Our $500 dollar race car build

Back in August of 2009 my wife saw this car for sale while she was jogging, the asking price was $500.00 I said that's an OK car but, I don't really need another car in the yard, and we forgot about it. We had been thinking of racing in the 24 hours of Lemons, but all the races were really far away. Then we found out about Chump Car racing, and they were going to have two races close to us, Nashville, and Putnam Park. But were were we going to find a $500.00 race car? Then we remembered the 300zx we saw about a month ago. Would it still be there? It was still for sale, it looks like we may be racing after all.

I talked with the owner, the car has some mysterious electrical drain, other than that the car ran OK. I asked what was the least they would take for it, the answer was $300.00. I bought it, put a charged battery in it and drove it home.

We changed the fluids in the car and found out the transmission was bone dry. I thought there goes the budget, I couldn't find a replacement transmission for under $500.00. So we pulled the trans out, took it apart and it looked fine. Evidently the previous owner must have been Bo, or Luke Duke and jumped something with the car, which tore off the speedometer cable which let the trans fluid leak out while the car was sitting with the electrical problem, so no damage was done to the trans.

We took the car to an autocross to see how it drove. The drove fine, the transmission worked with no problem, we found the electrical drain, the parking lights stayed on all the time.

Now it was time to make it into a race car.

Did I mention the car was rusty! Really Rusty! Extra parts.

Lots of work later, here we are at Nashville at track day to do some testing.

Here is the debut of the car at the Nashville Chump Car race.

The race car, and its evil twin.

The race started at the same time that the epic rains hit Nashville. We pushed through heavy rains for the first three hours of the race before it was called to be resumed in two weeks. Two weeks later we restarted to run for eleven more hours. It rained again. We worked through most of the day with rain on and off until about two hours to go and the sun came out. The old 300zx ran perfect, we had zero problems with the car. We finished in forth place 18 laps down from the leader.

Here are a few pictures from the race.

We are planning on going this race at Nashville on July 9th. 20 hour Enduro to Benefit the Hatcher Foundation @ NSS July 9,10,11

And we plan on going the Chump Car race at Putnam Park Sept. 11th. Chump Car events

We may try to go to the Lemons event at Robeling Road.

The whole $500.00 race car thing has been great fun, I think we may have enough people interested locally that we plan on starting up another team.

Hopefully I can get our team members to post and offer their thoughts

When I have more time and money, I would absolutely love to be involved.

That is awesome!

Awesome. Our team was just looking at a prospective 300z..... Good to know one finishes well.

I've got a 300ZX that'd be perfect for a $500 series I just can't seem to get rid of.

ORLY? Where is it located?

Corey, Chris Moore is trying to get a car together, you should get in touch with him.

Yeah, I've talked to him about it a bit, and tried to help him out with the Sunfire transmission. I swear that thing worked great when we pulled it out! I drove the car personally! I guess he's looking for something else now.

Ive got a Lemons mustang someone can rent from me.... If they want to run the July race in Nashville.

geez, it aint cheap to race in this series...

cheaper than a single track day. $900 / 6 drivers= $150 each for two hours of "race" time.

what about the driver school cost?

mattbatson wrote: what about the driver school cost?

Driver's school?

I had friends in the White Lightning Civic at the same Nashville race - a couple of them ended up stranded in Nashville for 3 days. Car-pocalyptic rain!

Here's my blog of our Lemons car, the Fauxrarri

In reply to mattbatson:

zero.

Nice bar code. Are you sponsored by Marlboro, too?

mndsm wrote: ORLY? Where is it located?

Mine? College Station.

Our Nissan is going to SPANK the KY 300z. IVE got a case of PBR on it...

Not sponsored by Marlboro, but it does look like that, our theme is "A generic brand $500.00 car", like Wal-marts Best value, notice our car is devoid of any expensive decorations.

Flatline, if it's like you other car, you will need to bring three more engines with you to keep up.
Valve float is not a rev-limiter.

Right now I am working on the DIY cool shirt setup for the 300zx. I think it will be worth at least 5 seconds a lap in the July heat.

youngfg wrote: Not sponsored by Marlboro, but it does look like that, our theme is "A generic brand $500.00 car", like Wal-marts Best value, notice our car is devoid of any expensive decorations. Flatline, if it's like you other car, you will need to bring three more engines with you to keep up. Valve float is not a rev-limiter. Right now I am working on the DIY cool shirt setup for the 300zx. I think it will be worth at least 5 seconds a lap in the July heat.

You just make sure you knock all the rust off that crap can so it doesnt fall of and go thru someones radiator... Or even worse scratch our paint.. LOL

gene, the SX is up and running. Its coming for your ZX ;)

Chris is getting his ex circle track Escort ready to race. He found it pretty much ready to go racing, already has a cage in it, for $1000.00 So we are going to have two teams ready for the races soon.

cool, see you friday at NSS

Cool project.

Valve float is not a rev-limiter.

bonus point!

I got our DIY cool shirt setup going, and in one word it's AWESOME. It was 96 degrees, it was so nice we would just walk up to the car and hook up to it to cool down in the pits. Here is a pic from Nashville Superspeedway last weekend at a Tracksunlimted.net track day. Notice the huge cooler in the hatch, we will need that for the next event on July 10th at Nashville. We are running a 12 hour race there for $500.00 cars, and I am sure it will be hot.