Looking around Michigan to see what's available out of curiosity and found this.....Marketplace - 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix | Facebook......$19.5K ready to go. Seems like a pretty reasonable number given that I have friends who have that kind of money in their track day cars.
The other end of the price spectrum.....a NASCAR truck roller for $1000.....Marketplace - 2001 Ford F-150 · Racetruck | Facebook Used circle track stuff seems to be easy to find and cheap, too.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:Looking around Michigan to see what's available out of curiosity and found this.....Marketplace - 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix | Facebook......$19.5K ready to go. Seems like a pretty reasonable number given that I have friends who have that kind of money in their track day cars.
Yeah this is a converted ASA car.
I suppose I'll know more soon, but I *think* the only thing keeping the chassis from being road-course friendly is that the front suspensions are mounted at different points on the frame side to side. So the left side has a slightly shorter wheelbase than the right side. Cut, weld, move and you should have a nice square car to go road racing with. At least that's the theory.
There's even a dedicated club that specializes in this kind of stuff—V8RoadRacingSeries—that has classes built around retired stock cars and oval track conversions.
Like, I always knew I dug the tube frame stuff, but I didn't relize how much of a thing it was until this idea came along. Looking forward to relly digging into this world.
Whatever happens, you have to race hill climb also. There is no reason not to.
I suppose I'll know more soon, but I *think* the only thing keeping the chassis from being road-course friendly is that the front suspensions are mounted at different points on the frame side to side. So the left side has a slightly shorter wheelbase than the right side. Cut, weld, move and you should have a nice square car to go road racing with. At least that's the theory.
Yep, and your chassis is just that. A slight repositioning on the left side and you will be in business. Actually, I never measured it myself...I was told by Deren that was the case when I bought it. And he is very dialed in to these chassis.
In reply to jh36 :
Are the front suspension pickup points different, or just the length of the control arms?
In reply to HalfFast :
The way Deren described it (three year old memory) it was the pickup point. I have in my head that welding was required. I became so engrossed in the other chassis, I never measured it. If it's simply the control arm, huge win.
There are a lot of available late model cars out there. Some are already set up for road course. They provide incredible bang for the buck, as we all see. Parts are reasonable and plentiful.
If you don't mind the way they look, you just go.
Or, send it, as the cool kids say.
For me, I can pinpoint the moment this baby started incubating. I was having breakfast in my bus with Chris Cobetto and pondering my next build. There was a stock car paddocked next to me and we started talking about the crazy value of these cars. Both of us respected the car. Neither of us liked the looks.
If you know me, you know I generally start a concept on the large side. And this being Chris's livelihood, he was a great enabler.
I thought if I could buy one car , re-body it into something that looked more inviting to more people, I might be able to grow a series. And maybe build and sell enough cars to grow that series. It made so much sense that I launched into a serious search. HalfFast connected me with Deren Ardenger and I got busy.
If I was a couple of decades younger, that might have been the way the story went. Building up one car has been a ton of fun, but I don't have the bandwidth to fire up a side hustle of this magnitude. Couple that with my two automotive sons-in-crime both firing up multiple lucrative auto side hustles and it really wasn't going to work.
I'm not sure where JG is going to take this, but I am hopeful that a few of you GRM whack jobs latch onto this vision and pull the trigger. Out of the gate, these cars are exhilarating far beyond anything I have driven on track. The cost of entry is low. If you can find an old ASA car, that means LS1 dependability, fuel injection and a car that has the advantage of being developed and safety tested by one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world.
I think JG and GRM are going to provide a road map far beyond my first outing. We are going to see questions I never thought to ask, answered after weighing multiple options. The cool thing about this, is there is no "one right direction"...one can go wherever their personal taste directs them. Heck, I sketched out a body that was a cross between Racer-x, a Cheetah and a 365gtb. It is a nearly blank canvas moment.
I feel like I just preached a sermon. Can I get an amen?
Amen.
In reply to jh36 :
I'm with you, I don't like the look of modified bodies on a road course car. If it were me, and spending someone else's money, I'd have an ASA chassis and that '66 Tempest body someone linked in your build thread. I saw the Gray Ghost Tempest at a vintage race some years ago and loved it.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:In reply to jh36 :
I'm with you, I don't like the look of modified bodies on a road course car. If it were me, and spending someone else's money, I'd have an ASA chassis and that '66 Tempest body someone linked in your build thread. I saw the Gray Ghost Tempest at a vintage race some years ago and loved it.
