicated schmoes!! And we appreciate following along. :)
 
excellent answer.

That is exactly what I was looking for. I was trying to explain to my cuz that my friend Dav's budget was pretty much on the mark. "budget" racing is a relative term. And $500 wasnt the true total cost, just a marker to keep the costs from flying into the stratosphere. If you htink about it, at the high end of your cash est (not time) and with a minimum of 5 people on the "team" the first outlay would be $1000 or less each! cant really argue with that!

I see this series as a great way of proving that you can have racing fun for a lower cost than what most people think. I think that the "fun" factor has been represented well and it looks like "lemons" is doing alot to keep it that way.


Odie
 
It's not just a matter of $ and resources used on this X, some one must make the technical and engineering decision as to what will work and what will not, make it reality, test it to see if this is going actually work.

It's easy to spend $$ on performance parts that are proven to work (This his where the penalty laps get handed out at LeMons and why cars like Miatas, E30's and Honda's get a careful going over during BS tech) , it's a completely differnt matter to design and build your own performance parts from scratch (The LeMons folks know there are next to none off the shelf performance parts for the X)..which is what we do and encouraged at LeMons.

There are a few teams at LeMons that are real racer folks and they do well due to their knowledge of the car or simply know what it takes to build a race car that works. These are the teams that do well at LeMons. The teams that don't do well at LeMons are the teams that buy a "cheap heap", put in a cage and other safety related stuff and run it at LeMons with no testing or knowing what weak areas of the car must be addressed to just finish the race.

Little stuff like hardware falling off, hoses that leak, electrical connectors that come un-done that are perceived as insignificant can easily become race enders when this stuff happens. Attention to detail and making sure this "little stuff" receives proper attention is critical to doing well at LeMons or any other motor sports event.

I do believe the car's ability is only part of what it takes to do well at LeMons, the ability of the drivers and how well the rest of the team supports the car mechanically and etc.. is another aspect of LeMons racing. This kind of support is not required for typical SCCA events as the races are 30 to 40 minutes long and the cars & drivers generally don't need to have extended support as they to in LeMons. It's the difference between racing LeMons or any endurance events and typical SCCA or other club events.

As for cost.. Based on my previous experience, SCCA or other similar club racing is similar in cost for the event, but the cost of the car tends to be a bit higher for "club" events.

As mentioned, the vehicle cost might be "$500", by the time one is done with race prep, the cost of the car is easily 3 to 4K, this does not include running cost like tires, fuel, transportation, lodging and etc..



JimD said:
you are very dedicated schmoes!! And we appreciate following along. :)
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the goal of lemons

Also important to keep this in perspective ... *winning* lemons is really a 2ndary priority. The experience and the spectacle is what is really most rewarded.

In the awards ceremony, class win and overall win was taken care of in about 2-3 minutes. The remaining 25 minutes was spent talking about those who did the most with the least, the heroic fixes, most improved, most unlucky. The spectacle and the experience are really what's emphasized in Lemons - do don't think "being competitive" is the only thing you need to do to "be successful" in this venue.
 
I can vouch for the cost, as we're in the middle of a lemons build.

Its going to be really tough to make $500.00 in the first place. At minimum we wanted to rebuild the transmission and engine. Gaskets and rings alone are +100.00 . Which gets us into selling stuff...

... the time dedicated to organizing, cataloging, and trying to sell gear is going to completely monopolize a person or two from our team from now until we make enough cash back to do the job.... if you've noticed by being in this forum, the fiat x19 group is very small and tight-knit, and also prone to giving parts away, which makes it hard to even sell / value items.

Without Matt (midwest bayless) and Bernice's help so far I'd be pretty much lost, so thanks to them and the rest of the folks

OH, by the way, on "non-$500 items"
- Brake pads = $200
- Brake lines = $150
- Wheels ($500)
- Tires ($500)
- Roll Cage ($1000)
- HALO Seat ($650)
- Spare seat for testing / track days ($250 at least)
- Belts ($300)
= I'm at $3500 and rising!!!!!
 
Radios = $100 +
Fire extinguishers ($100)
Driver suits ($350-800 each)
Helmets ($250 each)
Spare parts ($500 + parts car)
Fluids ($100)
etc, etc

+ entrance fee's ($1500 per 6 person team)

It will be about $1000 per team member on a 6 person team (including buying racing gear), and that's with a team member (me) eating a lot of the non-consumable car cost).
 
cmice said:
all of this to win $1500 in nickels

it just don't make sense. yet, we do it anyway. ;)
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When I was younger in 2001 (not that i'm old) I used to work for a race shop that did formula fords and sports racers for SCCA. On a typical 2-day weekend the driver would spend $2500 on our team (getting there), $1000-$2000 in consumables (tires / fuel), and that didn't include parts if he wrecked. This was to run a practice session, a qualifier, and a 30 minute race. Figure $5k a weekend.

We would always joke, Imagine if [driver] would open up his back yard to his friends and spend $5k on a party once a month, how much more fun that would be for everyone....

