Want to do this right Need help and advice

IMHO, if it's obviously a former race car you may want to be concerned with earning the people's curse. If you don't care how you place, then just get the thing, go over budget if you have to and take your penalty lumps/laps and drive. If it's truly work saved, then it may be worth it.

The benefit of buying a whole car is there are bits to sell off of it. Sealing a firewall can be done in short time. However, it sounds like what you're really buying is a sorted drivetrain and suspension.

RE: People's curse-- sounds like nobody is going to get it any more anyway due to the rule changes unless you actually beg for it.

Thanks for the advice.  Not sure what I will do yet the former race car do look attractive though.  I like the idea of being light weight. As for the curse I think it should stay However I think it should be voted on by the fans in the stands versus the drivers.  I go to the eve of destruction every year at Thompson Speedway in CT and they have the fans vote by applause. It seems to work and there is no bias except if you fill the stands with all your friends.

Former race cars are tricky. Very generally speaking, ones that are less than $500 are going to require more work than a clean-slate street car. Ones ready for Lemons are going to be more than $500.

The biggest trap for old race cars is the safety gear. We've seen a lot of old circle track/enduro cars (typically the ones you'll find for less than $500) that were purchased because of their included safety gear. Unfortunately, the majority of that gear won't pass Lemons tech. A personal friend of mine bought an old Ford Escort because it had a cage, then put a bunch of time adding to the existing cage, then later found out that the existing cage was made primarily of muffler pipe. It would have been much less of a headache in the long run to start from scratch. The moral: If you're buying an old race car because it has "stuff," make sure the "stuff" is actually relevant to Lemons.

A good general rule of thumb is to pick a car that was some computer programmer's daily driver until he got a raise and bought a Lexus. In other words, a generally sound vehicle that someone just wants to get rid of.

There are a lot of threads on here discussing the merits of specific cars--try the search function.

Hello

Thankyou again for the good advice I am sure everyone struggles with getting the right car both from appearance and functionality.   I like the old computer programmer car idea i know quite a few through work.  So the former race car idea is flushed down the toliet. We will continue our search for the perfect Lemon.

Im a computer programmer, mostly you dont want our cars, I assure you.  As a group we either dont care about cars and fail to maintain them, or have a natural curiosity and must "improve" things.  Either way you may be in for surprises.

OK, bad example. How about schoolteacher? Hmm, that won't work because they'll never get promoted and buy a Lexus. Maybe accountant?

I find that getting vehicles from mechanical engineers are the way to go. They're of the right mindset to take care of their cars, so when they do get rid of them, they have 600k and still in reasonable shape, but has a transmission problem that probably costs more than the vehicle's worth to replace... which leaves happy-fun-junkyard time to us bozos for a $50 tranny that probably doesn't work either.