Tyler H said:What I'm hearing is latent stress from your job. Forgetting about that for a couple days is the second-biggest part of the racing experience.
TBH it's more than latent. It's getting close to occasional burn out symptoms. And I haven't been able to drive on track at all last year due to the achilles tendon issue. That didn't help.
You're presumably rational. At one point, this seemed like a good idea. Push through and get through one race weekend in it before you pull the plug. Only after that can you make an informed decision.
Well, I'm not too sure about the rational bit...
I'm trying to push through, but I'm also aware that unless I want to deal with exemptions and all that jazz, I'll have to run a couple of races this year so I'd be able to renew my SCCA club racing license. That's added pressure that I don't need, but I may just rent a car for one or two races.
loosecannon said:Are there any karting clubs close to you? Karting gets you plenty of seat time for relatively little expense as long as you don't crash, and all you need is a small trailer and some hand tools. Plus there is a class in autocross for karts.
There's more of a rumour of a karting club around here, haven't had much luck to find a good lead. I do live in a bit of a motorsports desert...
That said, I've been the proud owner of an SCCA club race license that I haven't been able to use last year, mostly due to injury reasons.
docwyte said:In reading all your threads, beyond some consistently bad luck with vehicles, I'm struck with one real thought.
You just don't have the time to handle all the project stuff you want to do. This is complicated by the lack of a good, trusted shop that you can farm all the work out to.
There's certainly a case of too many projects and too little time. I'm still trying to get the hang of not having any "project" time during the week, which was the one major change with the current job.
I've actually farmed most of the work out by now other than the formula car and the RX8, mainly because I haven't decided if I'm not better off selling that the RX8 as is instead of dumping more money into it that I won't get back. I do have a trusted shop for street/track/auto-X cars but I haven't take the FST there yet. Mainly because it was one of those quick Sunday fixes that turned into months of fiddling and I hate taking a partially disassembled car to anybody.
Honestly I'd sell anything that's a "project". Sell the RX8, sell the race car/trailer, sell anything that's not late model and doesn't need anything but oil changes and gas to keep it going.
That's pretty much the plan, just haven't figured out the order of sales yet. I'm a bit hamstrung because I can only sell three cars annually without a dealer license, but I'm considering a pretty severe overhaul of the fleet. Basically to the extent where we have an SUV for my wife, a sporty car with a dual clutch transmission for myself (dual clutch so my wife can drive it if necessary), the Diesel beater truck and one raceable vehicle.
Then decide what you want to do. My suggestion is either take the ND or MINI out to auto-x and/or light track days, or see if you can do an "arrive and drive" either in a race or DE setting. Even tho arrive and drive seems like a lot of money, I think it may be cheaper for you.
There are some arrive and drive deals in the SF region - the ones I've used in the past, I wasn't very impressed with the quality of the car for the money, but I should probably look into that.
Another angle I'm currently investigating is a much newer/less used car that popped up not too far away that can serve as both a race and DE car, and is already log booked. I do want to run at least a few races to figure out if it's worth continuing or just going back to DE/Time Trials.
You'll save a ton of time (which is short supply for you) plus save in prep costs,repair costs, etc, etc. You can do what you really want, which is to have a fun time at the track...
That would indeed be very nice...
