Mazda2 on $100 a week

This is my Mazda2, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

It's a sport model that I bought new in April 2012. As it sits it's pretty much stock with just over 5k miles on it. It has Star Specs on the stock steel wheels, a set of ebay camber bolts, and I've been mucking about with bump stops a bit but the car is functionally as delivered. I take my four kids to school in it 5 days a week, and do my grocery shopping with it, and it does all of the things that a good new car should do. I've also autocrossed it 8 or 10 times. It's a good car.
The problem is that good isn't good enough, and I want to make it better, like basically everyone else here. The easy solution would be to throw money at it until it's awesome. If I did that and my wife saw the credit card bill, I'd end up sleeping in it too, so I need a budget. After a bit of bargaining I settled on $100 a week for my car allowance. This is a lot of money, and I know how lucky I am to have this much to spend playing around with cars. This has to cover all of my racing and car modding expenses from this point forward. All of my autocross entry fees, tires, new tools, the whole bit. It's time to cut out the impulse purchases and live within a budget. Luckily, before this started, I bought a set of stock alloys without tires that are sitting in the garage. I also bought a new helmet, a soloDL data acquisition system, some new magnetic sheet for numbers, and a 3 year SCCA membership. I'm sitting pretty.
Right now I'm just chilling and saving. There is a rallycross at the end of September that I want to attend before I decide exactly what direction I want to take with the car. I'd like to continue to autocross with the SCCA in STF as well as with the BMWCCA that runs events 15 minutes from home. I'd like to try out a road rally or two and I think I'd like to find a long weekend to drive the 15 hours to Deals Gap and see if it's everything that it's supposed to be.
This thread will start slowly, but I've got $5200 to spend over the next year. Something interesting is bound to happen.
Current virtual cash hoard: $200.
Current expenses: $0

Sounds like my budget except I only get 40 every two weeks

mazdeuce wrote: There is a rallycross at the end of September that I want to attend before I decide exactly what direction I want to take with the car.

Yes! When I saw your location, I was just about to suggest this. I'm planning on attending as well (driving one of Brianne's rental Subies; my rallymobile is under construction).

Here's a pretty cool '12 Mazda2 video from the last TRS RallyCross, driven to a 2nd place class finish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD9w1L-jhsY

If you're on Facebook, "like" Texas Rallysport if you haven't already. It's where all the cool kids (and those of us who aren't kids anymore) hang out to talk rallycross in TX.

Thanks for the video. I've been just a bit worried about how rough the course might be but it doesn't look bad at all. I'm not super thrilled about rally crossing on star specs, but they're all I have right now. The million dollar question with the 2 is whether I want to head down the hard core autocross setup road, or keep it in a configuration that lets me do more varied stuff with it. We'll see how hard the rally cross bug bites me.

That is a nice realistic budget.. I might look into that also, but I have 2 track cars, the E30 for Auto-x, and the M Coupe for the HPDE's. We'll see...

That's a great budget. I think a lot of us can squeeze $100-$200 a month out of the budget for playing.

Or we would be over at the Porsche 911 forum talking about $1500 monthly budgets.

When I tried Rallycross, I went to the junkyard and grabbed 4 snowtires on rims from another Civic for $40. Major grip, big sidewalls, awesome for the dirt. You probably don't get the snow tires in Texas that we get in PA, but perhaps some Mazda SUV rims with mud tires will fit?

I would try to find some cheap wheels (i.e. steelies) and tires if you can, because your Star Specs might die a quick death. They're pretty soft, right? I've not raced at BCR (Brianne Corn Raceway) yet, but tire chunking is a definite possibility in RallyCross in general. That being said, I'm quite sure that there are people running regular street tires in these events.

Re: snow tires -- yep, those are the de facto budget "rally" tire, even in TX. We just have to order them new from somewhere like Tire Rack The good thing is that they keep you in the TRS stock class, whereas a true rally tire puts you in the "rally modified" class.

After much thought and math I decided not to risk the Star Specs rally crossing. Star Specs are $132 each from Tire Rack and Firestone Winterforce snow tires are $73 each. Probably there wasn't a huge chance of killing the Star Specs, but it was there. My wife finally got sick of me waffling back and forth and told me that if I didn't order the snow tires she was going to get all stabby. She sent me off to the local tire installer to get me out of the house and see if I could actually order snow tired down here in Texas. I can't. I did get the Star Specs moved from the factory steel wheels to the set of Touring model alloys that I picked up a few months ago. They're not bad looking wheels really.

I also registered for the rallycross which cost me money out of my budget but I made it another week.
Virtual cash hoard: $300
Mounting: $44
Rallycross registration: $45
New cash hoard: $211

Excellent! You'll enjoy yourself more knowing that you're not trashing your sticky tires. Plus, you'll have a lot more grip in the dirt.

