MMiskoe

Neat spreadsheet. I'm assuming there is another whole page to deal with wear and tear and/or damage. Or does that fall under the "cost of improvements"? $10/night lodging made me chuckle. Not sure I want to know what that type of room looks like.

Not necessarily. If the newer cars with more potential are limited VPI points wise, they won't be overdogs. I'm not saying this is an easy trick however. Go look at SCCA Improved Touring. On some levels the rules were similar to Champ. IT was the largest group in all of SCCA for a while, but there were changes that came in cars and rules that made it hard to keep new cars coming in while keeping the old cars viable. Now it can be hard to scrape together 10 cars across the 5 classes at a race weekend.

How about changing the maximum stint time to something that is not divisible by the number of hours in the race? Example - in a 12 hour race, 2 hour max stint equals 5 stops, 6 stints. Not much advantage in doing something different. Ignore the 5 minutes in the pit lane for now. However, if the max stint length was 1:55 you now can't do the whole race in 5 stops, you have to add one stop. But you can do them at less prescribed times. If the race goes FCY at 30 minutes in, do you gamble that you can do 1:55 stints for the rest of the race with no issues and pull the car in for one of your 6 stops? Or gamble that there will be a FCY or other issue at some other point.

Thanks for this. Helps a lot. Now, did you look on the link posted at the section of "customers who viewed this item, also viewed....."? There are whole other worlds out there.

I see a couple of references to RAM mounts, but no specifics on what model. Anyone care to share what they have used? Hopefully products that worked well. Looking on their site I see a few options, that would likely work on a 1-1/2" roll cage bar, but unsure if any are better than others for vibration and not needing to get fussed over. I'd like to get it aimed in the shop and then never touch it again.

E. Nelson Ledges Track Operations agrees to pay Lessee for the following items: (1) Tires removed from tire wall and taken off site for disposal - $0.10 per tire

I know that in street cars with no lids, if it starts to rain you can often just drive fast enough to keep the rain out of the car. I'm curious if this sort of approach would work on the trailer? What do you think? Take the seat cover off, drill holes in the structure so the water won't puddle, then you at least don't need to sit in a puddle to unload it. If it is an NA miata with the ECU on the rear bulkhead behind the passenger seat, wrap it in a plastic bag. Drill a couple of drain holes in the floor (if there aren't some already there). The car is going to get wet on track, so if it gets wet on the ride home you may not be changing much. I'd just do your best to get it dried out once home.

At 5'-6" 145 pounds I am usually the smallest driver in the lineup. Foam inserts are harder to create than you might first think. But they do work. Ethafoam is a trade name for closed cell polyethylene foam that is often used for shipping cusioning. You can get it from McMaster-Carr. Cutting & taping sheets of this together for the right thickness and width often works. In a pinch, you can use layers of corrugated cardboard. Some people shy away from these things due to fire concerns. Pay attention to shimming yourself out of the seat too far, makes it hard to drive when you don't have any lateral support. Makes that nice bucket seat feel like a park bench. If you're doing sliders, read up on how far you can be from seat to roll cage before you need some sort of support, there is a limit to how far away you can be. And hopefully you and your co-drivers don't get all agitated when the seating position is not perfect. Some drivers are better about this than others.

Oh, I'm quite familiar with the car, but was curious to see who would bite at the idea that a mostly stock EFI system of that age could cope with a number like that and still run 93 octane. Or if the car was running like that why someone would bother to ask for opinions on why it blew up.

13.5:1

Don't ask my kids to respond, they will skew the response since I fund their exploits. For them it only costs them having to put up with me being a parent. Actual money spent also depends on the number of people who like my car so much they want to come over and touch it. First 4 seasons of Champ included 3 trips to the frame shop. I've re-painted every panel except the rear trunk lid. It also depends on the format and distance from home. The 12 hour race that is only 2 hours from home, we sleep one night in the trailer, no hotels. The 8+7 that is 12 hours from home requires 3 or more nights for us and crew. Adds up fast.

Tech - pay close attention to roll cage construction and seat mounting. I've seen some subtleties between rule books that can be trouble on your first time out. Champcar is also the most stringent I have seen on bulkhead/firewall sealing. Not really hard to correct, but not something you want to be doing at the track when you could be out spinning laps durring the test day. U-haul trailer - the price of a 16-18' open trailer seems to remain constant over time, it would be the easiest piece of equipment that I could sell. If you see one that is decent, just get it, you'll find it to be useful and won't be hard to get rid of. Gear - I didn't see fire extinguisher on the list. And practice putting fuel in it a couple of times before you go to the track. It seems easy until you're in a hurry.

Going by memory, but if you don't have a bulkhead between the driver compartment and the fuel you can't have the driver in the car. So if you have to breach the bulkhead to put fuel in the car, then the driver can't be in the car during fueling. Not sure that a trap door to a lexan window is going to fly.

Send a tech desk request. If the answer is yes, I'd have it in writing when you go through tech. Don't bother to ask that here.

Find a way to get to be around some other cars that are built. Doesn't matter they are a different brand, or even a different club as long as it is an entry level race where the drivers and crew have day jobs and the racing is a hobby. If you know nothing about it, reading the rule book would be like trying to figure out a baseball game by reading the regs. You need to do both - read the rules and look at cars. If you have never been on the track, find an HDPE club that will have an instructor ride shotgun with you to get some seat time while you learn what to be doing. It isn't that you can't just jump in a car mid race and figure it out, but boy oh boy there are easier ways. Sorry to effectively tell you to stop with the tools and do more homework. Let's start with - where are you located and what previous experience do you have?