Mazda2 on $100 a week

Cool. Glad you bought the snow tires now?

sachilles wrote: Cool. Glad you bought the snow tires now?

Thrilled. They show very minimal wear after 10 runs. I can see easily getting two years out of this set. They're a bargain.

Love the concept of this thread, and the car. Very fun watching you budget, actually. Keep the updates coming, and best of luck!

Man are you lucky with the budget... I am loving this thread.. :)

Another autocross this weekend so another $30 down. I also needed more magnet to attach my 1st place sticker to because I'm still irrationally proud of it. Ordered 2x3 feet of magnetic sheet from Dick Blick and figured out which is the good stuff this time. That was $26.35 shipped. Also bought another spray can of red because I also need to make some class numbers for rallycross and I totally need to paint them red to match everything else. Because racecar. The can was $1.50 and change. Round the week to $58.
My inlaws have also been bugging the crap out of me about coming up with something to get me for my birthday/Christmas. I'm getting close to 40 years old, if I want something I buy it. I think we've finally reached a truce with them buying me the motor mount I was going to get. I'll probably order it next week and then they'll leave me alone.
Expenses $58.
Income $100.
Sweet gob of money - $453

The budget is........berkeleyed. But only temporarily. Since I was going to get the motor mount, it only made sense to get a set of 6UL's at the same time. Save shipping, right? And aluminum valve stems. And aluminum lug nuts. And centering rings. Gotta do it right, right? Right?
Ok, I had $453. Add to that $100 for last week, $100 for this week, and $100 for next week because I'll be on vacation and it makes my accounting look good. My inlaws also gave me $100 to more than cover the cost of the motor mount.
$400 in extra money.
$849.35 (round to $850 because I hate pennies) in money to Goodwin Racing.
New balance of...... wait for it......$3!
Now to put tires on those wheels. Dammit. Cars are expensive.

Congrats on the 1st place finish!

Now I just need to make it out to one. Things keep coming up at exactly the wrong time

Small updates.
Installed the motor mount. Two bolts, should have been a 5 minute job. Turns out that the bushing sleeve on the motor end of the mount was a bit too long. I could have tried to return it or something but I decided that shortening it with the grinder was a better option. Grind a little, test fit. Grind a little more, test fit again. Perfect fit.

Stock mount.

New vs. old. New is slightly shorter which is interesting.

New in place.
I'm happy with the mount. Yes, the car vibrates like crazy in comparison but I'm already used to it and it feels normal now. It also seemed to break in a bit and get softer during the rallycross last weekend. Speaking of the rallycross, ran again, won again. I'm still driving conservatively and concentrating on not making mistakes. While this tactic is sure to land you out of the trophies in autocross, it seems to be the hot ticket in rallycross. People are interested in the car which is sort of cool. I had a guy who was working while I drove ask me about the engine. Turns out that on course you can't hear anything other than gravel and tire noise. There was some speculation on course that the car might be electric. Had an absolute blast. Saw a Fiero grenade an engine. Helped that guy pad a race seat with a towel, two jackets and a tire so that he could share the rest of his runs with another driver. The event finished in the dark with Brianne Corn making a run wearing night vision goggles in a car with no lights. That was pretty spooky working the course not being able to see her at all, also pretty awesome. Skipping the SCCA autocross next weekend (which makes me sad) to make extra family time to keep my wife super happy so that I can attend the two day rallycross in three weeks. That should be fun.
Still no tires on my super awesome wheels.

mazdeuce wrote: Tirerack just emailed to ask what the hell I was doing ordering snow tires for southeast Texas.

Oh man that is just too funny...

I guess the thought never crossed my mind.

mazdeuce wrote: The event finished in the dark with Brianne Corn making a run wearing night vision goggles in a car with no lights. That was pretty spooky working the course not being able to see her at all, also pretty awesome.

