What Kind of Car to Tinker With?

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[quote]Bujo wrote:
B rocK wrote:
I’ve always had a thing for the “fox-body” stangs of the late 80/early 90’s.

As far as experience, I’ve got a bunch of experience putting the basic mods in, and working on suspension and brakes. Not as much working with engines as far as head-work and valve replacement etc etc… But it might be worth mentioning that I’m a mechanical engineer and pretty good with my hands.

It’s not like I have $10k just sitting about that I’d dump into a project car right away. I was thinking of (next year) snagging a project car and making mods 1 at a time for a fun thing to do on the weekends.

I suggest that whatever you buy be drivable at the time of purchase. I’ve seen a lot of friends buy a project car that just needed this thingamabob or that doohickey to be drivable, and everyone of them turned into a massive money sucking black hole. Cars are an expensive hobby to begin with no need to make it more expensive or complicated than necessary.[/quote]

x2

or at least have the unmolested engine in it.

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Yeah whatever I get I plan to drive home.

Right now I’m thinking a honda/acura or a fox body 5.0 LX stang. But either one will be made for auto-x/road racing.

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[quote]B rocK wrote:
Yeah whatever I get I plan to drive home.

Right now I’m thinking a honda/acura or a fox body 5.0 LX stang. But either one will be made for auto-x/road racing.

[/quote]

You sure don’t want any fwd for that then IMO. I’m a drag racer tho.

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I agree, fuck the FWD for that shit…if you’re set on an import the 240sx is a good option. None of the hondas/acuras are RWD as far as I know (except the NSX I think).

I still stand by my original suggestion on the 5.0 stang…after I finish paying off a couple more bills I’m gunna be saving up to buy a 96-98 Cobra coupe myself.

And a side note…don’t get cocky and start driving it crazy in turns on the street. You never know when there’s going to be some water midway through a turn and cause you to spin out and total your car, this is from personal experience. I had a 2000 Mustang GT that I supercharged, did the entire suspension, exhaust system, pretty much everything other than an engine swap myself in my garage. I wrecked it hauling ass through a turn when I hit a patch of water. I’d do just about anything to go back in time and undo that mistake. Looking at old pics of it still makes me want to cry, and it was about 4 years ago now.

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Miata…if your ego can handle it, if not, the rustang.

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Figure I’ll try to bridge the gap between american v jap…

Elano is right, power per dollar the camaros / firebirds / mustangs are by far the cheapest… They seat 4 if you dont like two of them, and they are easy as hell to find (My friend in highschool got an iroc that ran for 1500 bucks)… They have great looks, chicks dig them, and they will ALWAYS sound better…

if you want a jap tuner, dont buy new !! I can NOT stress that enough… Too many people get trapped making payments… the number one rule to remember is that rear wheel drive is king… The old RX7’s (mid / late 80’s) are cheap as hell, sound great, but are really untunable unless you want to rip out the rotary and put in a 350. The 350 conversion kit is cheap as hell, fits really easy, and you can do it in a 3 day weekend (we did it for my friend in college during labor day weekend)…

The biggest issue with this is weight, the car doesnt weigh enough, and unless you want to chop the rear axle and tub it it will never fit adequate tires… that said, you can pick up old right hand drive ones which are fun, until you try to go through a drive through when your alone (hope your good at reverse)…

if you want a seriously legit tuner car, get an old skyline right hand drive, they are insane to drive, insane power, and get you a bunch of street cred… I just hope you have a credit card with a high limit when you have to buy a part…

My friend who owned the 350 rx7 sold that out of college, and got into rally racing… alot of people already pipped up about the WRX, let me tell you, its a piece of crap for wanabes who cant turn a wrench, it costs too much, parts are expensive, and its slow for the money… The Subaru mechanic he worked with to build his rally car told him to do this: 1) buy a used subaru wagon (i forget when the base car of the WRX is, but get that)… it has a non-turboed engine, but, has 0.5 more liters then the WRX and used it goes for 5 to 6 grand in good shape… Invest 1 to 2 grand in suspension… another 1 to 1.5 in wheels and tires, and the last few bucks in a turbo… for less then half the cost of a wrx new, you can now be competitive in drag races with a stock vette (i watched him school a C5 in his 91 wagon), will handle corners like a slot car (the only cars I have ever ridden in that handled better is my 98 Z28 with a stage 3 kenny brown suspension, and a lotus elise (gf’s dad raced it in a club instead of his GTR viper)). and thats on pavement, on a dirt road its non-comparable…

hopefully that helps… In earnest, the funnest cars I and my friends have owned was the z28, the subaru waggon, and the duely f650 super duty, the military H1 was fun till we got it stuck under a lake…

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UR all newbs. Whoever said 67-69 Camaro is the closest, but again, not even remotely close to your pricerange if you could even ever find one.

Best bang for your buck and will blow the doors off anything else anyways, Eagle Talon AWD Turbo. Car is MAD light, you can pipe it up to some serious horsepower, and the AWD will floor ANYTHING in a quarter, regardless of power difference. Car is just too light and properly piped and tweaked will OWN. Not much for top end I guess unless you gear it that way but who the hell wants to go more than 150? you need to dust people off the line, and a AWD talon will do that. Plus they are cheap and you can find one pretty heavily modded already for under 10K.

V

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A Talon did quarter Mile in 7.976 Seconds, Thats fucking fast!

V

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Talon Vs Mustang

V

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Talon Vs Viper

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about FWD, f that sh*t… I spent a summer at gm research and proving grounds and asked why they make fwd… know what they told me? because its cheaper to build… you can have the trans already bolted to the engine, drop it down, tighten engine bolts and put tires on… its not safer, in fact, you cant do anything once it losses traction, its horrible for race cars (weight shifts to the rear during acceleration) and its more complicated then RWD… less your gona rally it, get a rwd…

also, if your gona go fast, do it on the strip or get certified and race it on a track… we dont need some retarded wrecking his car and killing himself or worse, someone innocent because you had to be stupid…

ps, if you just wana go fast, suck it up and buy a crotch rocket, take the class, and race it on a real course… you can have a helluva lotta fun with a used ninja 250r (over 140 mph a year ago top speed) and take turns at well over double what any car most of us will ever own could hold…

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Yup, weight transfer is the name of the game.

If you want a cheap car to auto-x, the IROC camaro is really a good project. It was designed for cornering (International Race Of Champions). Has a factory panhard bar, lower control arms, torque arm, and stiff shocks. Has stiff springs and a high ratio steering gear box. Also factory with 245/50/16 tires all the way around that grip the road so good it’s scary. Mine corners like a champ and I’ve only added subframe connectors.

Bottom line, you can make any car do what you want to do with enough knowledge and money but if you want something easy to learn/work on a fwd or awd turbo car is not what you want to start with. You prob gotta pull the engine to do any real “modding” anyways.

In many v8 cars you can change the heads, cam, intakes, headers, add a turbo, swap transmissions, clutches, converters, rear end gears/carriers, etc. while the engine is still in the car. Also the older ones you don’t need any fancy equipment to figure out what’s wrong with it. You either tinker with the ignition timing or tinker with the carburetor. Take a look at pro-stock race cars, they run single cam and carburetors. You don’t need special equiptmet to tune a carb, that old guy down the street has been tuning them by ear since 1955.