24 hours of Lemons highschool club (Page 1 of 2)

Cheapest way to get in is buy someone's car that's for sale, 1-3k, then 600 to get in, drivers fees 175 per and 60 comp license. Then consumables, gas, brakes, tires, ect. So... 5k for a nice round number.

Up front warnings. It's not cheap to get started, at all. Plan on about $5k to get going, plus the cost of either renting or buying your safety gear. Can it be done cheaper? if you really try, yes, but plan on that number to be safe. Also know that while many people will say they are completely with you, once the request for money comes out a lot will bail. I will say that I think 15-20 might be too many people, but you can make it work. You don't want more than 6 drivers, you just won't get enough seat time (and you can't sign up more than 6 anyway). If you have some that want to drive and some that want to build that can work really well though.

I will ask, what do you want to get out of the whole thing? Do you want to learn more about working on cars, building up cars, and general repair? Or do you just want to go racing? Your answer will steer you in different directions. If you're trying to learn more about working on cars then by all means start fresh. Buy a car and go to town. Read the rules front to back 5 times to make sure you understand them all. Some things are worth paying for. If you're not a comfortable welder, pay someone to install your cage. Safety is not something to cheap out on.

However, if your goals are just to get some friends together and go racing, strongly consider buying a car that's already prepped and ready to go. You will still need to learn basic things to keep the car alive, but you won't have the initial worry of trying to get the car tech ready. Look for listings here and on facebook. Get their history, make sure it's been raced in the last year or two so you know it won't need too much updating to pass new rules.

I agree with the above on finding an adult sponsor. Someone with some car knowledge that can help you guys learn and get the most out of the whole thing.

Welcome and ask all the questions you want. The initial leap in is huge, but the payoff is great.

As an Auto Shop teacher that has fielded a team with my students, the BEST advice I can give echos that of other posts here:
Find an adult sponsor, preferably one with a skill set that lends itself to racing. It's difficult to keep track of the big picture when it comes to everything that has to get done, staying within the budget, making sure that construction is moving forward in safe manner, and the end product is safe and reliable. READ AND RE-READ THE RULES!!! and the "HOW NOT TO FAIL TECH" guide.

Buy someone elses completed and raced car. If "cheap and reliable" are strong considerations for your team, this is really the only way to go. There is a steep learning curve, and many an unknown when you are new to race car building. Also, choose a car that is well supported in Lemons. Leave the weird, unloved cars to more experienced teams. I'd steer you toward a Honda Civic, a Crown Vic, or a Volvo 240. None of these are terribly sexy, but they are reliable Lemons race cars, with lots of junkyard support.

You could post a WTB thread for your region, and entice someone into selling you their car, cheap.
You can definitely do this for less than $5000, not counting you entry fees or gear. You could probably build a car for $2500. The big expenses are the cage, seat, and harness. If you don't have access to a tube bending computer program, and tube bender, buy a pre-bent cage kit (Another reason to choose a well supported car.) Buy a used seat, and a new harness.

Yes, but, you have to have a project manager, and someone to double check student work. I say this from experience. Also, anyone who touches a particular part of the car, or a component has to be the only one to work on it. Otherwise mistakes are made. Students also tend to be forgetful, or distracted. You can't be. You wouldn't want a forgetful or distracted airplane service technician working on the airplane you were about to fly in. Racing is not much different.

Feel free to email me through the forum, and I can help guide you. Gotta go. Class is starting.

Individual equipment Rentals run $200/event or approx $500 to buy + another $300-500 for a shared neck brace/hans
http://www.racesuitrental.com/
http://store.24hoursoflemons.com/produc … t1whel.htm
https://pitstopusa.com/i-21932751-z-tec … raint.html

Unless you've got a well heeled parent or group of parents who are willing to bankroll this endeavor OR you are some kind of kid with your own income stream and hardly any expenses (maybe a youtube celeb), I think it would be very, very hard to put together the kind of funding necessary to field your own team. Chances are, if you have a parent who is willing to bankroll this kind of thing, they are already involved in motorsports in some form (look at how dirt track or KART racing is very generational). If youare some kind of teenage youtube celeb, code monkey, or cam model (I'm not here to judge), then the argument becomes would you rather spend the 300+ hrs necessary to prep a car or doing whatever is making you money that is not school related to make more money?

You say you have 20-30 friends interested in participating. I'm sure all would be happy to take a wrench and break the glass windows of your new "racecar" and some will even be happy to help you strip it down. How many of those would be happy to painstakingly strip it without damaging the take-off components, inventory them, and resell all of the parts off that car to help bring your budget down? Of those diehards, how many would spend all of their weekends doing some other minutae of car prep instead of hanging out and playing games or trying to pick up women? Finally, how many of these would be willing to scrape up a few hundred bucks to help out without the opportunity to drive the car? Or, if you did promise them a spot on the drivers list, would they still pay if you or your other idiot friend balled up the car before they got to drive?

Realistically, there are so many other things you could (and maybe should) be doing with your time and income as a HS kid (or hell, even as a college kid) than to try and prep a car for one race. I didn't start with Lemons until in my 30s b/c by then I had a place to work on the car, the income to bankroll it myself, and perhaps most importantly, the time. I just checked and when I started with a running car and even with help from friends, I spent 262 hours prepping my car for the first race (not including research time). Also, $3500 after selling of nearly $1500 in parts from said running car (not including race expenses).

$5K could go a long way towards modding a car that you would daily drive, your college fund (aka, money you'd spend on tuition, room/food, beer & men/women in college), or even dates now (IIRC, HS dates are a lot cheaper than post college).

If you are still dead set on racing yourself, you migth be able to find an arrive and drive opportunity where someone rents you a spot on their car for $500-1K + your own equipment. That means you'd only need to scare up $1K-1.5K depending on how your do it for your first race experience.

