rx7locost wrote:
Quote:
You'll hear from a guy named Chuck shortly, now that I've said that... Heehee...
To begin with, in order to get a good set of responses, you should state your end goal and budget. Race ready? Road course or ¼ mile? What class will you compete in? Will it be a street car? What state will you register in? You have a budget of $5K , $20K or $50K? What is your age? If under 25, or have no other daily driver, you may have problems getting insurance from the Grundy’s and Hagerty’s of the world. Normal insurance companies most likely will not touch it with a 10 ft pole, especially if you go with a modern exo-body style. What prior mechanical/fab experience do you have? Do you have your own machine shop or will you be farming out the machine work. Trying to stay with off the shelf mechanicals or willing to roll your own? These all help us to focus on your car.
Chuck
Great idea rx7locost, I was actually going over and admiring your build last night. As far as the use of the car the majority of it will be on the street. Drag strip, standing mile, autocross, rallies, and track days are things I want this car to be capable of as well but as far as a serious purpose built race car this will not be one. I'm thinking the high end of this car's budget will be under 15K but am willing to be flexible to make the final product what I want it to be. I'm going back to New Mexico after school but by the time this thing is done I could be anywhere, so I don't know where it's going to be registered.
I'm 27 years old (some of you probably thought I was younger) and have been an equipment operator for most my career I've always tinkered with cars, metalwork, and welding. I've been a diesel student at Wyotech for a year, 4 months of that being a chassis fabrication class. This by no means makes me an expert on building this car but its a huge head start. I am going to attempt to do every oz of work on this car myself, that's a huge part of this for me. Final tuning might be the exception but I plan to be involved in it and learn something along the way.I do have access to a mill but no lathe. Any basic machining that I can use a mill for I'll do myself.
That out of the way I'll revisit the 600hp since that's the majority of this thread has become. Big number light car I get it, it's obscene and might never hook. I've always been intrigued by rotary engines. High revving, super simple, very few moving parts. I read an article a while back about a 20b in an RX7 daily driver running 650hp with no reliability issues, no extra maintenance, and something rotaries are not known for, torque. So that's where that number came from. In all reality the engine that's going in it is going to have around 300hp initially, I'll have plenty of time to drive it like that and have fun before spending the money to make it any faster. Suspension tuning, car familiarity, and traction will go into account before adding power. Wider tires are made for a reason. To be honest the Youtube video in one of the posts before this one is what I envisioned when I came up with this project (minus the very ugly but needed aero kit). I see these things as Veyron slayers (at the speeds that matter). I may never hit 600hp and that's fine with me but I really want to explore the capabilities of this engine, myself, and this chassis.
The engine sound as bremms says is beautiful (with revs). At idle it sounds like a chainsaw. 4 rotars sound like F1 cars at speed and like a chainsaw that needs a tune up at idle. I personally love it but I understand why people wouldn't. I want to find that perfect balance between being able to hear the soundtrack of the motor loud and clear, and not having to wear earplugs in the car.
My build is obviously outrageous to most of you. cheapracer obviously thinks so. But as I said, to me that's kind of the point. This build list was made with me knowing very little about these cars and I obviously have a lot of holes to fill and ignorance to get past. I appreciate the welcomes and the helpful input from you guys and hope to one day have something unique to share on the finished builds section, and I know a lot of it will have to do with the information I acquire here so thanks in advance.