Thought of
E28
Any fox chassis anything fairmont to mustang
Toyota previa with the whole back half chopped off.
Early celica

12/10/2013 2:42:51 PM

nah, but i'd drive in one.

12/10/2013 2:50:55 PM

I know that's trying to be funny but .... First the diaper thread and now old people humor...

Awww schucks you got me bobby bobby bobby digi digi digi.

12/10/2013 3:50:24 PM

e39 m5

12/10/2013 5:12:22 PM

Lol eleventy gillion cheater laps...

But I like where your mind is.

12/10/2013 5:50:24 PM

geo storm

12/10/2013 6:35:00 PM

No.

12/10/2013 6:36:31 PM

are there rules like in the UCAR races or just run what you brung?

12/10/2013 6:36:37 PM

Target is $500 car (winner has to sell his car for 500 if offered iirc)
Cheater laps for every amount over $500

Now, in addition to the $500 car they make you put safety gear in the car.

12/10/2013 6:54:41 PM

no way people can buy a running car for $500.

i've always called shenanigans on LeMons for that reason

12/10/2013 7:06:53 PM

in college I purchased 2 running e30's for under $500

12/10/2013 8:22:30 PM

I sold a running Malibu that needed some brake work for $350.

12/10/2013 9:33:51 PM

Safety equipment doesn't count, and you can subtract out stuff you sell off of the car, etc

12/10/2013 10:00:26 PM

3 cylinder integra

12/10/2013 10:59:11 PM

Some old Jag, a 1st gen Insight sans battery, 2nd gen Range Rover or some old Buirck in that order.

12/10/2013 11:16:30 PM

are you just knee-jerk 'no'ing at the geo storm? Because that is totally a viable lemons car, foo1

12/11/2013 2:03:57 AM

[Edited on December 11, 2013 at 2:26 AM. Reason : ]

12/11/2013 2:26:09 AM

I got stuck with a rented metro nice a long time ago and that thing almost killed me. 3 cylinder damned near stopped on the interstate every time a strng head wind came and I was driving it in a storm.

Ironically I just realized you said storm not metro and I feel like a moron sorry


I would also just prefer rwd because if I'm driving that long I'd rather be honing driving skills I can apply to the other cars in my fleet.

[Edited on December 11, 2013 at 6:30 AM. Reason : .]

12/11/2013 6:28:07 AM

What I have run in a race: Geo Metro w/3L V6 MR (or RR sorta ) drivetrain swap.

What I'm currently building to run in Feb at Barber: 1998 Contour SVT with 3.0L Duratec swap.

Our budget: '98 Contour SVT with blown engine was $400. Blown engine scrapped for $60, bringing price down to $360. Selling off all the interior bits we don't need, around $150, bringing price down to ~$210. New 3L engine off ebay: $250, bringing the budget to $460.

Everything else safety related on the car, i.e. cage, seat, 6 pt harness, wheels, tires, brake pads/rotors, etc will be around $3,000-$4,000. Pics of build progress here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101578767050089.1073741827.11808016&type=1&l=d9201b731e

We wanted RWD, but decided what is really more important is reliability. And finding a $500 reliable RWD car is nearly impossible now. E30 318's or 325E's are a possibility, as are ragged out Miatas, but they're tough to find. We considered an FC RX-7 before we regained our sanity. Since our car is the 2nd car of this team (with the Geo) we decided to go with a straight-forward build using the same drivetrain for shared parts and more important knowledge. It should be reasonably fast in straights (around 200hp/tq at the wheels) which is what is really important in Lemons since the races are too crowded and chaotic to do much passing in turns anyways.

To respond to your thoughts sumfoo1:
E28 - Something I've thought about, and might build in the future with the Euro shop owner who works on my M3 when I can't handle jobs.
Any fox chassis anything fairmont to mustang - Mustangs apparently blow up bad, but there were 2 fast ones at the CMP race I did. I think we stomped them in the Geo though hah.
Toyota previa with the whole back half chopped off - Minivans in general are cool, there's an $800 1st-gen Honda Odyssey here on Craigslist that is a hilarious idea. Previa is even cooler because of the MR thing. However, the new ruling is that you cannot remove any crash structure from the body (thanks to a Crown Vic team that chopped most of their car off hah). We're not sure yet how the safety inspectors would look at a minivan with the back half chopped off...kind of ambiguous if that is crash structure or not. I think they'd tend towards not allowing it.
Early celica - Awesome choice, fast, reliable as crap, basically a race winning car and if you can find one a legitimate $500 car. Tough to find though.

