Binky has a little brother coming.

See, I knew there was a reason I stare every time I see a Mitsubishi Mirage. It's a secret racecar. 
 

Say what you will, I'd have a pink one. Do they come in manual? I know the Spark does. If you can find one. 

Toyota Yaris. Once you get it home and drive it to work for two weeks, you want to unload it again for any price. 

In reply to barefootskater :

yes, they are slightly more expensive than a spark, but you can actually disable tc/abs.  its about 11-12k for a manual es hatchback.where a spark will be 9500-10.5k for similar manual base model. brand new with a 10/100k warranty 

I think Nik & Richard would be flattered if we had a "Bad Obsession" UTCC class inspired by this build.  Might be fun...

barefootskater said:

I didn't see, and I'm sure I could look it up, but I wonder what the spec kit cost. Can't be too cheap with the cage and all. Either way, looks like a good time. Probably the only way I'd ever get to do w2w. 

Over £2900 which is  close to $3500 

If you don't mind risking your money on the unknowns of Champ car or LeMons racing.( A very few racers finish on the last lap and it's not real racing since it's very much an endurance event )  

The cheapest wheel to wheel for one driver is still Small clubs racing who do it for the fun rather than to make money. 
 

SCCA is reasonably close behind but the cost of operating a big club and the insurance to protect the top management from liability adds to the costs.  

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

For those posting about cage needs in a low powered car, I think you still need a decent, triangulated cage cuz...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh5Wys6Bn28

Go to 4:00 to see a real good wreck in these things...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecPJ1Mm8Rks

Not so much the relatively low speeds, but the fact that it's a spec series composed of identical small light cars. When you're building a cage for a Lemons/Chump car, you're worrying about the other cars (bigger and/or faster) that might hit you. My Starlet has a way overbuilt cage for the stock 58hp, but I didn't build it around that fact, I worry more about getting creamed by a heavy Crown Vic or something 3000lbs going twice as fast as me.

In reply to barefootskater :

Yup, though I'll give you that the Spark's 1.2L I4 is slightly more than the Mirage's I3.

So it comes down to how easily you can mess with the ECU, how easy you can modify the Mirage versus the Spark (disable traction controls, installation of cage, ect), average price, and tire choices.

frenchyd said:

barefootskater said:

I didn't see, and I'm sure I could look it up, but I wonder what the spec kit cost. Can't be too cheap with the cage and all. Either way, looks like a good time. Probably the only way I'd ever get to do w2w. 

Over £2900 which is  close to $3500 

If you don't mind risking your money on the unknowns of Champ car or LeMons racing.( A very few racers finish on the last lap and it's not real racing since it's very much an endurance event )  

The cheapest wheel to wheel for one driver is still Small clubs racing who do it for the fun rather than to make money. 
 

SCCA is reasonably close behind but the cost of operating a big club and the insurance to protect the top management from liability adds to the costs.  

I wonder if the NHS's existence plays a part.  The liability insurance would probably be a hell of a lot cheaper.

I would think messing with ECU  stops it from being street legal in many places , 

Do they leave the Cat on it ?

Cool project  , we need some team to do an IROC version , build 12 of them  and rent them for a race series......

Late to the party.  I watched it over breakfast yesterday.  To those commenting on the adequacy of the roll cage.  Something to be aware of.   While there are probably more race license competition in this country than the UK, I bet there is a far far higher % of the population in the UK than here.  Outside of drag racing I think there is a far higher % of the population involved in competition over there than here.  I know there are over 30,000 competition license holders in the UK alone, and they are closely aligned with rules, regulations and standards in main land Europe.  I think they probably have a great handle on what is/isn't safe, effective and practical at various levels of performance than we do here.  Not saying more isn't better, I'm saying that this level of prep has been proven to be very effective and cages similar to this are used in far bigger faster cars as well.  Also based on a life time of attending club racing on both sides of the Atlantic, I'd say the average club race is far more rough and tumble over there then here, so safety gets tested more frequently.  

As a follow up to the above post on safety, which I do stand by, there is this to consider.  The below vid is called 'Lanes Rallying;.  Please note helmets are specifically NOT ALLOWED as it's often on publicly accessible land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42TG2xHOD8M

EDIT.  OK, how do you embed vids these days?