I love the Gray Ghost and its underdog grassroots story. And the '64 horizontal lights on that car speak to me.
Amen bruther!
jh36 said:There are a lot of available late model cars out there. Some are already set up for road course. They provide incredible bang for the buck, as we all see. Parts are reasonable and plentiful.
If you don't mind the way they look, you just go.
Or, send it, as the cool kids say.
For me, I can pinpoint the moment this baby started incubating. I was having breakfast in my bus with Chris Cobetto and pondering my next build. There was a stock car paddocked next to me and we started talking about the crazy value of these cars. Both of us respected the car. Neither of us liked the looks.
If you know me, you know I generally start a concept on the large side. And this being Chris's livelihood, he was a great enabler.
I thought if I could buy one car , re-body it into something that looked more inviting to more people, I might be able to grow a series. And maybe build and sell enough cars to grow that series. It made so much sense that I launched into a serious search. HalfFast connected me with Deren Ardenger and I got busy.
If I was a couple of decades younger, that might have been the way the story went. Building up one car has been a ton of fun, but I don't have the bandwidth to fire up a side hustle of this magnitude. Couple that with my two automotive sons-in-crime both firing up multiple lucrative auto side hustles and it really wasn't going to work.
I'm not sure where JG is going to take this, but I am hopeful that a few of you GRM whack jobs latch onto this vision and pull the trigger. Out of the gate, these cars are exhilarating far beyond anything I have driven on track. The cost of entry is low. If you can find an old ASA car, that means LS1 dependability, fuel injection and a car that has the advantage of being developed and safety tested by one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world.
I think JG and GRM are going to provide a road map far beyond my first outing. We are going to see questions I never thought to ask, answered after weighing multiple options. The cool thing about this, is there is no "one right direction"...one can go wherever their personal taste directs them. Heck, I sketched out a body that was a cross between Racer-x, a Cheetah and a 365gtb. It is a nearly blank canvas moment.I feel like I just preached a sermon. Can I get an amen?
I understand what you are going for. That's fine. But for a few hundred dollars worth of steel and some stock car parts you can turn almost anything into a race car. The wear parts would likely need replacing anyway.
Hopefully there is enough race car stuff like quick change, big brakes, springs and swaybars to make the purchase pay off. Likely though, not enough. Local circle tracks tend to use standard brakes. Not the big racing stuff needed for wheel to wheel racing.
All those really tend to offer is some fabricating done that's likely going to need serious modification to really use as you'd like.
Dropping another body over a chassis isn't so simple. Even if the size is right. The rollcage needs to be in a certain place in order not to block your vision. If the forward bars don't line up with the window post just right, you have great big blind spots to the front. If the roof is too low or the steering wheel off things can get even worse. Then there is the matter of getting in the car. Crawling through the window can require joints you were made with if the rollbars block your way.
Far nicer to choose the body you'd like and build a rollcage to fit. Got one with no bottom due to rust? Fine just use square tube to build your chassis. 10 times faster and it's extremely easy to triangulate compared to round tube. Thin wall square tube can be both strong and light. The front 1/2 of a Jaguar XKE weighs 22 pounds, yet passed the government mandated crash test and carried a 700 pound engine. ( plus handles race tracks beautifully). Would it help to know the frame wasn't welded? But braised?
Also it was bolted to a Monique back 1/2? Spend a 1/2 hour looking at one and use those thoughts to build your own car. Some of the Trans Am cars did just that.
In reply to frenchyd :
Seems like you are missing the point of this whole thing if that's your argument.
In reply to frenchyd :
If you visit my thread, you should see the point.
Readily available, affordable chassis and drivelines. Easily modified to accept a host of skins. Yes, one could scratch build a tube frame or go in many directions, but that's not the objective.
In reply to alfadriver :
It's just my nature. I understand wanting to use something existing. Adapting a body is a whole lot less intimidating than scratch building your own.
I just can't accept the resulting compromises. I'd keep wanting to "fix" those. So I've learned to start from scratch.
The trade off is more time required. If you hate working with cars that's a deal killer. But I like it.
In reply to frenchyd :
What that does is mean that you are stuck with the original chassis design problems wrt being a race car. Instead of taking a race car and putting whatever body you want on it. You would be compromising pretty much everything, including the structural integrity of the body/chassis, too. These are carefully designed chassis made for the intent of safely racing.
Let alone the time and cost it takes to convert a road car into a race car.