[Edited on December 11, 2013 at 8:47 AM. Reason : .]

12/11/2013 8:47:17 AM

isuzu impulse rs or realistically an e30

12/11/2013 9:38:04 AM

e55 with a salvage title

12/11/2013 10:39:00 AM

Ohh yeah primer what kinda manual tranny rwd drivable junk with a salvage title could you find for $500

[Edited on December 11, 2013 at 1:53 PM. Reason : .]

12/11/2013 1:53:15 PM

I did not know manual transmission was a requirement

still

you might be surprised...

12/11/2013 3:48:51 PM

old beat up turbo volvo.

water injection then 25psi

12/11/2013 5:38:22 PM

A beat to shit old minivan - i just want to go out there and drive like an asshole.

Anyone see that "all-wheel-drive" someone made by combining two cars...two engines...two transmissions.

Edit: Here we go

http://blog.caranddriver.com/lemons-goodbad-idea-of-the-week-twin-engined-toyota-mr2corolla/

[Edited on December 11, 2013 at 6:12 PM. Reason : ]

12/11/2013 6:09:28 PM

e36 look to be the car to beat for chump this year with the rule change.. Not sure if a e36 would be possible for lemons

12/11/2013 10:03:51 PM

Infiniti J30? Cheap if you can find a beat-up example, RWD, a bunch of Nissan engines would be easy swaps?

(Yes, NMSJ, but a LeMons car is probably going to be J anyway.)

12/11/2013 10:19:19 PM

I say either an old beetle since they are reliable and pretty fair at maneuvering.

OR

if you can find an old Benz from the 80s, preferably diesel. Those things are tanks. We had one that had nearly 600,000 miles before the engine locked up on us...still planning to fix it and keep running it.

also, this:
http://raleigh.craigslist.org/cto/4240082810.html

12/12/2013 12:16:57 AM

Rule change? What rule change?

12/12/2013 1:06:48 AM

There are E36's in Lemons, of varying degrees of "cheater car" factor. Certainly a 318 of any sort is reasonable. Some beat-ass 325/328's make it in.

Chump runs things differently, they have a declared market value of a chassis/engine combo and you don't have to find one at any particular price. Certain cars have extra laps added in Chump. It looks like the E36's for 2014-2016 depends on the drivetrain pretty heavily...325's and 328's are still over $500 and get penalty laps. I don't know Chump that well though, it's so much more "srs bzness" than Lemons that maybe the penalty laps are worth it.

For my Contour, I'd start with a value of $425, but then have to go through this formula to determine value after swap:
MPV + (ACPV/IN + Stuff) – (ACPV/OUT) + Surcharge(s) = TCV

Looks like a huge pain in the ass, heh.

12/12/2013 10:11:51 AM

I could definitely see getting an e36 under $500, there is a lot of demand for interior and exterior parts in decent shape that you could get a lot of money parting out things you don't need.

12/12/2013 11:20:16 AM

I just joined the Ronalds Racers racing team that runs chumpcar series.

The value of the car used to be the average of 10 ads of the car on the day that you bought it. Like lemon's, you can subtract/add value of parts that are removed/added from/to the car, which are listed in the rule book. For every $10 over the $500 limit, you loose a lap. For 2014, they now have a set value for all of the cars. Good news for most, bad news for us as we run an e30 325 with a motor swap so for our next race in Feb, we're illegal and have a start value of $450, so we only have $50 in upgrades before being penalized.

12/15/2013 5:45:36 AM

^ Cool! What engine swap do you guys have, E36 325 (M52B25)?

Is the fire suppression system being required next year for Chump going to bother you guys? I had thought about building our Contour for both series, basically the extra stuff required for Chump, but the integral fire suppression system being required seemed like a huge pain in the ass. Also trying to figure out the value of our $400 Contour with $250 engine swap seemed prohibitive since the parts site they list to use lists our engine at $3,000. Yay 300 penalty laps

12/15/2013 9:45:38 AM

Quote :

"I could definitely see getting an e36 under $500, "

some of them, yes definitely possible, but there is a local buyer who snatches up most for his collection so you will only get what he has passed over...

Quote :

" there is a lot of demand for interior and exterior parts in decent shape that you could get a lot of money parting out things you don't need."

Anything with a decent interior is worth a lot more than $500 unless it has no motor/other similar issue
Anything with a decent exterior is worth a lot more than $500 unless it has no motor/other similar issue

...even then, going market average for e36 parts car is $800, with an average good running 6 cylinder e36 sedan about twice that

12/15/2013 8:46:24 PM

right, and after you buy one for over $500 you sell all of those valuable parts and then the value is under $500... like i explained in my post

12/15/2013 9:16:21 PM

That's a wonderful plan, sadly it does not work out that way. E36 parts just aren't worth THAT much...


