£999 Challenge; Buy or Build?

[Relentless Rob]

The title explains it all really. For your money if you were to enter the PPC £999 Challenge would you...

"Buy" a car for as close to £999 as possible and make a few minor repairs or alterations, like 2010's Celica GT4 winner...

...or "Build" a car for the competition and further developement and trackday use, like last years MR2 V6?

There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to both choices and feel free to use this thread as an open forum for debate and make suggestions.

So buy or build?

[mitsuru]

Both!

get a good car for as little as possible make sure it has good brakes
and and sort the suspension by stiffening it for those corners and to
stop wheel hop, using a lower strut bar or whatever they call them as
well s the upper strut braces. examples below









http://www.showoffimports.nl/pages.php?pageid=90

Also it you haven't spent that much if you blow the engine or transmission
during testing you could replace the parts or engine etc with the money
you didn't spend.(or save the money for the fuel bill)

my original engine and transmission had been hanging on to life with the
amount of work that I did on it to keep it alive< I gave up and went for an
engine and transmission swap after deliberately killing it off with towing
dad's discovery with the discovery's brakes seized on, and mine dragging
it in reverse.

For me I will recommend a car that is overlooked by everyone, a Chrysler
/Dodge Neon. They come with a 2000cc SOHC engine and a 5speed manual or
3 speed automatic. The 2.0L engine has 132 bhp with 129 lb·ft
(175 N·m) but the electrical system is simpler than other vehicles of the
ame age. And if you went for the R/T then those 2.0L engines come with
150bhp.

The Mk1 neon with all it's stuff still intact is about 2,500 lb. and as
they are an unknown element in the UK they can be bought cheaply, and
they are easily modified too.

So I would say if I was starting with a new car for the challange, get another Neon
(mk1's are lighter, but the mk2 has a better roll cage type shell)
Strip out the seats the A/C, change the air intake to a cold air intake
which as fewer bends and there is less of it and add strut bars upper
and lower, give the engine and transmission the service of it's life
including a new cam belt etc (including over hauling of the injectors)
A set of 16" steel rims with 205/50/r16s from a vw as certain vw rims
fit it for better traction.
Well thats what I would do.

[OilyFingers]

Your always going to get more for your money if you can do a bit of spannering. In an ideal world I would buy and engineless car or fairly complete ringing kit from the bay, put a cheap, strong and torquey engine in (Saab 2.3 by default) with a gearbox. strip out what isn't necessary/left and carefully spend the rest on whatever is needed like suspension and MOT.

Brakes are negligable for the 999 tests as the pod has enough room for a fueler to stop without parashutes and anyone doing more than 70 on the handling course is either about to spin off or get catapulted out the side of his Magenta.

[Renrut]

I'll give one for the 'Buy' camp. I don't have huge amounts of free time. Also I don't have a huge amount of free space.

So to me the idea of buying a car that could just do with a diet that could be shuffled on quickly afterwards is ideal. Something bargey is ideal, rip the interior out and fit a de-cat pipe if appropriate. Rag it round for the day then sell it afterwards for about the same I paid for it

This also means I'm very unlikely to win as the winner has always been someone who puts in a fair share of graft. Even that GT4 needed a lot of work, he was lucky the rear end wasn't all wonky tbh, but getting it looking like it did wasn't an afternoons work. But thats ok as the 999 is all about the taking (a)part.

[mjslonergan]

If I was ever to make the trip across the puddle to enter the 999, I reckon I would look at buying something, there is a lot of "performance" bargains to be had in Ireland since all the builders went bust, so probably buy one of those and remove weight...

[MrT]

I'd like to say build but due to lack of time, resources and skill it would have to be buy