How Many Hours a Week Did You Spend On Your Finished Track Car?

At the moment I am well behind on my reading and I've just gotten to the November issue of GRM. Tom's column mentioned  working 10hrs a week if you plan on finishing your project car.

My immediate thought was that's not true. Conversely I am sure Tom is accurate as once a project loses momentum it's as good as over for most folks.Most of my projects involved 3-5hrs per week.  I tend to work 30 minutes 1-3 week days and then maybe 6-7hrs every other Saturday. So I'm working maybe 4-5hrs a week.

I've almost always started with a vehicle that was running when parked or had simple issue like needing an engine rebuild. My rules is to get any project running and driving first. After that I start modifying it. 

It took me 20 months to finish the Datsun; I took it from a running bone stock 1200 to a fully caged SCCA race legal car. My vintage motocross bike took me 7 months. The D-sports racer was done in a year but a large amount of work was done by my fabricator; it would have taken me at least another year.

So out of curiosity how many hours a week have you dedicated to your finished projects cars?

I don't currently have a project, but I'm curious what everyone else says.

That article stuck out to me as the reason none of my projects get completed 😂

Tom1200 said:week.

I've almost always started with a vehicle that was running when parked or had simple issue like needing an engine rebuild. My rules is to get any project running and driving first. After that I start modifying it. 

Ditto.  Iterative development/optimization.  Make it work, then make it work better.

Which also means it is never "finished".  So in a way, Tom is right.  I'll never finish.

Not to mention that I currently have four projects...

This winter I'm maybe doing 1 hour a week at the moment if that but I parked a working car in the garage at the end of last season so it really only needs routine maintenance along with a few upgrades. Most of that work is stuff I can do in a weekend or two so the motivation just hasn't been there but it is starting to come back.

The last two winters though it was probably closer to 5-10 hours/week as the projects were much larger and took a lot more time. I also was targeting mid April events which meant the car needed to be on the ground as soon the roads were clear to start sorting it all out ahead of that. 

When I buily my champcar, it was probably 15 to 20 hours a week for about 9 months.

For the rx8, it was probably similar, but only about 3 or 4 months until I had a running / driving car.

Since I built the rx8, it has probably averaged to about 4 to 5 hours a week making it better and refining it.  Sometimes that means 20 hours in a week and sometimes none.

The last 2 weeks have been 20 hour weeks.  This week will probably be 6 or 7.  I will probably maintain that schedule until the challenge in late March. 

I probably average 6 or so a week during racing season and when its warm enough leading up to it. I'm hoping that slows down a bit once the car is mostly done. There are always more tweaks. Last year was getting a stock car reconditioned and trackable. This is more about safety and reliability. Next year will probably focus more on performance like an engine build.

I started with a functional A4 at the end of May 2024 and started gutting it. In June, we had a roll cage party and got to work on the cage. By the end of last year, I was running in HPDE events with it to test it out. That's a seat, belts, window net, probably-legal (but not-yet-inspected) cage, etc. I still need a few things: brake master cylinder, transponder... that's pretty much it. But to get here, June and July were basically work, then home, then stay up for 4 hours working on the cage. 5 days a week. Then on the weekends, I'd devote a whole day to the car. Almost all of the work got done in the Summer of 24. I get about 5 hours a week now, and that's barely going to be enough to finish the last minute things (like the aforementioned bits, and the second drive shaft hoop).

I intend to spend very little time maintaining it going forward. It should be reliable, and I won't be doing more than a handful of races per season. Obviously, things that break will get attention, but once I fix things, it'll just be... sitting there.

Andy Hollis said:

Tom1200 said:week.

I've almost always started with a vehicle that was running when parked or had simple issue like needing an engine rebuild. My rules is to get any project running and driving first. After that I start modifying it. 

Ditto.  Iterative development/optimization.  Make it work, then make it work better.

Which also means it is never "finished".  So in a way, Tom is right.  I'll never finish.

 

We've been optimizing the Datsun for the last 40 years. 

