Buying Car From A Team Member?

You generally don't want to even mention the fact that you may have purchased your car from a team member, even if you did.  Produce a bill of sale, make no mention of who the seller is.  "Some dude on Craigslist sold it to us."

Regardless of the condition of your Focus, I think a 2000 is probably far too new to pass through Lemons judging without a great deal of scrutiny and harassment.  It would have to be completely and unquestionably bone stock and beat up.  Even then, it would get a close look and possibly penalty laps if your documentation isn't up tight.

Remember, if you pay a verifiable $500 for a car that doesn't have anything good on it for you to sell, you have ZERO budget to put into replacing belts and hoses or anything else that doesn't fall into the "safety" category.  And if your buddy who sold it to you just replaced the plug wires and they look new... even though they really were "on the car when you bought it"... I wouldn't want to be you.  I've seen a lot of poor saps go through judging with such stories.  Even if they're true, the judges NEVER believe it.

You'd be better off fixing the windows on the Focus, putting a radio in it, cleaning it up a little and selling it for $1500 on CL.  Then buy something more LeMons-appropriate for $200 and having a little money left over to buy safety equipement.

Of course, if you're just in it for fun and don't care about winning... bring the Focus, accept penalty laps if offered, and go race!

People often forget that part.  Not every team is "in it to win it".  Your car isn't likely to get claimed, and if you don't drive like dicks, it's not likely to get crushed.  Do penalty laps really matter?

Alan and I are team captains/owners for the Tinyvette car. Alan's name was on the paperwork for the car we bought for $200 but he sold it to me for $50 when we went down to DMV to register it and drive it on the streets. I didn't dare try to list our car's purchase price as $50. Turns out Jay pittied us for driving a 40 y.o. field-find Opel so much that he never really asked, plus the flip-out headlights made for a memorabe presentation of bakshesh.

Questionable cars get lots of penalty laps. The Judges know what used cars go for. Like Loren says, if you don't care about winning or finishing close to the front, who cares how many penalty laps you get? But you'll have so much fun that the next time you will care about penalty laps.....

The Z in the trim level usually means it has the DOHC engine. You'll have a bit of a harder time with penalty laps with that motor because it is substantially more powerful and is Lemons-proven not to explode readily.

Let me know about those headlights when you get it apart - mine are starting to take on water, and I'm also quite interested in a rear passenger side door lock/latch mechanism (for power locks) if you think you could do without - mine's broken and the door can't be opened from the outside anymore. Obviously you can have the broken one if for some reason you want to keep the door closed on the track.

You might be able to yank the fan speed switch and hock it on a forum like focusfanatics. Those switches go bad a lot, Ford sells them for a billion dollars, and Focuses are annoyingly hard to find in junkyards.

The Mk1s are well known for water ingress through the blower motor intake which is made worse by removal of the plenum cover (which you DO NOT have to remove the windshield wipers to do, contrary to popular belief) - so if you plan on keeping the car outside, cover up that hole ASAP (you'll need to do it for tech anyway)

Manuals, wiring diagrams, whatever, drop me an email and I'll get you a PDF. Be careful with the electronics on this thing - they're STUPIDLY complex and damn near everything important runs through the PCM.

Budget?

Buy the car for $500, spend $500 on a theme that makes it top-heavy, aerodynamically challenged, and super slow.

No penalty laps, guaranteed.  The BS judging is there to keep the cheaters out.  If you're there with the right spirit, BS tech is actually kinda fun!

Much <3 to our high court, btw.

I can't speak for Jay or Phil, but I like this idea.

I'll be honest-- I think a Focus (even a crappy one) will attract more negative attention from the high court than, say, an Opel GT.  It's pretty new, and from a dynamic standpoint it's a fundamentally solid car.  If you bring it, you'd better go for broke on the theme.  Even then, there's a distinct possibility that you'll get hammered with BS laps.  But again, penalty laps mean that you can't win-- not that you can't have fun.