WTB - Chumpcar, preferably somewhere in the southeast

Coledoggy and I are in the midst of forming a world-dominating Chumpcar team. As part of our noble quest, we will obviously need to acquire an actual Chump Car. I'd much prefer to buy something already built and reasonably competitive. Would prefer that it be RWD and reasonably "sporting"....so no Volvo station wagons, unless the back is full of sausage and beer for the after race party. Also would like to find something not on the other side of the continent. We are located in Mississippi. Please let me know if you have or know of an appropriate steed for our crusade.

 

buy an E30 BMW or Porsche 944.

/thread

 

I'd like either of those. Both would be great, fun driver's cars. Trick is finding one already race prepped to the Chump formula. Double trick is finding it reasonably nearby. I've thought about buying a street car and converting, but that route is more expensive plus I really don't have the free time to build a race car right now. As close to turn-key as possible is what we are looking for.

 

define nearby?

 

Only having to spend one night with Coledoggy in a hotel room while on the road to drag the thing back home?

 

Call Ricambi America. My colleague, Aaron, races in ChumpCar and is a previous Ariel Atom series champion. He is extension x107 here.

 

Find a 1st or 2nd gen RX7

 

I've got one already caged for sale... slight front end damage but fixable. Trust me when I say buying an already prepped car is only way to go. PM me if interested.

 

Yes... trust him! Buy an already working car! Our Porschevy is still a work in progress, but when completed, it will be epic!

If you haven't raced previously, it's cheaper to just buy a seat on an existing team. Of course, it is a gamble, but most of the fun is in the pits anyway. I love racing, but sometimes, you are out there turning laps for 3+ hours, going through the motions.

Check the 24hoursoflemons.com forum for seats, or cars. You can modify the cars to comply with chumpcar rules - for example, window netting among other bits.

 

Would love one of these. My second car ever was an 87 RX-7 turbo....fantastic car, had close to the best steering feel of any car I've ever driven, lots of feedback. I learned a lot about car control from that car. Turbo lag gave a powerband like a 2 stroke motocross bike! May as well have just had an on/off switch for the throttle!

Will call ricambi today and also shooting you a PM farmerdave.

 

I've got a 944 that we just ran at the regional chumpionship at VIR patriot and finished 12th, how much are you looking to spend?

 

I've seen several running, functional Chump Cars advertised from anywhere from $2,500 to $6K....I think we'd ideally like to keep it under $4-5K or so. Is this realistic in the Chump world?

How reliable have y'all found the 944 to be? Several of our team members are enthusiastic Porsche guys.

 

You can probably find a Lemons car in that range. All depends. Other mod you need for chump is the fire system. That will be 600 and up.

 

I think that's definitely realistic and around the range we'd probably want to get if we sold ours.

We've run 3 races, first race we had a coolant leak but it was raining at the time and we couldn't find it (water everywhere). It overheated multiple times, but we still finished pulling in every 30-45 minutes to refill with water, turned out to be the radiator. 2nd race, it blew the motor about 2 hours in (broken ring) as I think the motor was hurt in the previous race and kept getting hot on us despite no coolant system issues. However, we were prepared and had a spare parts car and swapped motors during the race (took 10 hours) and finished the last 12 hours of the race with no major issues. Our last race was 14 hours and the only issue we had was the starter wire breaking at the end of day one, so we had to pop start it after a pit stop and we brought the car in to fix it in a 3 minute stop right before the end of day one. I would say as far as these things go, it's been very good considering how badly we treated it in the first race. It's an excellent handling car allowing you to push pretty hard while going fairly easy on the tires and brakes. It was probably the 2nd or 3rd fastest car in the rain on day two of our last race and we made up 7 laps on the leaders. We would have finished in the top ten if we had decent pit stops, but they were pretty horrible. Our car prep for the race consisted of checking bolts and hoses, changing fluids and that was it.

The lack of power is the car's biggest issue, but we could probably get 10-20hp more out of it with some tinkering as it's stone stock right now.

The rules have changed for this year requiring a fire suppression system and some other small changes, but other than that it would be another check over, fluids (probably tires) and go racing.