Myself, corytate, and two others I am currently attempting to persuade to join the forum, have just begun a journey to flip cars to fund our champcar effort.
Full disclaimer, I run a shop so I have access to good facilities, tools, and cheap parts, and two of our team members are professional mechanics.
Right now we are mostly in the collection phase. Technically we are out of pocket for the purchase of these cars, but we are going to pull our original investments back out and then we will be using flip money to do more flips until we have covered all of our race costs (and then some).
We have already made an agreement to buy a jetta that has competed in the series. We will be picking it up at the March VIR race. Cost will be roughly $3600, is more or less ready to race, and comes with a bunch of spares. So our first move will be to offset the purchase price, and have a "free" racecar. 
Here it is post power wash.
We drained the gas, new fuel filter. Put fresh gas in and cranked it until it started. After giving it an Italian tune up the miss cleared out and it ran surprisingly well. After a test drive we confirmed a caliper is seized. Caliper has been rebuilt and is waiting to be reinstalled. So far we probably have about 40 bucks in it, between rebuild kit, gas, and filter.
Car number two. Purchased for 1500. It is missing pretty much everything in front of the engine accessories. I am currently tracking down parts (used radiator, new hoses, etc).
Car number three. Purchased for 860. Just picked it up tonight. There is a front end clunk under braking that needs to be diagnosed. We rushed over before everyone needed to be back for valentines day dinners so I didn't have time to get a jack. We will find out what is going on tomorrow.
Car number 4. Purchased for 750. So far we have put on front pads and rotors, cleaned up the IAC and throttle body, and diagnosed a rough idle. Parts should be in to fix it Monday.
As it stands right now, we are out of pocket 3110 not including parts. Over the weekend I'll make a spreadsheet to keep track of parts cost as well, but as it stands it looks like the first Volvo to sell should get almost all of our seed money back out.
We have also picked up Liqui Moli as a sponsor in the form of fluids. We are currently accepting other sponsors ;)
In reply to Norma66 :
Thanks, we are pretty excited
fiesta54 said:
Car number two. Purchased for 1500. It is missing pretty much everything in front of the engine accessories. I am currently tracking down parts (used radiator, new hoses, etc).
IDK what the car looks like in totality, but e30s, unless very clean and complete, bring more in parts than whole. Hell, I just paid for my $400 e34 (which I took the engine out of) by parting some easy stuff and getting $150 for scrap. Came out almost even - and that was AFTER taking the M50 out of it for my e30. And e30 parts have a much bigger customer base than e34 stuff, that's for sure.
Side note: what engine is in it? I have a lot of e30 front-of-engine stuff if it happens to be a 318is
That looks like a late car, so you may have better luck than if it was a metal-bumper one.
In reply to irish44j :
It's a 325i
Yea I'm hoping since it is a the later bumper and an i car it'll bring some decent money. I think we will be less than 2k in to it and will hopefully get 5k when it is done. In a perfect world, they would then bring it back to my shop for service as well.
fiesta54 said:
Car number three. Purchased for 860. Just picked it up tonight. There is a front end clunk under braking that needs to be diagnosed. We rushed over before everyone needed to be back for valentines day dinners so I didn't have time to get a jack. We will find out what is going on tomorrow.
I'm putting my money on one or more of the torque rod bushings being bad. Classic 7/9 series failure point.
What's up with the wagon, is it turbo?
buzzboy
HalfDork
2/14/19 11:11 p.m.
Thinking: That looks a lot like Sportscar Workshop.
Then I saw the sign
Love the concept, I'll definitely be following along!
How did you manage to sign on a sponsor before even picking up the racecar?
In reply to orthoxstice :
No, unfortunately not turbo. Thanks for the tip. I'll start there.
In reply to artur1808 :
Good timing more than anything else. The liqui moli rep came by my shop yesterday to give me the rundown on new products etc and I asked him while he was in.
Multi tasking. Made some good progress on the Mercedes. Cracked all the lines on the fuel distributor. We got some pretty rusty looking fuel out, and the idle smoothed out quite a bit. Unfortunately one of the valves is sticking in the abs pump. If I can find a rebuild kit for it, we will fix it ourselves, otherwise we will be looking for a used one.
On the Volvo, we diagnosed the front end clunk as a control arm stay bushing. Parts will be here today to get that sorted. Aside from that, we cleaned it up and fixed a few little cosmetic things.
Thought these were pretty funny. Wonder if I can still get and eagle from Shorty Toombs.
The 300e is of great interest to me.
Looks like a fun bunch of cars! How y'all liking the new Southside location?
johndej said:
Looks like a fun bunch of cars! How y'all liking the new Southside location?
I love it. The space is MUCH better to work in. Way better lighting, we have heat, a big fenced in lot. Come on by some time!
Tjones_W123 said:
Looks like teammate number three decided to join. One to go. Control arm stay bushings are done in the volvo, tie rod ends and one tail light circuit board and this one is ready to roll. Blue volvo is being advertised now, hopefully we will get some bites soon. Not much progress on the BMW or Mercedes just yet. We did go look at another car last night. Audi 4000. It would have been fun to flip, but it really just needs too much work to be turned around reasonably quickly. I'm sure it would nickle and dime us to death as well. 