PS. I love the example of this young (teenage to early 20s) kid in Finland. He clearly blows all of his time and effort on building up this Volvo turbobrick into an 800HP+ monster. It's a pretty good series but clearly, when you watch his friends, it's HIS project and his friends mostly hang around what I presume to be his parents garage messing around, handing him tools, and maybe occasionally helping him hold stuff. Watching him take his pride and joy to Gatebil (which is a crazy scandinavian motorsports festival) is fairly amusing and clearly what he wants to do. . IMO, the key takeaway here is that if you want to enter a Lemons race as your Gatebil, YOU are going to need to be the key guy. Also, this blue volvo is his DD. You might find for the time/$ spent (call it smiles per mile) you'll get far more enjoyment out of modifying your DD than making a "race car".

https://www.youtube.com/show/bamsesturbounderpants

I know you are trying to be funny but for starters, there's something to be said about police stereotyping.

Just like being brown and driving a heavily tinted vehicle at night is going to leave a cop with certain "impressions", how do you think a cop will feel  when they see some kid driving a fully caged car on the street with a helmet on (so he doesn't brain himself against the bars) and using the 5pt harness?

Even if he's doing 25 in a 35MPH zone, I'll bet that any cop short of SpeedyCop (and even maybe him as well) will immediately think "hey, this guy thinks he's Kyle Busch." Should this kid get in an accident on the road (vs on the track), what do you think the other guy's insurance company will say?

Even if it might be legal, given that we are talking about kids driving around, I wouldn't do it.
-g

15-20 people is way too many cooks in the kitchen. Honestly, 6 people in the garage can get pretty hectic. Even if you can get that many people working, nobody would do enough to feel that connected to the effort. I quit my first team largely because I got stuck painting the numbers while the people with "experience" and "jobs in the industry" did the actual motor work. I now build (and detonate) my own motors pretty much on my own and I find the experience much more satisfying.

In fairness Mike, I was setting your cars on fire from my first race, so you really should have known better that to put me in charge

It's about quality, not quantity.  Find 5 - 8 guys who are truly committed (i.e. ought to be committed - *grin* ) and you should be fine.

First off may I say wow, I did not expect more than 1 or 2 responses. As for the dedication aspect, I am not too concerned. On my end, I have done no shortage of 500+ hour projects (I build lots of drones and code). I spend all of my free time working on various projects, and this would be my biggest by a sizeable amount, though also by far the most exciting. As for others, my school, they are in similar situations and have also been wanting a way into Lemons as much as I have. Money is probably our biggest issue. Part of why I want at least at the beginning a large following is to try and get some of the maker space funding put into this. Our school has a very, very well funded maker space (Michale dell's kids went there and left a lot of donations behind). Ideally, the school will pay for the car and I will cover race fees, suit rental etc. w/ summer job, as well as computer odd jobs, mostly I have found I am able to charge ~$150 to get rid of someone's cable, set up a Roku, and find a good combination of streaming services, and provide a year  of free IT for it, so basically as you said, a

. in my first draft, excel sheet not accounting for gas, I am already at 3k (after a few readings of the rulebook, but I know for a fact I'm missing stuff.)  The issue of too many people does not concern me too much as a) many will be flakey or quit after day 1,  and also I only want 5 or 6 actually doing anything of any importance to the functionality of the car. Most of the people are art students who want to paint it and things of that nature, or people designing custom peripherals, and things not crucial to the car's ability to drive. (I have a friend who wants to build a system to do lap tracking, car stats, location, speed, things of that nature remotely using a spare galaxy s2) .  Also, we would use a civic or something easy. I, nor anyone I know is capable of building a completely custom roll cage. Thank you so much for all of the help, seriously, this was incredibly helpful.

Buzzkill.  I say let them find the potholes.  We can let them know they are there but no reason to discourage them.  If you get Parent A to kick in a kill switch, parent B the wiring, etc, you can get there.    Maybe one of the parents has a car they can kick in.  Maybe it's not the car of choice but it'll help the budget.  Maybe get a prebent cage and dad-network to find someone to weld.  We need more vo-tech type projects for younger people.  Even if that's not their career path, it teaches solving logic problems which can only be helpful in life.

- You don't need racing brake pads. Good street pads are fine for the speeds you'll be driving. Scrounge some from a You Pull It wreckiing yard, and get spares. I gave a set of our spare, used race pads away to another team, once. They had been using O'Reilly-sourced pads, but the pad is one make only, and the local stores didn't have any.
- You don't need to spend $500 on tires. I sold some one 8 of our take-offs with three race days on them for $10 ea., and they still had a good one or two race days in them. Hell, I picked-up 8 wheels and tires here for free. All I had to do is haul them away.
- Yes you need a seat. I have a used one that I would give away to a high school team. I bet other racers, not just Lemons-folk, would, too.
- Gotta buy belts. They're too important not to.

The point is, it's all doable. Tools can be borrowed, Moms, dads, aunts and uncles, grandfolk, etc. can all be counted on for $20 here and there for fluids, parts, and sundries.

As long as your expectations are reasonable, you plan your work and work your plan, and you ask for help, a HS-built Lemons cars is possible.

Hell, start a Go Fund Me, post to this forum, and you'd likely get a good chunk of change from this community.

I actually had this idea earlier today, and I totally will. It is a lot of money to try and get on my own, and with any luck, a not insignificant amount can be covered by that. I ended up drafting something for a go fund me page, and am just waiting to actually make sure this is something I can go through with. I feel that starting a GoFundMe is a point of relative no return.

I had not even considered this expense at all. How necessary is that if the car already has good street brake pads?

I do have all of the tools you listed, though I anticipate another 200 minimum.

Thanks for all the help!