Hi, I'm thinking seriously of the opportunity to buy a old F1 which not have too much electronic items (as less as possible I would say) and specific carbon parts and so on... from the 70's or 80's. I can find some for about 100K included a lot of spare parts. You can make your dream true by buying one, with real F1 history, one which was beside (or let's say behind ;-) ) Senna, Prost etc... you can definitly enter in the F1 world with everything that it concerns (amazing exhaust sound, driving position, handling, power, gear box shifting, clutch...) for not an unaffordable amount, so ?? The maintenance, if considering a serious one and a pretty calm use on track should be affordable and quiet "usual" at this level considering not too much electonic and complex engine setup (am I correct ?)... Is that crazy to consider this dream reachable ?? The problem is certainly to obtain some special spare parts broken or used and in case of replacement (clutch, gera box, suspension or body parts....) ? I guess that after a number of thousands KM you have to rebuild the engine partially or completly, and maybe the troubles start there ? Is anybody have previous experience in maintaining one, using one, reliability ... That would be great to share with somebody else his own experience on it, to know how to deal with the prices of keeping and using one few times a year during club events or any other special events.... and put few hundreds Km on it a year... Thanks for your feedbacks and contacts. Matthieu.
i dont own one but im sure someone knows someone who does and will say so but i think if you are leaning towards a specific company i.e ferrari, mclaren etc give them a call, email etc as im sure they would be more than happy to tell you about all those things. i think i may of read on here a while back that ferrari maintains fixes etc alot of their old f1 cars so mayby try a search on here. had a little search in the archives for old f1 car and found thhis http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/251280/217056.html didnt bother reading it all but looks like it might be usfull
How much driving experience do you have with openwheeled aero cars? Using any F1 car as a tracktoy is an expensive way to kill yourself if youre in over your head. All ex-F1 cars will require at least a partial crew per weekend; it's the nature of the car(s). Even if it hasn't got all the gizmos, you'd still want an engineer there in case it starts sputtering, puking up fluids, spiting out spark plugs or purveying any other, generally lamentful (and worisome) racecar teething behaviors. Further, these cars need to be gone over with a fine tooth comb before and after every event; as in, from floor pan to steering-every bolt, everything.
Like Hubert mentioned, I would not buy one unless I had advanced experience with 'smaller' open-wheeled formula cars - like the Formula Mazda's or something. Then move up later. But if you already know that style of driving and familiar with the type of car, then why not (if you can afford the crew and maintenance!)?