But e46... different story. Even pre facelift parts off a 323i (some claim better throttle response also with a 323) might provide the cost offset you are dreaming of. But it aint happening with e36.

12/16/2013 11:21:08 AM

If I happened to get a fat envelope, from a kind deliveryman, I would sell him my e36 325i 5sp for $500

12/16/2013 11:26:08 AM

@Jek: Yeah, we have an e36 325 engine in the e30, but we plan on swapping it back out to the stock motor. Not to sure about the fire suppression for next year, its something to talk about after the holidays and our next race is in Feb at Road Atlanta. We also talked about building up a different car since car values are different and makes a lot of bmw's not as appealing to run. Most of the e36's start value is $500+ so a lot of teams are in the same position we are in and looking at options.

We looked at going with a cheaper e30 like the 318 if we can find one and still do the motor swap, but a friend of ours just mentioned she had a 20+ year old jag sitting on her father's farm that we might snag. Maybe something for down the road project.

The thing that made us a little funny about the new rules was the yellow MR2 guys running the v6 camry engine; even with the motor swap, its still under the $500 value with the starting value of 350... a $100 cheaper than our e30.

I'm still very new to the chump series, plus the rules change completely for next year so I'm not completely acclimated with the series yet. I'm only partly helping out/pit crew/documenting.


@optmusprimer & dtownral: It doesn't matter how much you can net in the sale of items/parts from the chump car, everything has a predetermined value or based upon market value at the time. Even if you don't sell. They could be scratched up to hell or not worth a damn, but if they were part of the car and was removed, you are still credited with the value.

12/16/2013 5:38:15 PM

would a locost be acceptable for lemons? or are there some no-kitcar rules of some sort?

12/16/2013 6:36:15 PM

^^ it does for lemons

12/16/2013 6:39:15 PM

^which is why I said chump car, not lemons.

12/16/2013 6:49:41 PM

and i was talking about lemons

12/16/2013 7:12:03 PM

I know you were talking about lemons, I decided to talk about chump to showcase that the rules on parts was slightly different.

12/16/2013 7:30:24 PM

I had hoped to build our Contour to be eligible for both, but looking at the parts site they use for their valuation, our 3.0 Duratec V6 (that we bought for $250 on EBay) would be valued at ~$2500. Yikes! Wish I could turn around and re-sell it for that much, hah.

I bet when that MR2 team has to value their Camry V-6 off that site they mention in the Chump rules, it'll be a different story. I guess Chump will be in quite a bit of flux next year. Being able to run both series would be cool because they go to different tracks, but it sucks that their rules are diverging so far.

12/17/2013 10:39:27 AM

what parts site are they using for valuation??

12/17/2013 1:14:31 PM

Car-Parts.com

Quote :

"ChumpCar teams must then document and add the value of the major components installed, determined by the average of the lowest ten (10), “A-rated” advertised prices for the exact same component, as found on Car-Parts.com."

At a second glance, I guess there are 04-05 Taurus/Sable 3.0L Duratecs on there in the range we bought ours in...still seems like a huge pain though. I guess having a theme like in Lemons is a huge pain too though

12/17/2013 3:16:44 PM

I haven't read the rules for lemons but I do know they aren't as strict as Chump.

12/17/2013 5:30:10 PM

Quote :

"Car-Parts.com "

Oh that is bullshit, they should be using SOLD eBay listings for sure.

Do they use car-part to value the parts you sell off the car as well? Because that would be much more of an advantage...

12/18/2013 7:34:39 PM

Started our Lemons car with the new engine for the first time last weekend, and it ran on the first try!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J61LXU5YBF4&feature=youtu.be

Unfortunately the new slave cylinder we put in with the new clutch is leaking, so we have to take the whole damn engine and transmission out. Great design, Ford

12/25/2013 10:25:31 PM

Raced at Barber this past weekend in my Contour SVT LeMons car. Had a great weekend, took 2nd place out of 21 entries in B class and my team's other car, the Geo Metro I've mentioned before, took 1st in C class and IoE!

The car held together well, with a brake upgrade it should be a strong (for LeMons) car We stayed on track the entire race except for one black flag due to a spin in the rain, no mechanical failures during the race days.

Here's a shot of the team cars in the paddock before the race:

2/3/2014 1:53:16 PM