Pretty sure the car will never be done.

I've had multiple track / race cars. Only 1 was ever finished - courtesy of the Turn 5 wall at Riverside.

I built a SpecMiata from a roller to race ready over the course of one spring/summer/fall. The other side of the coin is I've been poking away at my Challenge car for a decade, I think.

I mean, you can always say that no project car is ever done, but a lot of it is just maintenance and adaptation. By that same standard, that brand-new Toyota someone bought today will never be done, either, because it'll get oil changes, new batteries, tire and brake replacements, etc., until it's scrapped. I think it's good to define and frame your objectives, and if you want, to use stages (like Andy's iterative development). That way, you can actually finish something, before moving onto the next thing. Scope creep is real, but this is how I manage it. Stage 1 of the Audi: get it legal to race and get it onto a track this year. Follow the GCR. Stage 2: bigger turbo and support hardware, tune the software, replace the glass with plastic, use lighter wheels. Stage 2 should be ready before the 2026 season commences, but it can start anytime during the 2025 season.

I generally get eight to ten hours of shop time a week.  That gets used for everything from building a new car to maintaining the current fleet of race cars and daily driver to cleaning the shop.

What is a "Finished track car"?

One common theme I see from usernames I recognize with some pretty wild project cars, is the emphasis on taking things in chunks that result in the car having the least amount of down time necessary to achieve the goals.

I think it's so much easier to stay motivated on a project that feels like you're nearing the endzone. vs when you're going on month 19 of lots of work and never getting to enjoy the project (unless building is the part that brings you joy, which I don't relate too)

and to answer the original question, I am 3 months into my current e46 wagon m3 swap project. (1 month I was in a different state with zero progress) I've had 4-5 weekends of 10-15 hours of progress, pulling the entire drivetrain/brake/abs systems out of each car and rebuilding the S54 motor. but the rest of the time has been a couple hours each weekend plus my goal to get at least 1 task on the swap done each day. Some days it's 15 minutes disassembling the auto trans throttle pedal to remove the stepdown switch. other days it's a couple hours replacing the rod bearings. but at the end of each week I've got 5-6 less things to do that weekend than I did when I ended the previous weekend.

I also tend to find, for myself, just getting out into the garage is the hardest part. once I overcome that hurdle each day, progress comes easy.

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

I have a friend who enjoys the build process but couldn't care less about the driving part.

He's got a Pinto Country Squire Wagon that has a really trick digital dashboard; the dash was an experiment. Once it was done he moved on to the next project..................the Pinto has no door panels and the interior is just scary...........but that wasn't part of the experiment.

My track car is currently 'finished' because it is also a part-time street car. The next stage would be fully gutted with a cage, but I need a dedicated track car for that. Brakes are currently more sufficient than the tires, and more power would drop my laptimes but not make me a faster driver. The plan for this year is just track time and maintenance in between. 

In reply to cyow5 :

The 40 year timeline on our 1200 went like this.

1984 - 1989 street car.

1989 - 1990 H-Stock autocross car

1990-1991 D-street prepared

1991-2010 SCCA GT-5 regional race car and E-Prepared autocross car.

2010 to date; vintage race car, track day and time trial car.

The suspension and brake set up has been on the car since 1992-93.

The car was at 1740lbs and is now down to 1652lbs. 

We started with the stock 1200 engine (68hp) went to a JDM motor (83hp) then a 1200 "race" motor (73 at the wheels) to a 1500cc motor (99 at the wheels) and now back to a vintage legal mild 1200cc making about 78-80hp at the wheels. This summer we'll be installing a slightly more aggressive motor that should be around 88-90 at the wheels. 

There is not much more that can be done without making the car less reliable. It's possible to pull another 30-40lbs out of it but that will have little effect on lap times.

We'll see if it's ever done.

I used to put in around 18 hours a week when restoring or prepping a car - an hour or two on weekdays and 6-8 per day one weekends.  Less dedication than that and the projects seemed to rake forever!