LeMons Budget...

What is a realisitic Budget to run a LeMons event? I am thinking 5-8 thousand dollars, including the car, safety stuff, entry fees, gas, spare parts, tires, etc.

Am I wayy off? Thin king of doing this with guys who haven't raced, and am trying to figure out how to get them in the racing "groove" as it were. So I am slo trying to figure out how to get them into say SCCA driving school, get them safety stuff, etc.

ANY thoughs on running LeMons would be very, very helpful. Used to crew for an SCCA team that ran endurance racing, so I know a little bit about it...buit just enough to be dangerous.

Chris

You'll save a ton of money if you can borrow safety gear from other racers, since you're trying to get a bunch of rookies into racing. Personal safety gear will nearly double the budget for the event if everybody buys their own stuff, even cheap crappy stuff.

If you pick a common car with a readily available cage (think Civic) you can do the entire event for $3k if you have 6 drivers. My Thunderhill LeMons team competed for $500 per driver (with 6 drivers) and that covered EVERYTHING except for travel and personal safety gear. Gas, tires, safety gear, entry fees, license fees, transponder rental, spare parts, etc. It takes some work selling off spare parts, welding in your own cage, etc. but it can be done. We borrowed a lot of personal safety gear from racer friends, shared hotel rooms, carpooled, etc. to cut down costs further.

Search this board and you'll find plenty of chatter about LeMons budgets.

Bryce

For our ChumpCar effort (a similar series to LeMons) we're trying to keep it to about $500 per driver and we have 6 drivers. That doesn't include the driver's personal safety equipment (suit, helmet, shoes, gloves, neck collar), just entry fees, car cost, parts, tires/wheels, and safety equipment. That is about $3000.

Since I didn't have a legal helmet (needed a closed face and my new AutoX helmet was not) or a suit, I had to buy them. Since it is near the end of the season, I was able to find some decent deals and bought an SA2000 helmet and a current suit and gloves for about $200. The shoes are another $50 and the collar and Nomex headsock will probably be another $50. That's $300 more per driver which potentially brings the total to $4800+ depending on the cost of your personal equipment.

BTW, looking at the LeMons rules you can share safety equipment (while gross) is legal, but in ChumpCar you can only share driver suits amongst drivers, each person must have their own helmet to ensure a proper fit. Plan on at least shoes since foot size is pretty variable.

Finally, this doesn't include the track support equipment, truck, trailer, tools, food, gas, spare parts, etc. The truck/trailer could be borrowed or rented and the tools/spares can be tricky if you have none. If you don't have these answered already, you're in trouble.

Good luck!

$3,000 is pretty reasonable if you don't include personal safety gear and travel expenses. The more unusual the car, although desirable as a basis for a theme, the more expensive it'll be. If you're already an automotive enthusiast for a particular make and model, you can save some bucks through the shared enthusiast communities for that marque. If you don't have any of these and you go with an unusual setup, the price can skyrocket quickly. It's still cheaper than "real" racing, but the delta rapidly closes at that point.

The key is to go into it with a desire to have fun. If you go into it trying to win, you'll be miserable, disappointed and out a lot of money!

Good luck! WW

you guys are way underestimating the cost to prep the car. $500 is one thing, but the safety items are waht really add up. and Lemons entry fees are $500/car plus $100/driver. plus $50 if you don't have a racing license. count on spending at least $4000 just to prep the car.

it's (relatively) cheap W2W racing, but that doens't mean it's cheap.

Buzz Killington wrote: you guys are way underestimating the cost to prep the car. ... count on spending at least $4000 just to prep the car.

If you're referring to $3k for 6 drivers all inclusive but excluding personal safety gear and travel costs that I mentioned, that isn't a number I made up, that's from actual LeMons experience. How in the world are you spending $4000 (!!!) just to prep the car?

Bryce

Are you building the car or paying to have it done. RE the cage, Brakes- all the safety stuff that doesnt go into the budget. We built our first car for about 2k. But we did everything ourselves. Built the cage , plus all the work on the car., Like a timing belt, water pump etc.

The car we are building now we are paying to have the cage put in so it will be about 500 to 800 more. Plus we have a $0 car. meaning what we sold off the car paid for the car. So that give us a $500 buget for the engine and misc items. So that $$ is a wash. but there are alway unexpected things Like tires for the tow vechile that Blow out on the way to the track etc..

B

3-4k not including personal safety gear is pretty realistic if you do all the work yourselves. Jensenman and I built our car and entered it for about 600 each(6 drivers). We built the cage, did all the construction, 6 wheel and tires, water pump, alt, fuel pump, belts, hoses, and exhaust. Even got a trophy for "Most Likely To Leave In An Ambulance" Had a blast!

Ran the same car the next year with a newsed engine and transmission. Off the top of my head it cost us about 400 each. Totaled it. Blown engine, smashed front and back. Still had a blast!

