Cheap Horsepower?

Can you build fast cars on a budget? I think so!

The quest for cheap horsepower has been the forefront of club motorsport for many years and, seeing as the gap between competitors season budgets seems to be growing wider all the time, ever more important.

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The low budget competitor needs to do most of his or her own work on the car to keep costs down, so how do you build fast cars on a budget? The class rules need to be taken into account as building an illegal car for a championship is helping no one!

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The best way in my experience to build a fast car on a budget is to go for some serious lightening, I mean take out everything that is not used. I even go as far as to scrape all the sound deadening pads off the floor of the car and remove all underseal, you can also take out all unnecessary wiring, if you are building a race car chances are you are going to take out the airbags, but you will be surprised how many people leave the wiring in and just tape the ends.

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I do all my own engine work, also keeping cost's to a minimum, many engines come out the factory very inefficient at producing horsepower and much can be done to improve this. If you plan to tune a used engine for your fast car then try to get one from a passenger car that has done low miles and hopefully never been driven hard, you would not want to buy a used engine off me for example! Much can be done to make a car fast without taking the engine block apart, for example many cars leave the factory with very inefficient air intakes with warm air feeds. This is great for economy but no so good when we want to build a cheap fast car. The warm air feed and much of the breather system on most cars can be modified within the championship regulations to give a fair few extra horsepower.

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In many championships induction is free thus allowing the airbox to be drilled or removed entirely and replaced with a home made or after market item to help make that elusive fast car on a budget. I have been competing in club level motorsport with an extremely low budget for years and I have had a fair amount of success, nothing will ever beat the feeling of beating a car that cost 10 times as much as mine!