Topic: Our total cost for first Lemons race
We did a complete accounting for our first race, which should drop dramatically for any future races.
Now one of our goals was to really try and do this a cheaply as possible with no compromise in safety, or course. We did use the services of a great Lemons cage builder but other than that "subbed - out" work, we did all the rest ourselves or volunteers.
One area we did not skimp on (because posts on here and team mates) was tires. I wanted to buy just ONE (for the RF, at Thunderhill gets worked over hard) and the rest just good used ones. In the end we got 4 new shaved Hancooks that were just over $425 shipped for 245/45/17's. For brakes all we did was new pads and turned the rotors.
The car came with some nice 350Z rims but we found another set of wheels - some scuffed up ones - on Craigslist for $100, that were wider, lighter and a better offset. Gotta love Craigslist. So we had mounted primary tires and another set of really good used practice / rain tires
Including the entry, test day, transponder, all the gas, even the Saturday Night team meal, I mean EVERYTHING, came to $4,300. Excluding the actual hours by the cage builder we ourselves as the team and volunteers had a grand total of about 50 man hours into the car. most of that was stripping, de-scuzzifying it and fixing the front end damage
I have heard of teams doing it for $3K or less and some at over $6K. One team told me that they had over 400 man hours in the project over a 7 month period!!.
Based on people I have talked to, $4,300 "is about average" to build, race and support their first Lemons car/race. Costs do add up, but for $4K and 50 man hours, it is great.
For then next race (provided we get accepted) we will need only 2 more tires. The car seems to be OK but we have not done a thorough inspection on the lift yet. There is some body damage but not so much that a good hammer, racers tape and screws can't fix. Brake pads hardly looked used (Hawk DTC-60, I highly recommend them) The rotors do look worn, but I think they are still fine, but since OEM rotors are cheap, we'll probably get some new rotors.
It looks like our cost for race #2 will less than half of race #1 and half of the projected cost is the enry fee for the team. It does seem that once you build a decent and reliable Lemons car, the racing really is huge bang for the buck, HUGE
j/k 
