Not Your Everyday Race Car - The Mighty Citroen
Discussion
delays said:
Showed this to a mate and now we're man-maths'ing our way into endurance racing.
Does anyone have a link to the "club" that sells the parts? The suspension, the cage, etc?
I'd be keen to get the Excel spreadsheets out and crunch the numbers...
I reckoned on about 6k all-in, depending how much the suspension came out at and with a bolt-in cage (obviously with welded-in spreader plates).Does anyone have a link to the "club" that sells the parts? The suspension, the cage, etc?
I'd be keen to get the Excel spreadsheets out and crunch the numbers...
Few things - Philip, Caryl and I build the first two cars and have been putting this together.
The website is just getting launched (a very simple version is up already on www.c1racing.club). We will be adding details of the club-supplied kit and club-organised multi-purchases over the next week or so, but in the meantime, please join the forum and tell us all about yourself and your car (if you've already bought one). The current race schedule for 2017 is already up, with some more races awaiting confirmation.
Build costs. Our all in cost (excluding labour) was around £3,800. That includes testing a pile of components until we could make it work properly for a sensible price. You should be able to buy and build a car for less than £3,500 easily; and less than £2,750 if you use the OEM dampers rather than the Gaz dampers (and we've tested them a lot against each other: there is no detectable performance improvement. So much so that we are thinking of making the series OEM dampers only). The donor cars to date have cost between £600-1,200. Don't buy a car with over 60,000 miles on the clock - the engines won't stand up to racing anymore. We've seen 5 engine failures in total so far.
- One was driver error (selecting first not third)
- Two were very high mileage engines (over 100k miles)
- Two were aux drive belt failures caused, as far as we can tell, by gravel getting into the belt. We are coming up with a cover for the belt, since after removing the wheel arch liners, its very exposed
Net, if you have a sensible mileage engine, don't select the wrong gear and we can protect the aux belt, we've done 10car x 24hr races; 4 car x 1,000km races, many days testing with no engine failures. They do use oil a bit, but other than that, the engines have been great.
Cages: only one cage is allowed, which is the Safety Devices bolt in cage. We buy them in bulk and pass the savings on to you, so they work out less than £500. Don't weld them in, as your car will be illegal and won't race.
Scrutineering / general principles. This is intended to be a low-cost endurance racing series. The rules are very clear - if it doesn't say you can, you can't. Poor / aggressive driving won't be tolerated, and we will investigate every incident. If a car is suspiciously quick, we can supply standard parts and require anything on the car to be changed; so if you spend a fortune on porting / gas flow / titanium crank & rods / special cams / ECU tuning, we will simply replace your engine with a second hand one and, if we find any modified components, charge you for a new one. The whole idea is to keep costs as low as possible and focus on the racing.
Spares package. Buy a second car..... Its much cheaper than buying all the parts, and you can drive it to the circuit etc
Any ideas you have to keep costs down, please tell us. We're very open to ideas and won't have got everything right to start with. We're super excited about the series and have had such fun developing the car into what it is. Its not the fastest car in the world, but it is a lot of fun. The handling is brilliant wet and dry; the brakes are stellar. What's not to like?
The website is just getting launched (a very simple version is up already on www.c1racing.club). We will be adding details of the club-supplied kit and club-organised multi-purchases over the next week or so, but in the meantime, please join the forum and tell us all about yourself and your car (if you've already bought one). The current race schedule for 2017 is already up, with some more races awaiting confirmation.
Build costs. Our all in cost (excluding labour) was around £3,800. That includes testing a pile of components until we could make it work properly for a sensible price. You should be able to buy and build a car for less than £3,500 easily; and less than £2,750 if you use the OEM dampers rather than the Gaz dampers (and we've tested them a lot against each other: there is no detectable performance improvement. So much so that we are thinking of making the series OEM dampers only). The donor cars to date have cost between £600-1,200. Don't buy a car with over 60,000 miles on the clock - the engines won't stand up to racing anymore. We've seen 5 engine failures in total so far.