There's no rationalizing racing, we do it for the love of competition and because it brings out the best in us and others.
 
And, the cost is not that different for running a production based car, sports racer or open wheel car in SCCA back in the day. That is a whole lotta $ for less than an hours worth of race time.

A friend who worked at Pirelli as their tire tech guy ran a Formula Atlantic Brabram BT-35, the cost for running this car was about the same as running a production based car, except the FA car was a LOT more fun and way faster than any of the production based cars. Real race cars are easier to work on too.

Give the almost fixed cost or racing be it SCCA or LeMons..

LeMons, IMO is more fun in many ways and it does not have the marketing and political agenda that is so prevalent in SCCA to this day.

I re-posted a rant by Tom Neely about racing here and it contains the essence of why LeMons racing has become so popular.

bikesandcars said:
When I was younger in 2001 (not that i'm old) I used to work for a race shop that did formula fords and sports racers for SCCA. On a typical 2-day weekend the driver would spend $2500 on our team (getting there), $1000-$2000 in consumables (tires / fuel), and that didn't include parts if he wrecked. This was to run a practice session, a qualifier, and a 30 minute race. Figure $5k a weekend.

We would always joke, Imagine if [driver] would open up his back yard to his friends and spend $5k on a party once a month, how much more fun that would be for everyone....

There's no rationalizing racing, we do it for the love of competition and because it brings out the best in us and others.
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bikesandcars said:
There's no rationalizing racing, we do it for the love of competition and because it brings out the best in us and others.
Click to expand...

That's like a hallmark card moment right there.

I'm probably going to be in Montvale NJ in the next month - where you guys located?
 
everyone has given good estimates.... yes in theory its a $500 car...but since many items are "free" and not restricted by the budget it will end up costing FAR more...

In my experience racing the 928 twice the total "team" cost was between $3500-4000 per race..BUT that does not count the hundreds of hours of labor that was "free"....

I've also found that "labor" is very important in lemons....the key factor is you need to find at least 3 friends (4 driver team minimum) who have similar driving abilities & similar budget + time available and you will have a great time..... On my team I have great drivers (better than me anyway) but they are far away, so they can't contribute "labor".....so I do most of the labor and they pay their share of expenses.....
 
If I may contribute to this "fracus"...

My brother crewed on a Top Fuel Blown Hydro Drag Boat team for a few years... Ralph Padilla is the driver's name, His boat was QuarterFlash... and he even OWNED the IHBA for a while.

(He starred on one of those TV shows where he crashed at 190 mph and sunk to the bottom of Puddingstone Lake. It wasn't the first time either... and this time is when my brother quit as he couldn't stand to see him do that anymore...)

Anyway, on a "good" day I watched him go through an engine, a hull and host his team for an entire weekend which had to cost over $100K... with very little sponsorship, mostly parts, lube and fuel... for a chance to win $3000.00 for Top Fuel. This was late 1980 dollars...

Even if he didn't break anything, he still spent close to $3000 per 1/4 mile "lap".

His disposable income came from his Stucco Contracting business... as did most of his competitors... all doing something in construction!

Must be nice!
 
Black-Tooth said:
His disposable income came from his Stucco Contracting business... as did most of his competitors... all doing something in construction!

Must be nice!
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I suggest everyone read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" before going racing.

There's really 2 types in racing. Dilbert types that make little money but do everything themselves, and wealthy types that concentrate on business and pay others to do it.

The guys we ran in SCCA were all wealthy small business owners.

I figured out pretty quick that the best way to race is to concentrate on getting wealthy first, then using that money to race... but I ended up being a dilbert type despite this realization.
 
SCCA started as a small group of wealthy folks who had sports cars that wanted a place to drive and race them. It was and is to this day a car "country" club. In time, car manufactures figured out they could use SCCA as an advertising medium to promote and market cars.. This commercialization brought money into the SCCA and drove it's orientation and politics to this day.

There was an agreement signed by the big three Detroit car manufactures to not go racing as they believed at the time racing had no relevance to the products they produced, but they supported racing via the back door. I do believe this is the reason why the golden age of American sports cars died and killed what could have been an American performance / race car industry. Today the UK has the world's greatest concentration of real race car companies. This was a cottage industry that could have happened in the US.

More recently, vintage racing has become fashionable among along with vintage concors events like Pebble Beach. Events like this became the driving force behind vintage / collectible car market prices.

There was a time when highly valued cars today were no where near the market value today. These are the folks who are driving car market values via car auctions and their desire to re-live some of their lives from their youth. Or, like art collectors who have no appreciation or understanding of the art they collect, the own what they do as monetary speculation for return on their "investment".

This is what changed the vintage/ collector car market today.


bikesandcars said:
I suggest everyone read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" before going racing.

There's really 2 types in racing. Dilbert types that make little money but do everything themselves, and wealthy types that concentrate on business and pay others to do it.

The guys we ran in SCCA were all wealthy small business owners.

I figured out pretty quick that the best way to race is to concentrate on getting wealthy first, then using that money to race... but I ended up being a dilbert type despite this realization.
Click to expand...
 
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