We're meeting this weekend to discuss next years racing budget.. (Page 1 of 5)

Add another $400 for more tubing after your drag race cage fails tech.

I'll sell you a running, already built Miata ready for action (turn-key) for $500 plus $3000 in car safety gear/seat/cage/fire bottle/harnesses/kill switch/brakes/wheels (2 sets) and tires for a total of $3500.  Save yourself $15,000 and have more fun driving it.  It's already run both Lemons and Chump.  Total costs for entry fees/transponder rental/licenses/race gas would be about $1700  hahaha

I don't know how realistic you want to be but I have a set of 16" C4 Corvette wheels I picked up for like $150 or less with tires.  The tires have tread but they are old.

I see plenty of cheap Corvette wheels but I don't know about 19s.  Personally, I would stay away from 19s sine they don't have a great of a tire selection as 17s and 18s.

We have a panoramic mirror, winks mirrors and rear view mirrors.  Our roof-line makes it hard to see out the back window.  On top of that, I had a driver stick on additional convex mirrors on the outside mirrors so we had a total of 7 mirrors.  Still hard to see what's going on sometimes.

We all have our own safety gear and that starts at about $500 each.

I picked up a transponder on eBay for a good deal.

Regarding rebuilding brake components, it is a good way to save money.  On the second car we run, they already had to replace their front calipers.  So if you buy lifetime warranty parts, you only have to buy them once. 

Technically, many rebuild kits from O'Reilly's and Autozone come with a lifetime warranty too but you have to keep doing it.  In their case the pistons got screwed so they would not have been rebuildable anyway.

Point is you may save money up front but it can cost you more overall.

Good brakes seem to outlast crappy ones.  We have always run race pads and we blew through a set on each car on the Saturday session at Eagles Canyon.

We have weld-on steering wheel disconnects which are pretty cheap.  You can get one of those a 3 spoke wheel for around $100.

We don't have fire systems, just extinguishers but it's not a bad idea.

The reality is, racing is expensive.  Even on the crap can level.

In the last calendar year:

Nelson Ledges, 1 car 6 people
Gingerman Spring, 2 cars, 8 people
Summit Point, 2 cars 8 people
Gingerman Fall, 2 cars 8 people
Autobahn, 1 car 4 people

Total dollar amount just shy of $20,000.00

That includes all 3 cars built, lodging, fuel (race day and travel), food, tolls, bribes, and used safety gear, various spare parts (engines included), turbo setup for SBC, 4 VW engines and extra 71 beetle.
Now that we kind of know what we are doing, the costs involved will go down considerably, have 2 cars to build, all safety equipment is purchased except roll cage tubing, and both cars are complete (some assembly required). And by taking good parts off our retired/wrecked racers, we save more $$$. We hope to do the same amount of races this year at half the expense.

Cheaper still would be to sign up on an already operating team. Good teams seem to have seats for about $1000 an event or less.

We too have a wink and can't see shit out of our Z.  It blocks the view out the front and doesn't offer good rear visibility either.  We will be switching to a panoramic for 2011.

I'm not sure if you still plan on running Chump, but if so, you will be over their brake and wheel allowances.  I'd stick with smaller wheels, tires, and brakes.  Heck, it's a Jag so the brakes will have plenty of cooling time while you make electrical repairs in the pits. 

Haven't read the chump car rules in a while but if I remember right wheel and brakes can not cost more than twice the amount of oem for each component (so you can't save on rotors and calibers to get nicer pads).  Of course saying that when I priced the nicest alloy rims from gm for my car it came out to $375 per wheel.  So my wheel budget would end up being $750 per wheel for chump.  Of course on the brake side I'm not sure how much I'd have to spend on pads but I would probably be pretty restricted.

You also have to look at people assuming you are cheating.  While you may not be most people will wonder why you paid 4 times as much prepping your car as the average team.

One note on wheels/tires/brakes. It is certainly true that in the context of the $500 budget, they are "free." But it is also most assuredly true that a team that goes out and puts super-fancy new Wilwood or APRacing calipers (for example) and magnesium wheels on their ride is also going to get sweated harder at BS than a team that's running rebuilt stock calipers, new slotted discs, and less-expensive aftermarket wheels (or stock wheels). And the logic is solid: it stands to reason that a team that is willing to pump nearly $7,000 into their brake system is probably willing to invest some off-the-books cheaty into the engine and other go-fast parts.

4 times? please remember the handicap of lousy gas mileage Plus I'm using  stuff that I see on most cars.. Now granted I haven't started shopping used (and I will, looking for deals)  But if we have what others have I don't see where the claim of cheating will be..
Chump  Rules say 2x times OEM parts brake.. There doesn't seem to be a limit on Lemons
I'm waiting for the local dealer to give me a quote but aftermarket calipers are $508.87 each (plus shipping)   Thus my allowance would be $1017.74 per caliper! That's close to state of art 6 piston NASCAR caliper prices..
  Racing calipers are cheaper than stock! by hundreds of dollars!  (and they are a direct Bolt on for the Jaguar ) there is a similar deal on rotors..
Bottom line?  I'm sure there is money yet to be saved here shopping for used stuff.  and there is an extra grand for what if stuff.    We might wind up buying a good used motor home rather than simply renting.  If we have a new enough one with room to store spare engines etc.  maybe we'd save the cost of the pick-up.. There are plenty of over the road trucks out there at affordable prices if an affordable  race car trailer could also be found.. (don't know where we'd keep it though)

Not saying you are going to cheat but reality and perception are often not the same thing, and sometimes its not worth the fight to make people believe the truth.