Wow that sounds incredibly irresponsible and dangerous.
Wonder what their insurance would think of that.

nocones wrote:

mazdeuce wrote: The event finished in the dark with Brianne Corn making a run wearing night vision goggles in a car with no lights. That was pretty spooky working the course not being able to see her at all, also pretty awesome.

Wow that sounds incredibly irresponsible and dangerous. Wonder what their insurance would think of that.

Don't know about the insurance, but it wasn't as bad as you might suspect. The facility is hers and she's run the track probably thousands of times. She has also previously driven the track, at speed, with the night vision goggles on, when it wasn't an event. Everyone was informed over the radio what was happening and we were told to stand still well away from any danger area. We all had a chance to look through the goggles after the event and it's safe to say that she could see the course and the workers better with the goggles on than the competitors driving with their lights on.

Nothing happening. In fact I'm sitting here not Autocrossing when other people locally are. The reason for this is a Christmas tree and family happiness. My wife said it was ok to go race today and they'd get the tree without me, but she was really really happy when I told her I was staying home.
I did register for the 2 day rallycross in two weeks.
Old money: $3.
Add $100, take away $70 for entry fee.
New budget: $33

mazdeuce wrote: My wife said it was ok to go race today and they'd get the tree without me, but she was really really happy when I told her I was staying home.

Sounds like a good decision this week.

Wise move....but maybe get on the local clubs board of directors and see about getting a rallycross at the local christmas tree farm. Do they have christmas tree farms down there, or must you import them from the north country?

Funny you mention that....
The Christmas tree farm we go to is almost exactly two miles down the road. Yes, in Texas. Part of the tree cutting experience is going for a hay ride around the field. The field itself wouldn't be so good for a rallycross, but the old horse pasture next to it looked like it would work quite well. It's not huge, maybe 8 acres or so, but it only has three trees in it. I'm going to ask the guy in charge of rallycross what the going rate is for a site and maybe see what we can do.

This whole budget game can be a downer. I have plenty of money to buy new tires, but my imaginary budget doesn't. I have gotten the wheels out to look at them a few times. A 7.5 inch wheel is a lot wider than a 6 inch wheel. Hell, it's wider than the 195 tire that I'm supposed to mount on there. And they're so light. I like them already.

Since I couldn't spend money on car stuff, I decided to step into the future and get a tablet computer thingy. After much hemming and hawing I ended up with a Nexus 7. The main reason I went with the Nexus is the GPS chip in it. This allows me to run a GPS mapping program without having to have a cell phone and it's associated contracts and data. I've only had it for 4 days and all I'm doing that's car related so far is running NavFree. The program is ok, and it's fantastic for being free but I'll probably end up trying some of the paid navigation apps eventially. Once I had the Nexus I had to mount it. I didn't have to include the Nexus in my car budget because it's technically not a car thing. I would have to include a mount though and I didn't want to do that. Using a pair of scissors, a utility knife, and this old broken storage box:

I fashioned a mount and a latch that I stuck to the steering column with command strips. It works fantastic. Yes, it covers up the gauges but the GPS app has a spedometer in the corner so I know how fast I'm going. I'm not sure that this is the final location for it, but it's working and it's free.

I had $33 last week and I add $100 to the budget for this week.
$30 for autocross entry for Sunday.
$25 for Texas Rally Sport stickers and t-shirt that I'll pick up at the event in two weeks.
Current budget is $78. Not enough for tires.

This weekend is the Texas Rally Sport Texas State Championships. That's probably a little optimistically named with only 10 drivers pre-registered for the event, but there will certainly be more showing up and it should be awesome. Four courses over two days of competition. I'm excited.
I got around to putting mud flaps on the front of the car finally. It was throwing enough rocks hard enough that I was getting rock chips on the rockers. Lucking it's a silver car so they're invisible but it still seemed prudent to get something in place. I'd love to order a set of Rally Armor flaps, but I'm cheap, so instead I dropped $10 at autozone for a set of cheap universal flaps and put them on. I just pulled the mounting hardware for the fender liner, punched some holes in the flaps and put them on. Turns out I'm cheap and lazy. I debated using sturdier hardware but in the end I decided that I'd rather have them rip out without bending the sheet metal. They feel sturdy. We'll see if they last.

