Tony, I agree with you. But I bought a car that wasn't raced for ten years
and took it apart, rebuilt it and I'm still getting it to my likings. The
main advantage I had with this car was it already had a SCCA rollbar, the
interior was mostly finished and it looked like a race car. I think not
having to strip a street car and find all the problems under the interior
and carpets was probably worth about 6 months time.
Not having raced before I wasn't sure what I might need to do outside the
normal mechanical restoration and safety requirements. After driving it 2
years I now know what things I need to attend to. I think I saved thousands
of dollars doing it this way, not to mention the time. I now have probably
as much in it as it would take to buy a turnkey TR6 racecar, but none of the
joy of building. I really do enjoy building them, almost as much as driving
them.
Charly
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Drews" <tony@tonydrews.com>
To: "fot@autox.team.net" <fot@Autox.Team.Net>
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: Cambridge car for sale
> Everyone I know that has bought a Triumph race car already built has had
> some trials and tribulations. I think I lucked out on mine. I did have
> some issues related to my own negligence, though. I think I've taken
apart
> pretty much everything and put it back together the way I wanted in the
> last 2 years. Not to imply that things were really wrong, just that I
> wanted them to be different. Maybe the advice would be "buy a car that's
> done, take it apart and put it back together to your liking, and then hit
> the track". I've probably saved $10K to $15K and 2 to 4 years of part
time
> car construction by buying a well prepared car and then modifying it to
> suit myself over building it from scratch (thanks to R. John Lye). The
> standard story I hear is "the car was supposed to be race ready, but the
> motor appears to be mostly stock". When I took mine apart, I kept finding
> more top notch parts than I expected. That's certainly not the typical
> experience...
>
> I know I'll never get out of the car what I've got into it, but I knew
that
> going in. It's the price we pay to have the kind of fun and camaraderie
> that this Triumph community provides. If someone wanted my car, it would
> be in the Cambridge zone before I'd even consider selling it.
>
> - Tony Drews
>
> At 05:09 PM 10/1/2004, Larry Young wrote:
> >I've never been successful at finding a car that was done. I've found
> >ones that LOOK done, but they normally have some hidden sins. When I
> >start going through it, I usually find some real odd mechanics, e.g.
> >distributors wired wrong, camshafts installed wrong, etc. If it's a car
> >I'm going to keep forever, I'd rather build it myself, even though it
will
> >cost more. Then I know what I've got.
> >Larry Young
> >
> >Bill Babcock wrote:
> >
> >>And it's
> >>why the best kind of car project to buy is one that's done
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