GM W-body as Crap-can racer?: Grassroots Motorsports forum: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

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Dec. 26, 2011 10:52 a.m. HappyAndy HalfDork

A kid in my neighborhood had a Pontiac GXP that he was offering to me for $250. It had a decent body, non working supercharger, fouled cooling system (thanks to dexcool), and lots of hacked up wiring. The car ran and it had under 100K miles so my guess is that the supercharger only needed a new coupler and could be fixed cheaply.

My thought is that for a weekends worth of work this heap could be brought back to good running condition. And for a bit more effort turned into a craptackular crapcan racer by removal of the AC system and addition of an external trans cooler, as well as all the other customary crapcan racer mods.

So my question to the GRM collective is, would this be a complete waste of my time or am I onto a viable concept. I don't like the fact that this particular car has a slushbox, but in my area running W bodies can be had all day long for pocket change, and dead and dieing ones for free. I don't know much about these cars and I am not a fan of GM cars in general, but cheap plentiful sturdy and supercharged sounds like a good crapcan racer recipe to me. If I'm completely nutty let me know. ,
Dec. 26, 2011 10:54 a.m. N Sperlo SuperDork

At $250xx, you could drop it off for recycling and make a profit.
Dec. 26, 2011 11:00 a.m. Ranger50 Dork

Tons of those cars around... I would fix the wiring, SC, and the trans. As the trans will puke SOMETHING at some time in the future.

I wouldn't have a problem DD one of these cars either. You can pretty much fix them with simple tools after you have the codes causing the problems.
Dec. 26, 2011 11:21 a.m. mad_machine SuperDork

buy it, salvage the SC, and drop the rest off to be recycled?
Dec. 26, 2011 11:46 a.m. Gearheadotaku Dork

Sounds like you are on the right track to me.
Dec. 26, 2011 11:46 a.m. novaderrik Dork

there have been a few teams that have tried supercharged 3.8's in Chumpcar and/or Lemons, and i think they have a survival rate about as high as the small block Chevy cars that don't get a baffled road race style oil pan installed..
Dec. 26, 2011 1:00 p.m. Travis_K SuperDork

Having driven one, there are many better cars you can get for that purpose.
Dec. 26, 2011 2:30 p.m. 93gsxturbo HalfDork

If the body is nice, can you get it, fix it, and send it down the road?

Around here if the body is clean thats a $3000 car once its all fixed up nice.
Dec. 26, 2011 2:53 p.m. HappyAndy HalfDork

I think the kid sold it a couple of days ago I told him he could get more than he was asking from just for scrapping it. I hope thats not what he did, I'll find out in a few days.

As I mentioned in my first post these things are like stray cats around here (at least the NA versions) so if I really wanted to persue this it would be easy.

In reply to Travis K: I know that there are better handling cars, and cars that would certainly be more competitive, but my point is that in my area there is a nearly inexhaustable supply of almost free W bodies. I've owned and driven dozens of SAAB c900s and I know that I could asemble one of those as a crap can racer, It might even be a front runner, but it would cost more to build and maintain, as would most other good handling and front running crapcans. I,m looking for cheap and easy.
Dec. 26, 2011 3:00 p.m. Travis_K SuperDork

Yeah, I know the cheap part is the most important, a W body just seems kinda fragile and not that much fun to drive. Cheap doesnt help if the car only survives a few laps. lol I like the idea of getting it running and selling it to fund something else.