Thought experiment: Cheap and "easy" street/strip car

As my rallycross car is getting to the point where it should not have to occupy the garage all the time, I'm starting to think of a future project. I've never owned a "fast" car before. My Abarth is probably the fastest thing I've owned, and the most powerful vehicle I've owned was an F-150.

It might be neat to have something to play with in a straight line, and go to cruise ins with. Here's the goal, and limitations:

Goals

-Capable of a 12.X second quarter mile time.

-Can be driven on the street in relative comfort. Not exactly a cross country car, but capable of taking a 100 mile highway trip at 65-70, running off several passes, then going home, without breaking down, giving me a backache, or destroying my hearing.

-Needs an automatic transmission, for consistency, in case I go bracket racing.

-Needs a heater. A/C would be nice, but not necessary.

-Fuel injection would be nice, but not needed

-Doesn't need to look pretty, but has to be structurally sound.

Limitations

-Must be able to be built in one garage bay, with a little bit of extra space for storage

-Built on a restricted timeframe - maybe over 3 months (winter build) with 5 or so hours a week dedicated to it.

-Buildable with resources available in the rust belt. Assume a car could be trailered from a state away, or driven back from a couple of states away at most

-Builder has a reasonable amount of mechanical experience, but nothing too advanced. Very limited fabrication capability. Light welding is doable.

-A parts car to get the drivetrain from is acceptable, but it'd have to be disassembled quickly, and the shell hauled off for scrap.

-No GRM Challenge budget heroics. A limited amount of time and skill means I can't wait forever for "perfect" deals to come up. It'll be a matter of getting stuff from craiglist, ebay, junkyards, and occasionally Summit and Jegs. No selling off to recover budget costs either, no space or time to deal with it. Also, don't have time to deal with too many part failures and "do overs"

-No Camaros/Firebirds. Mainly because I don't want something so low slung.

-No nitrous oxide. It needs to be fast enough on its own.

-No gutted interiors

I suspect buying some else's unfinished project is the cheapest way, but fraught with peril. It seems like going with something like a GM A-body or G-Body, or a Fox chassis Ford would be the best base, though I'd be more inclined toward the GM option. I could get into an acceptable one around here for $1500-$2500. It'd be ugly, but the chassis would be solid enough. For drivetrain updates, rebuilding the TH350 or 200R-4 transmission to be a bit beefier shouldn't be too hard. A 350 V8 could be sourced from a junkyard, maybe one with Vortec heads. Get a compatible intake, an inexpensive rebuild kit, a somewhat more aggressive cam, and a free flowing exhaust, and I think it'd be able to make enough power to move 3300 lb well enough. Orient the suspension towards drag racing, without taking away too much of it's street manners. I haven't put together a spreadsheet, but I am thinking it could be done for under $5000 with some reasonable (not great) deals. That's getting close to ratty LS1 F-body price ranges, but this is hopefully the cost of a finished car, that needs nothing mechanically, and can be enjoyed quite a while with minimal troubles.

What would you come up with? I'd like to see ideas. Not sure if I'll do this or not, but I have had the hankering to get to the drag strip.

I'm expecting times knocking on 12s when my new rear is finished. I won't be afraid to use grippy tires, so no more walking it out of the hole on clutch slip to blistering 2.1 second short times with those dried out all-seasons.

Just sayin'. Light makes might, and my car isn't light for what it is but it is still lighter than a Fox, F, or G body. You can make a lot of power from cheaper and easier to source drivetrains than what I run.

I have been contemplating an IROC Camaro with an LS swap. That would tick all your boxes and the platform is awesome to start with. Just add power.

I've had a bench build kinda like this floating in my head recently, a cheap classic car build that would break 20 mpg highway without $overdrive (hopefully), get into the 12s, and make 500 ft/lbs with lots of torque all over, on pump gas or maybe E85. I was thinking 70s Nova (or other any make X body), subframe connectors, mild weight reduction (deal with 5mph bumpers) TH400 (good used TH400 is way cheaper than built TH350), 2.73 or 3.08 rear, and a mostly untouched used 350 with the ring gaps opened up fitted with a junkyard twin turbo setup and megasquirt(google "twin turbo sbc grenade"). These use F body front suspension (Gen 1 68-74, gen 2 75-79) so making one handle isn't horribly hard. Mine would be a 4 door and painted fridge white because I'm weird.

As stated. Light makes right in drag racing. Have you looked into someone's S-10 project? Should be a LOT lighter than the cars and you can throw a couple of healthy slicks in the back to help with the launch. Otherwise it'll all be simple GM small block stuff and robust truck parts.

Mitsubishi Mighty Max with a turbo 4g? Or any other mini truck with a V8 for that matter.

go buy an s10, an explorer 8.8 rear axle, and a rusted out 4.8/5.3/6.0 LS truck for engine/trans. i've seen 5-10 LS trucks with rotten frames this week on CL under a grand running and driving. i just missed a 6.0 truck the other day for $900. bonus points for the 6.0. you should be about $2500 in at this point. scrap the donor truck and s10 engine/trans, send the harness off for standalone rework for $250, add headers and mounts and you should be around 3500. 1500 can buy some sticky tires, used drop parts, traction bars, and incidentals.

then later you could go with more heads/cam if you want.

Foxbody, add windsor and a c clip eliminator kit too the 8.8, its hard too beat the fox body suspension for small tire cars.