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

Looks like fun. Lots of Miatae.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said

EDIT.  OK, how do you embed vids these days?

it's the icon/button with the "+" . It's next to the image button

frenchyd said:

barefootskater said:

I didn't see, and I'm sure I could look it up, but I wonder what the spec kit cost. Can't be too cheap with the cage and all. Either way, looks like a good time. Probably the only way I'd ever get to do w2w. 

Over £2900 which is  close to $3500 

If you don't mind risking your money on the unknowns of Champ car or LeMons racing.( A very few racers finish on the last lap and it's not real racing since it's very much an endurance event )  

The cheapest wheel to wheel for one driver is still Small clubs racing who do it for the fun rather than to make money. 
 

SCCA is reasonably close behind but the cost of operating a big club and the insurance to protect the top management from liability adds to the costs.  

I don't think you have been to a lemons or champcar race in awhile.....

It is basically an all out sprint for 8 to 10 hours with finishes being within 3 or 4 laps at the end amongst the top 5 cars.  Many races the top 3 are on the same lap.

The races at pbir last weekend has finishes of 25 seconds separating 1st and second on Saturday and 6 seconds on Sunday.

Also, about 75% of the cars that start finish the race these days.

bearmtnmartin said:

Toyota Yaris. Once you get it home and drive it to work for two weeks, you want to unload it again for any price. 

same can be said about a gen 1 chevy cruze 1.8 non turbo, even with 3 pedals I am considering of pedaling to work instead... 

10% throttle? 80% throttle? WOT? all feels the same. 

also it has no cruise control which is ironic. 

Does B Spec racing still exist?  Surely that would be the best way to do something like this.  A class within a class for one of the eligible models.  Come up with a spec kit, even if those cars are a few tenths, or a few seconds off the 'hot car' for the class, running with an existing class would make an easy way to introduce it.

This whole "spec slow car" thing comes up here every now and again. I don't think I've ever been to a club race weekend where I thought the real problem is too few classes running. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

The issue isn't lack of classes.  It's lack of cheap, affordable classes with new-ish, cheap to buy cars and ultra cheap consumables.  These cars are cheaper to run than Spec Miata's and the cars are still being made, unlike old Miata's which are, around here and in many other places, rusty and no so cheap plus totally ragged out.  Also many people claim they don't fit a Miata. 

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

Does B Spec racing still exist? 

It did last year...
https://www.scca.com/videos/2037566

I think one challenge is the Fit kit is $3000... which doesn't include the car or the cage

And I'm not sure what the other 'homologated' kits out there are... or how to acquire them.
 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

I'm unlikely to ever have a horse in the race, but if I did it would have to be something way cheaper than spec Miata. If I'm going to race whee to wheel, I want to be competitive, and for me that means cheap entry spec racing. Even better if I can keep it street legal. From my seat, a spec Miata may as well be a GT3-RS. 

FWIW, I built my SpecMiata for less than $8K in 2006 and actually sold it for more than that after racing it for two seasons. I had even less than that in my ITB VWs. Now, that's all old data at this point. If I were to go racing today and was budget limited I think I'd look at one of the Production classes and run an upgraded IT car. B-Spec would be my next choice. Otherwise , I don't know what other low cost classes there are. SCCA's two best subscribed classes are SpecRacer and SpecMiata if having a popular class mattered to me.

Edit: If you want track time a SpecMiata can be run in multiple classes, SM, ITA, Touring,etc, which helps "amortize" the initial cost of the car.

I think I mentioned this in one of the Binky episodes, but Brit rust works differently to what I'm used to.  My suspension parts always look much nicer, but the odds of all the bolts coming out without the use of a hot wrench and violence are much poorer.  Particularly on Honda and Toyota based products.

I realize this is meant to be a budget, budget build, but does anyone else wish they'd spent a few mins with a wire brush and some left over rattle cans of black just to tidy things up, especially the front subframe and rear twist beam before putting it all back together?

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

The issue isn't lack of classes.  It's lack of cheap, affordable classes with new-ish, cheap to buy cars and ultra cheap consumables.  These cars are cheaper to run than Spec Miata's and the cars are still being made, unlike old Miata's which are, around here and in many other places, rusty and no so cheap plus totally ragged out.  Also many people claim they don't fit a Miata. 

There are no new-ish, cheap to buy cars in the US, period.  Even an eight year old "B spec" class car is going to be $3000-10,000 depending on what you are looking for.

Believe me I would LOVE to have a Fit or a Mazda2 but they are freakin' expensive...