The last thing I had to do was make the 2's for my class numbers. I have enough magnetic numbers that I've made over the years for my car number and the first half of my class. I'm in S2. The S came from my HS days autocrossing and I've recently added a T and and F to it to run in STF. Now it's time to make the 2s. It's always surprises me when people ask me where I buy my numbers. I just assumed that everyone makes them, not buys them. The process is simple. First cut numbers out of bulk magnetic sheet.

Then haul the numbers out the the paint booth and paint them with high quality flexible paint for a long life. Or paint them on the lawn with the cheapest paint you can buy. Either way works.

Ready to rallycross again. I'm going to bring my camera this weekend so hopefully I can get some pictures of the event.

Well that was a very short lived mud flap. Dammit.

I think it died when I was going sideways through the dirt. . Perhaps the mudflap maker in China never planned on that sort of abuse. Time to rethink.
I'm also worried about the longevity of the stock rubber air dam thingie. What's nuts is that if I break it off then I'd technically not be legal for STF I don't think.

RallyArmor sells universal mud flaps for like $20 for a set of four. I had a set "installed" on a previous car and they lasted a winter without issue. Might be worth considering.

And you can go to ikea and get cutting boards of a similar material and make your own. If the are cutting boards the don't come out of the car budget.

I thought I was rough on the air dam on Saturday. Ha. I was just tickling it. Sunday was rough. It will never be the same. The whole car will never be the same.


If I ever complain about dust you can feel free to punch me in the nuts and then remind me about mud. So far I'm three hours into cleaning off the car and I'm not done yet. I'm hoping I can get it as clean as I want it with another two hours of cleaning.
I'll post a full race report when the final results show up. It was an exciting weekend of racing. After two days and three courses first and second in my class were 6 seconds apart. Made some great friends. Had a ball. If you're in central or east Texas, you should come join us.

remind me never to buy your car. id hate to have to rebuild THAT suspension.

makes me wanna rallycross something, though.

glad you had fun.

Some thoughts on mud........
First off, the mud you saw above wasn't from the course that we ran. The Texas Rally Sport State Championships were run at Texas World Speedway. The site is awesome and has three big areas to set up courses. One drains really well. One, not as good, and the third can get soggy. On Saturday we had sprinkles, but no real rain and we ran one course on the lower section and one on the middle section. On Sunday morning we had a downpour. The soggy parts got soggy and the well drained parts drained. We ran a course in the morning on the dry stuff and then it was decided that we didn't have a suitable spot to run an afternoon course without things getting too sloppy to be reasonable. That's when we kicked some cones around and set up a play course where it was muddy. The guys who run the event and set the courses would never make someone run in what we were running in. It was just stupid to be honest. Stupid and fun.
Then I had to wash the car. I've got about five hours into cleaning the car off. It's not quite concourse clean, but it's getting close. Quite frankly I had no idea it would take that much work to clean the car. I'm not sure I would have taken those dozen fun runs if I did. What I really feel bad about is taking a couple of runs in someone else's car. That.....was not nice, even though he offered the car up and encouraged me to do it.
I'm pretty sure that I don't like mud any more. I'll take lung choking dust any day. With all of that said, it does wash off. The car is clean again and I'm ready to get it dirty again.

My last budget read $78
I get $100 for last week and there's nothing more going on this week or next for another $200.
That leaves me headed into the new year with $378. Not too shabby.

mazdeuce wrote: If I ever complain about dust you can feel free to punch me in the nuts.......

I don't mind being friendly on a car forum but this pushes my "comfort" factor. I haven't purposely punched a guy in the nuts since the 5th grade.

Do I have any options?

You can just skip the punching and move right on to reminding me what I said about dust and mud and what not. That would be OK.