jrgordonsenior

I'm special....

Astroman

hacker-pschorr

Yes you are, now put your helmet back on before you hurt yourself.

Dennis K

Try it first. Arrive & drive a race or two. Plenty of guys renting rides.

You may try it and say "this is madness!" Or you may try it and say "I can't wait ride the dragon again!" It's a litmus test of sorts.

In my experience, drivers matter much more than the engine, particularly at the regional level.

Circuit Motorsports

The speed during a race is relative. I switched from Formula Continental to SRF. A drop in over 20 seconds a lap at Road America and felt like the car was just as fast.

multi21

Just to muddy the waters alittle bit, I read that the Formula Fords are allowing Honda Fit engines now.

Just my opinion based on the OP posts but I don't think a FF is probably a good first race car.

Interesting comment by Frank DDS that you'll go through 2 or 3 race cars before you settle on one you like.... Wonder what my next on will be

winders

No one suggested Formula Ford as a first race car...at least not that I saw. Spec Racer Ford was recommended.

Scott

Circuit Motorsports

Formula Ford is a perfectly good first car. The Honda powered ones are 25K at the bottom end though.

ninjabones

I have four seasons (30+ days per year) on my "older technology" 17-year-old 993 engine and she's still pulling strong. I for one, would much rather pay $20K to rebuild my engine every 6 seasons, than pay $15K to rebuild an M96 every other season (that is if you were lucky enough to get 60 days out of one).

hacker-pschorr

I understand where you are coming from, I just remember one of our drivers complaing about falling asleep between 3 and 5

Heartland Park was our home track back then.

J richard

^^^truth.

Not sure about the 996/986 just yet, but relative to the a 944 for instance, I've had air cooled 911s go on and on. This is also true of the GT3. They are very reliable, If you take care of them they will take care of you. The money shift is the usual demise but that's not a mechanical reliability issue, but many 911 motos come back with a few bent valves which would have destroyed lesser motors. They tend to wear out and get tired over a long time. I've sunk more in "affordable" 944 engine repairs than it would cost to rebuild an "expensive" 911 engine. And unlike a waterpumper I really enjoy working on the old flat sixes.

utkinpol

all those evnts are 80% social and may be 20% sport, so, it all truly depends mostly of whom you want to race with, what group of folks, what organization and then based from those decisions you may look at what class works best for you within that organization. when after you`ll look at what people do - you`ll see that a lot of folks change actual cars like gloves depending of rules and regulations for any given season.
if you want a proper race/DE car - first get a lift in your garage, trailer and tow vehicle.
then look at all the options. i am in the same boat and by now still get into 2 major options - first is a E36 3.2L bmw car - as it is cheap to run, second is Z06 based car from '09 car donor - but it may get very costly to build.

as of 911 car - in CA you do have probably enough folks running 996 spec cars but any racing p-car is a very costly fun. find folks who run them and check on costs and parts and labor. if you are not a mechanic you will have to use hired help and this will cost a fortune, also new engines and transmissions are not cheap, even on base cars, not even speaking of gt3 and cup. compared to porsche both vette and bmw are peanuts.

as of miata - try to drive it at least ones before committing to it. if you feel that you like dynamics of a 'momentum' car and like crowd in the local miata club and like event by itself and all action - why not. to me e36 car with 315-320hp is somewhat a sweet spot, i tried such a car once and imho it is pretty good for a race horse, not going to break your budget if you need new engine or transmission and there are plenty of parts for it anywhere.

RSAErick

What about Karts? I suspect that these may not be considered race 'cars' by most. But, without knowing anything about them, I would expect that the cost would be a fair bit lower than most other forms of 4-wheeled racing. And the maintenance, repair, setup could be more manageable to the home-wrencher.

Also, I would generally think that they would have large, and competitive races.

Anyway, I didn't think that this was brought up already, so wanted to throw it out for consideration. There's probably someone here who can speak much more intelligently about karts than I - maybe there's more issues to be aware of.

Best of luck!

multi21

Karts can be VERY expensive if you want to race W2W. New tires each race day and near new for practice days are necessary to get good data. Because of the low volume parts production, some kart parts can be very expensive. A new kart is more expensive than what I bought my 944 for. My tire budget is lower in the 944 than a kart. If you want to be at the pointy end of the grid you must refresh your blueprinted engine every so often depending on the package, less so for a Rotax, more so for shifters, HPV air cooled etc.

Ltc can give more insight, spent a small fortune on his son's karting career.

Cory M

Going the Porsche route gives a lot of options in California: POC, PCA, PRC, NASA, VARA, etc. Virtually every organization has a class for 911's. You should go check out some events on raceday, and search MyLaps for results if you want to see typical car counts. The most active Porsche club in SoCal is POC. If you are after competition the V3 class in the POC is the biggest and is dominated by SC's and Carerra's. There is a nice proven V3 car now in the classifieds. For cheaper options Spec E30 and 944 Spec are pretty popular down here. Other spec options are boxster and of course miata. If possible I would stick to local cars that are proven for a particular class. There are some big differences in rules between orgs and a lot of nice PCA cars I see advertised online would need a lot of changes to be legal and competitive out here.