- One was driver error (selecting first not third)
- Two were very high mileage engines (over 100k miles)
- Two were aux drive belt failures caused, as far as we can tell, by gravel getting into the belt. We are coming up with a cover for the belt, since after removing the wheel arch liners, its very exposed
Net, if you have a sensible mileage engine, don't select the wrong gear and we can protect the aux belt, we've done 10car x 24hr races; 4 car x 1,000km races, many days testing with no engine failures. They do use oil a bit, but other than that, the engines have been great.
Cages: only one cage is allowed, which is the Safety Devices bolt in cage. We buy them in bulk and pass the savings on to you, so they work out less than £500. Don't weld them in, as your car will be illegal and won't race.
Scrutineering / general principles. This is intended to be a low-cost endurance racing series. The rules are very clear - if it doesn't say you can, you can't. Poor / aggressive driving won't be tolerated, and we will investigate every incident. If a car is suspiciously quick, we can supply standard parts and require anything on the car to be changed; so if you spend a fortune on porting / gas flow / titanium crank & rods / special cams / ECU tuning, we will simply replace your engine with a second hand one and, if we find any modified components, charge you for a new one. The whole idea is to keep costs as low as possible and focus on the racing.
Spares package. Buy a second car..... Its much cheaper than buying all the parts, and you can drive it to the circuit etc
Any ideas you have to keep costs down, please tell us. We're very open to ideas and won't have got everything right to start with. We're super excited about the series and have had such fun developing the car into what it is. Its not the fastest car in the world, but it is a lot of fun. The handling is brilliant wet and dry; the brakes are stellar. What's not to like?
Edited by coxm on Sunday 4th December 19:38
Edited by coxm on Sunday 4th December 19:39
Prizam said:
RichUK said:
joe_90 said:
Do we all need race licenses?
Yes. National B for the UK races. National A for the European ones.Really need to get my backside in gear and get on with the car, man-flu and some time working away and suddenly we're in December and I'm no further forward....
Prizam said:
So...
Having done a few track days and getting "the itch" from reading this thread...
Take me through the process of joining up and racing in this series. Does National A mean you don't need B as well... or does one progress from the other?
Get your 'go racing' pack from the MSA (Motor Sports Assn. The sport's governing body in the UK) here.Having done a few track days and getting "the itch" from reading this thread...
Take me through the process of joining up and racing in this series. Does National A mean you don't need B as well... or does one progress from the other?
Fill out the form, get a medical from your doctor, do the license test, pass and you'll have a National 'B' license.
Join the organising club in the new year (usually a nominal fee) and they'll update you with details of the races they're organising.
Choose the race(s) you want to enter and are eligible for, and enter them
You'll have a yellow and black 'Novice cross' on the back of the car but will be allowed to race in all the UK events. For each event you complete over 2/3rds (from memory) of without a visit to the officials you'll collect a signature on your licence upgrade card, 6 signatures mean you can take the cross off and apply for a National 'A' license.
You can also get a signature for spending a day on a marshal post and/or taking the MSA's advanced test I think.
Mark Benson said:
Get your 'go racing' pack from the MSA (Motor Sports Assn. The sport's governing body in the UK) here.
Thats cheap. Thruxton charge £310. Whats the difference?What is the ball park cost of the C1 series? Cant find it on the website.
It mentions 3 mandatory driver changes, can this be between 2 drivers?
Thanks so far, you are a great help.
Prizam said:
Mark Benson said:
Get your 'go racing' pack from the MSA (Motor Sports Assn. The sport's governing body in the UK) here.
Thats cheap. Thruxton charge £310. Whats the difference?What is the ball park cost of the C1 series? Cant find it on the website.
It mentions 3 mandatory driver changes, can this be between 2 drivers?
Thanks so far, you are a great help.
Costs are noted above, car prep with standard dampers is ~£3k, plus your racing fees on top. I'd over-estimated the costs a bit when I worked it out, but I also included costs for a 24h race.
Increasingly tempting!
Krikkit said:
Prizam said:
Mark Benson said:
Get your 'go racing' pack from the MSA (Motor Sports Assn. The sport's governing body in the UK) here.
Thats cheap. Thruxton charge £310. Whats the difference?What is the ball park cost of the C1 series? Cant find it on the website.
It mentions 3 mandatory driver changes, can this be between 2 drivers?
Thanks so far, you are a great help.
Costs are noted above, car prep with standard dampers is ~£3k, plus your racing fees on top. I'd over-estimated the costs a bit when I worked it out, but I also included costs for a 24h race.
