Getting started in 24Lemons or Chumpcar?

My coworker wants to either a 24 hour Lemons or a Chumpcar race. He asked for my help, which I am glad to provide, and I'll be able to drive as well. But we are starting at the bottom, as in, not only no car, but no clue as to where to start. I mean we are pretty much new to all of this. No race experience, no knowledge of cages, etc. We've both autocrossed a few times and that's about it...

Some of you guys that have been there done that can you point us in the right direction? Is there a cheap racing for dummies book/site/forum?

Also anyone in Knoxville willing to help out send me a PM and let's meet up.

Thanks

I keep thinking I want to do that too and then I get into planning with what car questions and the like and eventually decide I don't have the time or energy to do that.

So,

My advice is find someone else's old chump car that is being sold with spares. Get some safety gear frrom one of the "one click out" vendors and Find a date and location you can both attend.

Then go have fun.

As others will point out I'm sure while lemons and chump are cheap motorsports, they are not exactly cheap. Figure to field a legit team from nothing to legal (not even competitive) is around 10 grand. They cars are virtually free but cage, tires, seat, fire suppression, HANS, radios, helmets, etc, etc, etc all add up.

Then you have to be ready to walk away from everything if the car gets stuffed in the middle of the first lap.

If those realities are understood and accepted then go for it.

First step, get your proto-team together and rent seats with an existing team. This lets you take the first financial hit of buying your gear and let's you go experience a race without stressing out over the minutiae. You'll have a good time.

I'm in Knoxville. We have a team and a car. Come hang out and drink a beer some weekend and I'll tell you all about it. Sent you a PM with my info.

I have similar aspirations of starting a team, but each time I rent a ride and do the math, I can't find the benefit or the affordability.

As KyAllroad said, get ready to spend some $$$. I went in on a team and we bought a $500 '94 Celica (Toyota = reliable, right?, Um not so much). We each put in $1000 and quickly burned through that for a cage (we did it), safety gear, new brakes, 6 tires, etc., etc. We put new oil and water pumps in our Celica and a ton of other maintenance stuff. Entry fee for our first race was ~$1400 IIRC. We didn't plan on winning, just participating. We even brought a spare car to the race to pull parts from, etc. 45 minutes into a 24 hour race our motor tightened up and we then realized that none of us had ever pulled a FWD engine before. After 3 hours of fighting (you have to take apart most of the interior to get the wiring harness out, etc., etc.) my teammates quit and went drinking). We eventually rebuilt the motor from our parts can and went to a 14hr Chump race. Six laps into the race our fresh $1500 motor threw a rod out the front of the block. Game over.

At this point all of my teammates quit. They were more interested in the allure of racing crapcans instead of the reality. All racing is tough on cars and requires a lot of work. Crapcan racing just makes it worse.

My suggestions:

You and your coworker should buy a seat in a car to see if you really like this sort of thing. Borrow gear if you have to or buy your own. Understanding that Chumpcar now requires a HANS type device.

If you then choose to get your own car buy a prebuilt and campaigned race car with verifiable finishes and a spare package.

Make sure your teammates are in for the long haul and the workload. Finding a team that can share the mechanic load/requirements where everyone feels like it is fair is tough. Best I've seen is to have one person own and prep the car and team members pay for consumables/upkeep and per race. This also allows you to sell a seat or two when needed to offset the cost.

Most of all remember that this is supposed to be fun. Slow down and enjoy the experience or it can get frustrating pretty damn quick.

Tyler H wrote: First step, get your proto-team together and rent seats with an existing team. This lets you take the first financial hit of buying your gear and let's you go experience a race without stressing out over the minutiae. You'll have a good time. I'm in Knoxville. We have a team and a car. Come hang out and drink a beer some weekend and I'll tell you all about it. Sent you a PM with my info.

This would be my path if I wanted to go racing.

I would also start doing track days just to get back in the practice of concentrating for long periods of time and stringing corners together.

I think we spent $3500 or thereabouts the first time, though we did not need HANS at that time, and we used a whiteboard rather than a radio, but we had lots of fun. It can be done cheaper.

If you haven't welded before, budget $1000-$1500 for a good cage. Get a running car that everyone like to work on, give it to the cage guy, get it some good brakes pads and fresh fluids and let it go.

Without any question whatsoever, before you dive headlong into team ownership go rent a seat in a race. You will learn a ton and really decide if it's right for you. It's a lot more expensive than you may think to build a car properly. Plus you need race gear, spare parts, etc... If after doing a race weekend as an arrive and drive you decide you want a car, given your lack of cage skills (trust me, I have none either) your best bet will be to buy a car that's already actively racing. There are plenty of them for sale. You'll get it for far less than what it costs to build, and you'll know it's going to pass tech. Plus if you ask around, a lot of us can tell you about the car for sale...is it competitive, etc... The car, uh truck, in my avi was a prior LeMons racer. It hadn't run in a few years, but needed little to pass tech. We were probably all in for about $2500 before we got it on track. But we'd have spent twice that easily to build from scratch.

Not trying to scare you away, it beyond awesome. This is my 5th season racing and I can't see myself doing anything else. But it ain't cheap, and if you're lacking skills it's much more of a challenge. I'm part of a large team that has tons of skilled guys (forum member Sonic is our team captain), so that's how I manage. If I had to do it myself, it would never happen.

From my perspective, both series are getting faster. If you're going clean sheet, careful car choice will yield a platform that can do both. I've analyzed this to death. It's also the reason you find solid cars for sale cheap -- they've given up on the platform.

Racing isn't cheap. This is as cheap as W2W gets. It's also (IMHO) the purest form of W2W circuit racing left, and I can't help but think this is one of the reasons I see Randy Pobst driving at 80% of our races.