Mopar A body with a stroker 360. It'll get you deep in the 12's.

The other option is a FB RX7 with a nicely built 302.

Both will be easy to build and get you well into the target range you are looking at and really are pretty easy to build.

2WD GMT800 with a snail tucked away under the hood somewhere?

Sn95 mustang, used H/C/I set up 4.10 rear end. Drive it hard and you should get 12s easy

Throw a small nitrous kit on for good measure and run even faster

I've had a hankering to find and build a mid 80's Monte Carlo SS. Black with red accents and red interior, like my grandparents had when I was a kid.

Otherwise a fox body or SN95 mustang sounds like the easy button.

S10 or S10 based Blazer to gain interior space.
Seems to answer the "not too low" while still offering all the GM based easy bolt-ons.

Fox bodies are the easy button but they are no longer that cheap. Prices are going up. You can build out the chassis and never touch the engine and get into 12's with drag tires. It only costs about 1-2K to get one into the 12's if it's healthy.

Thanks for all the ideas. Keep 'em coming. I'll have to think on S10/Blazer setups. Of all the unfinished projects I see for sale around here, there are usually a few of them.

Seems like all the 70s/80s RWD stuff is finally going up in price (Seeing rust free Regals and Cutlasses in the 5k range). I think if I went fox body (and was going to do an engine swap), I'd probably start with a T-bird, just to save money. Fox mustangs are either overpriced, rusted out, or both around here.

patgizz, if I do this, I might have to reach out to you in looking for a drivetrain donor. While Cincy is still in the rust belt, we don't use anywhere near the salt Cleveland does, so LS powered trucks tend not to rust into oblivion before they are sidelined by mechanical problems.

Anything with a ls based truck motor shoved in. Easier if your swapping it into a gm chassis. Dont bother with a 350, yeah you can make some power but with the vortech heads they need machining to accept a decent lift cam and still might just barely make the same hp a stock 4.8 makes. And when 12s arent enough slap a turbo on

I think the biggest danger with any LS swap is going to be accessories and any other doodads needed to complete the swap. That's where being limited on time will be a killer, since a lot of it might need to be sourced new. Definitely don't want to discount it, because of the power and the fuel injection, but would want to do extensive research to make sure I don't back myself into an expensive corner.

Mopar a body with a full magnum 5.9 swap from a truck will get you mid 13s out of the box. And completely daily drivable.

And a 100 shot and your in the 12s.

And except for transmission tunnel mods, molt in.

Dusterbd13 wrote: Mopar a body with a full magnum 5.9 swap from a truck will get you mid 13s out of the box. And completely daily drivable. And a 100 shot and your in the 12s. And except for transmission tunnel mods, molt in.

And when the stock heads crack (hint: they will be before you get it, although most don't crack through to water), slap a set of fairly cheap Enginequest heads with 2.02 intake valves on there, a nicer intake manifold (the stock beer keg is a POS), a decent (but not huge) cam and some headers and you'll be pushing 400+ hp (crank).

Swapping intake manifold and distributor would let you run it as a carb-ed motor if you don't want to screw with tuning EFI for mods (the stock EFI is tuneable, but it's not cheap).

Done right, a mild build like that gives up no driveability on that setup if you keep the cam reasonable. And it wakes the thing up a lot, as you're pretty much just pulling out a few corks the factory left in.

77-89 Caprice or Impala

FB Rx-7 with 302 as suggested above. Any Fox body or slightly later Mustang (and no I am not a dedicated Ford guy) DSM eclipse will be the fastest car/$$$ at the strip but it will live on jack stands (at least mine always did).

bmw88rider wrote: Fox bodies are the easy button but they are no longer that cheap. Prices are going up. You can build out the chassis and never touch the engine and get into 12's with drag tires. It only costs about 1-2K to get one into the 12's if it's healthy.

Seriously doubt this, how are you gonna run 12s with 230hp, considering most of these are a 15 or 16 second car and a few are high 14 second cars, I doubt your gonna cut even 2 or 3 seconds off a 1/4 mile time with just chassis mods and a severe hp deficiency.

Id say 350-400hp to be safe a good chassis and sticky tires. Could do it with less but probably more work, since there are so many engines that can make thtat power with little work.

Opti wrote:

bmw88rider wrote: Fox bodies are the easy button but they are no longer that cheap. Prices are going up. You can build out the chassis and never touch the engine and get into 12's with drag tires. It only costs about 1-2K to get one into the 12's if it's healthy.

Seriously doubt this, how are you gonna run 12s with 230hp, considering most of these are a 15 or 16 second car and a few are high 14 second cars, I doubt your gonna cut even 2 or 3 seconds off a 1/4 mile time with just chassis mods and a severe hp deficiency.

These fellas claim to have done it:

They stripped it a little further than the O.P. intends, but they made it look awful easy.

http://www.mustangandfords.com/featured-vehicles/m5lp-0812-1989-ford-mustang-lx/photo-gallery/

I've pondered this a bit myself, being familiar with Fords that's what I started with.

Buy a 2wd, regular cab, shortbed first gen Ranger. = 2,800 lbs stock.

Swap in a 31 spline Exploder 8.8 with 3.55, 3.73 or 4.10 gears and a freshly rebuilt diff, they bolt right up. You'll need to fab some shock mounts.

Swap in a slightly warmed up 302 mated to a built C4, set back as far as possible and have some fun.