The next car is sitting beside the house now. Car with 8 wheels was only about $100.00. (the wheels were free) Going to have a blast again just as soon as we find the time to build the damn thing.

Don't build it to be fast, build it to last. First race we had a T-bird with a V6. Slow as sin. The only thing we passed in the straights was a diesel MB. But it was like the Energizer Bunny. It kept going and going. Our top speed by the end of the second day was about 38MPH on 4 cylinders and one gear. We finished 36th out of 90. The next race, same car. We built for speed, 5.8l V8, 3 speed manual trans. The only thing we couldn't pass was a Mustang GT in the straights, and no one could get passed us in the corners. We spent more time fixing it than driving it. I think we finished in the 70s. Another local team showed up with a Saturn. Slow as hell, but they finished 11th.

The Wartburg came with free entry fees for our team and crew and we are still planning on $800 per driver plus personal equipment. Once you factor in all the safety equipment, especially a custom cage since autopower doesnt seem to have a wartburg cage, travel, fuel, etc etc etc....

Like most things hobby car related, whatever you think it will cost....it will be more.

Thanks for the responses, guys!

Chris

I think the key differentiator here is the presumption that if you want to keep the price low, you've got to do the vast majority of the work yourself. If you have to pay someone else to do work, even if it's safety cost exempt, it's going to dramatically increase the cost of the car.

I know of one car that was campaigned at the 2008 LeMons event that the team had almost $10k in the car because they had no mechanical aptitude and had to pay to have all the safety requirements built and installed by someone else.

We had $4200 or something into the entire event for our third try. We can't seem to get the cost down much below that. With three races this season at Kershaw - it's unlikely we'll make all of them.

Keep the responses coming, guys!

Chris

Our first race we spent about $2800 total including two nights in a hotel. That's one suit and helmet between three guys, which is gross. We were one of the "top" five slowest cars on the track. I figured it would cost $2700ish to cover expenses for two cars last week in Houston. I've been able to build cars for around $1500, but I do EVERYTHING to them myself.

but most races you cant get away with one suit any more since everyone fueling needs to be in a full suit as well.

We'll have just about $1000 into the car when done but like you that's doing everything ourselves, starting with a free car and getting alot of parts very cheap or free.

Nashco wrote:

Buzz Killington wrote: you guys are way underestimating the cost to prep the car. ... count on spending at least $4000 just to prep the car.

If you're referring to $3k for 6 drivers all inclusive but excluding personal safety gear and travel costs that I mentioned, that isn't a number I made up, that's from actual LeMons experience. How in the world are you spending $4000 (!!!) just to prep the car? Bryce

i'm probably a little high on the prep cost, but not by much...i can't remember off the top of my head what our actual costs have been (incl. steel for the cage, seat, harness, wheels, spare wheels, tires, spare tires, brakes, spare brake parts, other spares, etc). of course a lot of that is variable (e.g., choosing $35 175/70/13 pep boys all seasons instead of sticky 15" shoes), but i'm operating from the assumption you're trying to build a reasonably fast car.

getting a car bought and prepped and covering your entry fees for $500/person seems to be pushing it. for a car that's already been built, sure. just going off the 5 lemons event i've done.

tires- $500

entry fees- $1000

fuel- $350

brakes- $200

food- $200

Those are the reoccurring costs. Add: $500 for cage,$200 for seat, $150 for belts, another $200 for fire bottle and all the other little things. This does not include the cost of the car, spares or each driver's gear.

It's worth it!

KT

The actual $500 car is the cheapest part of the whole thing. The required safety equipment (cage, tires, brakes, fire suits etc) are the expensive part, at least for the first year. If you can build your own cage etc it saves a heap of money.

Once the car is built and all the safety stuff (cage etc) is paid for the first year and assuming the car didn't get balled up or Cursed, the next year your costs go down dramatically. At that point it's just beating out whatever got dented, fixing whatever overheated etc., paint for the new theme, maybe some tires and brakes and the entry fee and you are back in business.

x2 what Jensenman said. I looked into joining a team with an established car, the cost sans personal safety gear looked to run around $1500 per person for one race spread across 4 drivers, that's a $6000 budget for the race including travel to and fro, food, lodging (if you can call a tent that), entry fees, licenses, spares, gasoline, tires. Since I've never done Lemons I figured the better way to get involved was to join a team whose 'been there, done that' as far as the upfront costs. After working with a team of buddies on a track car for the past several years, I know the pain of trying to get something like that done and really don't want to go there again...

When you factor in the car, safety equipment, repairs, to get it to the race you're looking at something like $2-3k for just the car, so add that to the $6k and figure your first race you'll need a budget around $8-9k (I'm being conservative with my estimate based on the team I've been courting's spreadsheets) unless you actually know what you're doing!