i wouldve kept that Formula SAE for autocross fun..
im assuming it's not road legal so i guess you tracked it?

your chevy and s2k are both 2 seaters lol

 

lol, i wouldve kept it too, if it didnt belong to the university of MA lowell. fsae is a collegiate design series competition. although we had a few good days out running with it, id say 98% of the time the car didnt work. problems with megasquirt (totally build-it-yourself, open source ems), engine harness, compression issues, oil pressure problems, and yielding and snapping our quarter inch control arm ball joints, the car ended up being a bigger pain than it was worth. although, the learning experience was priceless

 

if anyones interested in fsae, and the UML car, let me know, i was thinking about starting a whole thread about it just to share some info. the car is completely 100% designed, built, and raced by students. i have tons of pics i could post up too

 

Sure! Here's the deal. Back in '06 I bought the yellow S. I concurrently owned the S (which i just drove mostly unmodded) and a modded to hell Miata which I beat the piss out of at every opportunity. In '08, I broke the yellow S with 113k or so on it. Thought I nuked a diff, turned out to be an axle. Started going "ya know what? I should get a cheaper car and save some money. Something like 200 bucks a month or so". . . so i started car shopping while i fixed the S.

Went to a dealer, saw the Lotus, threw all my plans out the window. Bought the lotus, traded the S, sold the Miata... whereupon I discovered exactly how fragile my little tupperware track car was. I owed money on it so I didn't wanna track it. Any time something small happened on the street it was REALLY expensive, and after 13,500 in repair bills the summer of '10 in 2 incidents, i decided as much as i loved it it needed to go away for something a little sturdier.

Sold the Lotus January of this year after putting 20k or so miles on it. Couldn't find anything i wanted to replace it with. Test drove a bunch of cars, and narrowed the next car down to one of the following: 330i ZHP, E46 M3, E36 M3. Found an E36, the dude wouldn't budge off 11k. Found a 330i, but hate red cars. Found an E46... ALMOST pulled the trigger, but it was 'eh'. There was this little Valiant on CL though. Decided to check it out, and when i pulled up, all thoughts of M3 were gone. I was like... MINE!

I kinda wanted to see what it'd be like to A: drive something with a V8, B: something low and slow, and C: learn to work on carbs/distributor vehicles, since i've always had EFI cars. I learned a lot. Learned how to hotwire my car, for example! Learned how to adjust carbs, learned how distributors worked... but I was driving the car hard enough to starve the carb in corners, I'd dialed in negative camber up front and i was just driving this car to death and i missed having a convertible.

Started shopping cars that met a very particular criteria; RWD/LSD/Convertible.

... and ended up back in a 2nd S2k.

 

On a sunny day open up the trunk and tell me what you see - light bleeding through the tissue thin body - rod throwing corolla base motor check! - 1970's brake booster check! - randomly detaching under panels check!

 

Never had any of those issues. It's a 2zz not a 1zz, the booster is plastic, as is the master and are fully modern.

Never had a panel fall off either.

 

I would love to drive a FSAE car. Can't you guys simply use the EMS/ harness from the bike where you got the engine from? Or is that against the rules?

 

type-j, at first I only saw the first pic and I was thinking...WTF you sold it?

Then I scrolled down and saw the NSX.

Yum.

 

running a stock engine harness was my first idea. however, not only is it frowned upon by judges, the original ems would not be able to cope with the 20mm intake air restrictor that is mandated by the competition rules. engine size is also limited to 600cc's. most of the team's 600's put out about 40-50hp, however some of the senior, high budget teams ($1,000,000+ per year) sport twin cylinder aprilias and such which can produce about 70-80hp even on a 20mm restrictor.

and if you're wondering what a million dollar sae car looks like, something like this






alright, im done thread-jacking now

 

I think we all come back around to an S2000. I can not seem to move out!