Also, I laughed at "she was going to get all stabby."

Tirerack just emailed to ask what the hell I was doing ordering snow tires for southeast Texas. I resisted the urge to simply reply "because race car" and leave it at that. I guess rallycross was a good enough reason to get them to release the shipping hold, so they're on their way.

mazdeuce wrote: Tirerack just emailed to ask what the hell I was doing ordering snow tires for southeast Texas. I resisted the urge to simply reply "because race car" and leave it at that. I guess rallycross was a good enough reason to get them to release the shipping hold, so they're on their way.

Those guys at The Tire Rack always seem to impress me.

Also I didn't see any Nitrogen tanks when I had some tires mounted last month in South Bend; did I miss the tanks? Do they not push the green valve stem cap kool-aid?

That's the good kind of anal retentive. I've also experienced the bad kind from Tire Rack, where they didn't let me order a particular tire size for my MR2 Spyder (yep, as in would not let me place my order, even after speaking with them on the phone), even though it was known to work by the Spyder crowd. After that I swore I would never order from them again. So far I haven't, but I've mellowed on my hardline stance. It just hasn't worked out so far.

I often search by car, but I NEVER put down a certain car when I order because I've heard a story or two of that happening. I'm not sure if I'm really fooling them, but the snow tires aren't an 'approved' size for the 2 and they're coming anyway. They're only .7 inches taller than stock and the same width, so I'm sure they'll work. Probably.

I'm telling you, man, the best mod I ever did to my car was the Wife-Delete mod.

Sky_Render wrote: I'm telling you, man, the best mod I ever did to my car was the Wife-Delete mod.

Well, aside from the fact that I well and truly love my wife, being a stay at home dad would make the wife delete option a particularly bad one. It would be a little like checking an engine delete box when ordering a corvette. Sure, you'd save a few pounds, but at what cost? Speaking of corvettes, my wife is the same lady who was pressuring me to just go ahead and order a grand sport about a year ago. It was a complicated set of decisions that led me to driving the 2 every day with the kids inside instead of a corvette once a week alone, but I'm quite happy with how things are working out.

mazdeuce wrote:

Sky_Render wrote: I'm telling you, man, the best mod I ever did to my car was the Wife-Delete mod.

Well, aside from the fact that I well and truly love my wife, being a stay at home dad would make the wife delete option a particularly bad one. It would be a little like checking an engine delete box when ordering a corvette. Sure, you'd save a few pounds, but at what cost? Speaking of corvettes, my wife is the same lady who was pressuring me to just go ahead and order a grand sport about a year ago. It was a complicated set of decisions that led me to driving the 2 every day with the kids inside instead of a corvette once a week alone, but I'm quite happy with how things are working out.

It was a joke, hermano.

Sky_Render wrote: It was a joke, *hermano.*

Yep, and it was in poor taste.

...Or people's sense of humor differs.

Regardless, I apologize if it offended anyone. Mods can feel free to delete those posts if they want.

Yeah, you'll be glad you grabbed the winter tires. Heck I tried a rallycross with my all season tires cause that is what I had handy, and even in an awd it wasn't pleasnant. That being said, course surface in rallyx differs largely around the country and site to site. Regardless, star specs are not the right tool for that particular job. Have fun. Make sure to air up the tires, as the sidewall will be very soft. Debeading a tire is a very real concern rallyx on snow tires.

mazduece said: I'd like to try out a road rally or two and I think I'd like to find a long weekend to drive the 15 hours to Deals Gap and see if it's everything that it's supposed to be.

It's not worth the trip. It's a cool road, and you can get some cool pics of your car. But its not worth 15 hours. Heck I live here and I've only bothered to go once.

Now if you do come let me know and we can hit up some other, lesser known roads. I'm just sayin...

When you say road rally, do you mean time speed distance or more like a performance rally/hillclimb?

Tsd. Caging the car isn't an option. I've got to stuff it full of kids to take them to school every morning. Stage rally is a long term goal though. Very long term.

octavious wrote: Now if you do come let me know and we can hit up some other, lesser known roads. I'm just sayin...

Deal. I've driven some roads off the beaten path in southern Ohio/northern Kentucky and was absolutely blown away. Literally hours of turn after turn after turn. Tragically that was in a crappy Toyota pickup. I really want to do it again in a car that doesn't suck. Like the 2. :)

mazdeuce wrote: Stage rally is a long term goal though. Very long term.

For you and me both... I'd really like to do the Roxton Rallye de Paris at some point in the next few years. It's semi-local to us (it's in TX, anyway) and supposedly newbie-friendly.