[Jeff Lee]

Originally Posted by Grant Eldridge

Lots of great advice already posted. Might be a good idea to look at your local competition in the class you hope to run and first decide how fast you need to run. If you can get away with .5 under, you might be able to carefully put together a car with a good combination, decent machine work and not too expensive parts. I started out with used TRW pistons and flogged it down to .6 under after a year. But, to go 1+ under, in my opinion, everything in the short block had to go high dollar, index crank, high dollar pistons, exotic ring package, many thousands of dollars more just in parts plus more machine work, etc. Now, to go 1.20+ under you'll need expensive step or better headers, merge collectors, great trans and converter, excellent shocks, quality traction device, radials, high dollar carb, mondo fuel system, etc. These are just examples, there's lots more but you get the idea...To figure all this out, you'll need tons of great advice from guys that are fast, and tons of money to cycle multiple parts through the car to determine what works best for your particular combination. For example, I cycled 7 converters through my car in one year to get the best one, then went to a metric trans and bought three more to get one I felt worked well, these are around $1000. each, of course the others can hopefully be sold to get some money back. The same goes for most of the other parts on the car, you have to experiment, it's a lot of hard work, time and effort unless you are very fortunate and get it right early on. Someone posted to do it once and buy the best first, great advice! Otherwise you're re-doing each system over again as you learn and improve. My fuel system went from small to medium to large pump, then large to larger to return style for lines and regulators. If I'd put the best stuff on first, I'd have saved money and time, as well as eliminating a possible problem area. Not to discourage you, it's very rewarding if you enjoy the challenge and can invest the time and money.
My opinion, buy the fast car where someone has done all the above, you'll be years of effort and many, many thousands of dollars ahead. There's a limited market for these specialised cars, so there are cars available if you look that really should be much more than what they will actually sell for in today's market. Just my 2 cents worth....

Grant is right on in his assesments. The only thing I would ad to this or any other post BUY THE USED RACE CAR ONLY AFTER WATCHING IT RUN AND THEN ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE SPENT A SOLID 1/2 OR FULL DAY INSPECTING THE CAR WITH A KNOWLEDEABLE FRIEND, PREFERABLY WITH ACCESS TO A LIFT (TO CALM DOWN YOUR EXCITEMENT).

A frind of mine just bought a car from across the country that ended up being only about .400 slower than reported (after taking into account weather condition variations). I told him to schedule a track appearance but he didn't. He did get a nice car at a reasonable cost. But it was full of poorly repaired / burnt wiring, loose suspension components, a fuel system that consisted of factory 5/16" lines coming out of the fuel tank mated to larger lines with a nice 90 degree kink in the 5/16" line and a stall convertor rated at at least 1000 RPM higher than what is required for the application (which also had an efficiency rating that calculates to only 86%; 95% or better being preferred). And now it looks like everything may be up to par but then the ring gear broke. Now it looks like everything is repaired or replaced but it's summer here in AZ and it's to hot to evaluate the changes.
And in the end it looks like the car will serve it's purpose. But it's extremely frustrating to buy a used car and find you need to spend not so much money to get it fixed (because it is a used car) but the time in trying to diagnose the problem area's (in this case there were many). At one point you could have picked this car up for free, the new owner was that disappointed.
So like I said, check it out not once but twice and if things aren't as claimed in the advertising, walk away or re-negotiate! Or build yourself, which is what I've always done. But be prepared to spend 3x from your best calculations in bothe time and money.
Good luck. It's not as bad out there as people make it sound...!