But if you want to do that, great- but don't try to convince other people who see this as a solid way to have an inexpensive dedicated track car that your way is "better" and with less compromises.
In reply to frenchyd :
I will pile on here. It is rarely cheaper, faster or easier to start from scratch. Especially if what you are starting with is decent. Those ASA cars were state of the art when they made them. IMO they were better than the Cup cars of the same era. That's when NASCAR was coming out with the COT and ASA made this great package that was equal to all and good drivers could go run a nationally televised series and compete (I need to YouTube the Concord race that Davin Scites won, it was classic).
You say that local track cars use standard brakes etc. Maybe the bomber class (or whatever your local circuit calls it) but the top classes at any local track are running all catalog cars with high(er) end specialty brakes, chassis and suspension pieces.
I will agree that dropping a body on a car isn't as simple as jh36 made it look, that's a testament to his fab skills and experience. I will not agree that the level of effort to do that is in the same order of magnitude as taking a rusted street car and making a reasonable track car. Maybe a back running bomber car at the local dirt track but not anything on the same level as what he built here.
The more research I do the more cool stuff turns up. I've known about our southeast group dedicated to ex-stock cars gone road racing (https://www.v8roadracingseries.com) for a while. They run a group for pretty much anything with a V8 and a tube frame and a silhouette body, regardless of where it started its career. V8RR runs with SCCA events from Florida to the Geln, and I think Bosco Logsdon, who's one of the founders, even posts here once in a while. But there's also another group that runs under NASA sanction in Texas and OK and NE called American Muscle Car Masters (https://www.americanmusclecarmasters.com) that has a ruleset that's a little more restricted, and kind of based around building affordable TA2 cars with a variety of chassis, included retired ASA cars. They also work with a body manufacturer (http://arbodies.com) that has some pretty cool stuff that looks like it's designed around these perimeter chassis machines. Check out their "muscle car" catalog. Those are the bodies that are legal in the AMCM series.
I'd still love to skin it with some sort of '80s throwback Trans-Am/GTO bodywork, but looking at some of the specs that could be tricky. The 3rd-gen F-bodies specify a 102" wheelbase. Oddly enough, my beloved Somerset specs out at 108" in the current SCCA GCR GT1 specs, but looking at all the chassis, they appear to have the same wheelbase as the contemporary pony cars. But if that's true, maybe the Somerset was the right choice all along. then it would just be a matter of finding some bodywork and making it fit.
That AR Bodies stuff is pretty slick, though. And fairly priced. And it's plastic, not fiberglass. Not sure if that's better or worse, but it's something to throw ink at, which is ultimately the point of anything we do. Regardless of how it gets skinned, though, it look like the smart thing to do is to take off the top of the cage nd reconfigure for whatever body you hang on it. And, honestly, I'd want to do some cage tweaking anyway, to make the thing a little more road-course friendly, and a little more ingress/egress friendly. Looking at the AMCM builds, it looks like the SOP is to at least take out the top driver's side door bar, and connect the windshield bar down to the door area like Jack did.
I don't know if there is a body to appeal to all but the 80's NASCAR stuff appeals to me. It's not as unique but a thunderbird or Monte Carlo body from that era should be relatively easy to procure and you could put any tribute vinyl on it (Wrangler, Coors, MGD, Folgers, name it there are a bunch).
I also found the ASA race I was thinking about. Concord Davin Scites
I was at this race and it was a great one. I was always a big Davin fan watching him beat some really good Late Mode drivers in the Carolinas and Virginia was fun. Also a nice guy and drove his own truck, set up his shocks, and basically crew his own car.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
The Somerset seems to speak to you most. And at 108", perhaps it is your destiny?
The Somerset is a billion times cooler than the modern-style Muscle Car bodies. An easy billion.
Does anyone make repop 1970 Cyclone sheet metal...? 
jh36 said:In reply to frenchyd :
If you visit my thread, you should see the point.
Readily available, affordable chassis and drivelines. Easily modified to accept a host of skins. Yes, one could scratch build a tube frame or go in many directions, but that's not the objective.
Given your goal I think your work is brilliant. Plus I understand your logic. I'm sure it makes sense to you.
My suggestion isn't the only way. It's just me. I've watched many Trans Am cars made and stock cars too. Part of my career had me traveling all over and one thing I always did was stop by local chassis fabricating shops. No matter how successful the builder was I always wanted different details.
You'll need to log in to post.