Increasingly tempting!
Race costs; well as far as I know none have been published but the 2CV club that this series was born out of charge £400 for a 2 hour enduro race so budget double that for a 4 hour and you should be fine.
I'd be surprised if 24 hours was £200/hour though; I wouldn't like to speculate on what they might be but the 2CV 24h race cost about a grand each for 4 paying drivers and and we were effectively hiring the car as well as entry fees, fuel & catering etc.
That's why more drivers mean more accessible racing, get a third person involved and get them to pay for (ie. 'rent') their seat as well as their entry fees and your costs decrease, a fourth and they decrease a bit more - use the asset you've built to help cover your racing costs (but don't ever expect to make money on it
).We paid £1250 for the one in the OP. It's a Cat C with 46k miles.
It was from a breaker who'd bought it and realised it was too good to break so put it back on the road, he wouldn't say what he bought it for but you can bet it was under a grand (if you factor in a new wing on the car and some dents pulled out plus a fresh MOT).
Took a bit of searching for though, there are a lot of over-valued high-milers around. Ebay, Gumtree and word of mouth plus calls to breakers locally just in case they've picked something up from the insurance companies.
It was from a breaker who'd bought it and realised it was too good to break so put it back on the road, he wouldn't say what he bought it for but you can bet it was under a grand (if you factor in a new wing on the car and some dents pulled out plus a fresh MOT).
Took a bit of searching for though, there are a lot of over-valued high-milers around. Ebay, Gumtree and word of mouth plus calls to breakers locally just in case they've picked something up from the insurance companies.
Mark Benson said:
You can also get a signature for spending a day on a marshal post and/or taking the MSA's advanced test I think.
I'd encourage any racer to do the marshalling. A better appreciation of why yellow flags are waved would help a lot of drivers. (You're not supposed to be in a 4 wheel drift around the corner, on the 2nd lap under yellows...)A good place to get a C1 is Copart, which is where I got mine for £720. It was a CAT D with a broken headlight and cracked bumper. It had 1 owner from new, 27k miles and had been serviced the week before it got hit.
The Copart experience was OK, but their fees get up your nose - mine were £110, but I got a great car and only had to spend £100 to get a new bumper and head light.
We took it to Mallory Park for its first test day. It was the car Will Beaumont of Evo magazine drove in the Anglesey 24hr. It also raced at the Spa 24hr race in October.
It brilliant fun and low cost. My engine got buzzed at Anglesey (not by Will) and I picked up a new one from a breaker with 4.5k miles for £265.
Parts for the build are available on the c1racing.club website. I hope to see you at Pembrey in July or possibly in Belgium or France sooner.
The Copart experience was OK, but their fees get up your nose - mine were £110, but I got a great car and only had to spend £100 to get a new bumper and head light.
We took it to Mallory Park for its first test day. It was the car Will Beaumont of Evo magazine drove in the Anglesey 24hr. It also raced at the Spa 24hr race in October.
It brilliant fun and low cost. My engine got buzzed at Anglesey (not by Will) and I picked up a new one from a breaker with 4.5k miles for £265.
Parts for the build are available on the c1racing.club website. I hope to see you at Pembrey in July or possibly in Belgium or France sooner.
More dates up on the site, all are currently to be confirmed but it's shaping up to be a very international series:
http://c1racing.club/2017-calendar/
Spa in April, Croix in May, Anneau du Rhin (no, me neither. On the Franco-German border near Strasbourg according to Google) in June, Pembrey in July, August off, Cadwell September, Spa October and Anglesey in November for the RoR.
I told my wife I'd be doing fewer events in 2017. Maybe not.
Meanwhile, progress made and pitfalls experienced on the blue beast over the Christmas break. Photos and waffle to follow......
http://c1racing.club/2017-calendar/
Spa in April, Croix in May, Anneau du Rhin (no, me neither. On the Franco-German border near Strasbourg according to Google) in June, Pembrey in July, August off, Cadwell September, Spa October and Anglesey in November for the RoR.
I told my wife I'd be doing fewer events in 2017. Maybe not.
Meanwhile, progress made and pitfalls experienced on the blue beast over the Christmas break. Photos and waffle to follow......
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