Don't build a E36 M3ty car. Build a car that could plausibly be a E36 M3ty car.

It doesn't take too many wasted $1400 entries before the crap in the can gets old. And no safety shortcuts -- our car will pass any series' requirements. We all have HANS posts and share a couple of HANS. We have onboard fire suppression. etc etc.

Edit: I consider myself a decent hobbyist welder. I still wouldn't do my own cage. We added a NASCAR bar to our driver side pro-built cage after seeing how many higher-profile (looking at you, Crown Vic) cars are in Lemons. It took me a solid Saturday. No. Thanks.

Edit 2: Anyone who says they make it to their first race for less than $5000 is really bad at accounting, or is on their second or third car.

Lots of good advice so far in this thread. Take Tyler up on his offer.

Give this a read, a thread specifically designed to answer this question from those who have made all of the mistakes already.

http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=7415

As a fairly novice chump car owner (3 races), I'd recommend you try renting. Long term, renting works out well as typical rental rates only cover your share of basic running costs, so they're a good deal. Either that or try volunteering for a race or two first so you can decide what type of car you want to build.

IMO it's a mistake to start off with a random car you happened to find in someone's yard. Chumpcar uses MPV (market performance value), not actual car costs, so pick a car you can be at least competitive in and buy a decent condition example of whatever car you chose to save yourself hassle. It costs ~$3k to do a chumpcar weekend, so breaking and losing track time is expensive. Another good option is to purchase an already built car. They typically sell for a nice discount in dollar terms alone, let alone labor.

I agree with the suggested typical ~10k costs to get started, including suit, etc. I also agree you should have some lapping days under your belt.

Read the rules over a few times. To learn more start reading the chumpcar forum. There is a lot of helpful information there. There are also a lot of negative people whining about the same things over and over. Don't let that scare you away, people there seem to use the forums as a form of entertainment, but by in large the on track stuff is great. Regarding cage building, I purchased a cage "kit" for my car and had a local shop weld it up.

In reply to Tyler H:

We did it twice, although the second car was closer to 5k as I recall.

I actually just ended up starting a team with a few friends last year. Only made one race last year, but planning on doing three this year. We did our own cage. All of us had HPDE time, and most of us had been on an SAE Baja team together at school, and knew the basics of fabrication. 75% of the team is extremely familiar with the BMW E30, so that's what we went with. There is a reason a lot of people do, and a reason it's considered kind of a cheater car. Fun to drive, durable, and proven. Hell, our old Eta (automatic!) ran most of the race on 3 or 4 cylinders and still did well enough. We probably have $5k in right now, not including entry fees. Not the cheapest thing in the world, but definitely a great experience. Amortizing the cost over 4-5 races makes it much more palatable, assuming you can get cost down to just tires, brakes, etc. As such, pick a platform you like and know, if at all possible. Sure it's not cheap, but as others have said, it's still the cheapest way to really go racing wheel to wheel.

We didn't rent seats; we just kind of dove in. While I don't regret it, one of our members did quit the team last year after realizing how much of a time commitment it is. Just part of it, unfortunately. Definitely make sure that everyone is on the same page with spending money and starting the team - we have a written agreement of financial responsibility between members so it doesn't ruin friendships down the road should E36 M3 hit the fan.

Thanks guys.

And Tyler I'll contact you later.

As a driver and tech for a few LeMons races, I'd add the following:

Get some professional help on the safety equipment and how it is installed, especially since you don't have any experience with this stuff. I can't tell you how many seat belts installs were failed when I was tech. Many people didn't wrap them around the harness bar properly. I could grab the belt with my hand and tug it right off the harness bar! Also, there are some very specific install scenarios for belts with HANS devices, etc. Don't expect tech to find this stuff, or worse, try to slip something by. Take responsibility for it yourself. I've seen a lot of cars go upside down. We failed more than one roll cage, too, usually because somebody tried to weld the top bars in place and couldn't make a clean weld all around it because the roof was in the way.

Choose your team carefully. One guy driving like a knucklehead will not only be hard on your equipment, but put you in the penalty box for much of the race. I got on a team that had one guy that couldn't do a lap without passing under yellow or some other stupid thing that sent the whole team to the judges constantly. I ended up with very little seat time and more than my fill of "punishments."

All of this is good advice. I'll add this resource: http://racesuitrental.com

They rent every piece of gear you need for way less than the cost of buying it.

If you have no track experience, a couple track days would help.

Remember, this is real racing with moving, sometimes not, Chicanes.

tuna55 wrote: In reply to Tyler H: We did it twice, although the second car was closer to 5k as I recall.

You guys are special, though. Believe it or not (and more often in Chump,) there are teams that campaign cars that are totally outsource built. Not a guy among the whole team that can turn a wrench.

One of the things that I LOVE about both series is that they're inclusive -- no snobbery, this-is-the-only-true-way, do HPDE 1,2,3,4,5,6 then a TT and then get a Provisional, but promise to do 3 weekends a year, and then you and you squire can maybe go racing.

That said, it's real racing. If you're a newbie, take it seriously, learn some flagging and etiquette. If you put the work in, you can go mingle. I love that. Every race there is at least 1 team that has never done ANY of this stuff before.

Despite what some of old guard that 'earned' their comp licenses say, these guys are almost NEVER the problem. The problem is always the 300 hour pilots that have learned the ropes and are ready to take their spot on the podium...and some of the semi-pros that like to get in and steamroll the amateurs.

Edit: sarcasm intended to rib those that always decree that the only way to go race is the SCCA way. It is a proven method and a good way to weed out some folks early, but (in my opinion) at the expense of a lot of other great folks that never get the chance.