Found my donor on craigslist for $1200. Here are the stats:
1 owner 1996 with 250,000 miles
Body is in excellent condition. Only two very small dings and they are on the hood.
5-speed
Rear spoiler and rear lower skirt, but it is not an "r" package from what i can tell
Top is in good condition

So now i am going to start taking everything apart on it and sell everything as fast as i can to get it out of my garage and make room for the new project. Hopefully i can get back a lot of the money if not all from parting out what i don't need on it.

I have the hook up on a lot of metal, so that will definately help. My goal for this is to have a turbo locost for $1000 more than what I get after parting everything out i don't need. Hopefully that will just be $1000 if I can get pretty close to my original investment back.

Making the lemons car was just such a blast to do on such a limited budget that i know this will be even better.

 

Where are you sourcing the Locost specific parts from?

 

I am building the frame from 1" square tube and using the rear subframe from the miata. The little pieces that need to be bought will come from places like Kenetic kit car parts, but those will mainly be small brackets for the front suspension and pieces of the front a-arms. The driveshaft is really going to be the only semi-expensive thing as that has to be custom made.

 

I also have a fiberglass shop, so i can make the panels out of that or i can make them out of thin aluminium.

 

Sounds like a fun project. You will literally be building this car from the ground up. Do you have a set of plans you are working from for the chassis design?

 

Good luck with this. Be sure to keep us up to date with pictures. i always like these kinds of projects. Sad to say most never work out though. Hope yours does.

 

I will be looking at the plans made by ron champion and then revised by Haynes. The original frame designs from champion had a few measurement flaws that the Haynes book helped eliminate with CAD designs.

 

I will start a build thread on this once I get started making the frame and have all my parts sold. Look for it in late July/early August more than likely.

 

IMHO you'd be better of with a low mileage damaged car. I bought a '00 with 25K for about the same price. I managed to recoupe about 50% by selling the roof, shocks and some smaller bits. Still have the wheels, doors, bootlid and complete interior to sell. Since it's a low mileage car, these parts should sell more easily than parts from a high mileage car. 0.02$

 

While i do agree with you that lower mileage will help me sell more stuff, the trade off to buying a wrecked car is having more things that I can't sell. The things that are on this car for me to sell don't really get damaged that much, so i can get back more of my money than with a low mileage wrecked.

There really is nothing wrong with this car. I am not a fan of the wheels that came on it, but i can trade those for stock ones and get a little cash.

 

Wow, good luck on the project. The more I look into locosts, the more I KNOW it's got to be a blast.

Keiths build is one of my fav's, and well documented.

If you are looking for a set of daisies to trade for other wheels let me know. I would like something different (can't see pics if you posted them), and these have 2 Potenzas at 90% and two regular Bridgestones at 80%.

 

I don't think anyone on this forum will want the wheels that are on there now. Appreciate the offer though Damon. It has some 15X6.5 chrome heavy *** wheels. Very flashy. I am going to try to some them to some local guy for maybe $250 for the set.

I may be interested in buying your dasies from you though. I will let you know.

 

Is it an ABS car? If so, would you swap rear uprights with me and sell me the rear ABS sensors and pigtails?

 

I am 99% sure it is not an ABS equiped car. Haven't really had a chance to break it down yet, but if it is then sounds fine to me.

 

Enjoy your build, are you going Locost or building a track car ? I have a CMC framed car.

Edit: Sorry just noticed year of post.... 2009

 

Its alot of work. Ask me how I know...