Dilemmas ?

[jason 82]

I have just realised why so many roadsters never get completed. Building the chassis, buying the donor e.t.c are all relatively cheap. But then when you come to the later stages you have to buy coilovers £400+, bodywork £800+, iva £400+. The home straight is the most expensive, and people have to wait long periods of time to gather the money, by which time, interest has gone, we can't justify the spend or our circumstances change. How the bloody hell did they do the original locost for £250 ? Surely this is impossible ?, so to reduce my net spend, I am considering making aluminium panels wherever I can, and having a go at grp. I have bought the book by John Dickens, & I am going to take the plunge ! I hate to have to do this, because I know that the quality will be substandard, but I have to rain in the budget a little. I always wanted to have a show spec roadster, but, I may have to hold back on that one until I can buy my grp at a later date. Don't get me wrong, my estimated build cost is about 2.5k everything in, this is still peanuts for a kit car, but one mans peanuts is another mans gold nugget. It's either reel in the spend & keep the project moving forward, or stick to my build spec, and risk it never getting finished. I can't decide which way to go ?

[Enoch]

There is no reason whatsoever why home made ally panels should be "substandard". If you have managed to do everything else on the build there is no reason whatsoever why you can't do the panels too. The nosecone will be by far the hardest but the rest are easy.
To succeed in anything the first step is to convince yourself that you can do something. Get over that hurdle and you can acheive anything you want to. In the original book there is a photo of a car that had been panelled entirely from ally, it looked stunning. You don't have to get it that good cos you can always fill it and spray it to make life easier.
You are spot on with the build cost bit though, it's astonishing how much you can spend on the small bits too - nuts, washers, rivets, sealant, tools etc. As soon as you have to buy anything that is not a donor part the costs escalate very quickly.
Ron's original build was based on an Escort that cost him about 20 quid, he used just about everything he could, the other bits were from a scrappy or other super cheap source. As everyone now wants alloy wheels, smart seats, cool instruments etc the costs have inevitably risen, the price of donor parts does not help either.
I think this is also the reason why nearly all the people that have tried to make a business out of making and selling roadster parts have gone down the tubes. People want to build the cars for two parts the square root of bugger all and won't pay a price that allows the companies to make a decent profit.
After all the expectation was set - albeit quite a few years back - that you could build a car for £250.
nuff sed.

[Enoch]

Oh, I forgot to add, when Ron built his car all he had to do was get an MOT on it, SVA and IVA had not been forced upon us by the EU at that stage.

[jason 82]

Cheers Enoch. Ally panelling looks brilliant, as I have no fabricating experience apart from my chassis, I am very much learning on the job, & as you have just said, it's the confidence to get stuck in. I have loads of respect for you, Kev, stot, Johno e.t.c because you have the ability to think outside the box, where as I mentally need a lot of time to think on stuff ! Tell you what, a second roadster should be a breeze after you honed your skills on build one !

[Talonmotorsport]

I think you have to work out what you need to spend money on and when, if your picky over your choice of donor this will help alot. My donor cost £150 and was pre stripped but has given me an eng/box running gear and a set of wheels with legal tyres, a full car would have been £300 plus at ebay prices.
There are parts of the build that you don't need to spend a fortune on, yes it would be nice to make every panel in side and out in ali but unless to can either buy it second hand or nick it steel sheet is 1/3 of the price and you can weld it. Who cares if your car ends up being 30-40kg heavier if you've saved £250-300 on the cost and got it on the road 3-6 months earlier.
The costly things like coilovers you don't need untill you have the engine running,main body work fitted (minus rear arches)and can be found as new second hand from people that have given up,you need to watch ebay set your self a limit enter a bid then don't look again untill the auction has finished. Do you really need to have those £600 wheels and tyres before you've brought your lights,seats,body work,exhaust,plumbing,paint......?
The body work does not need to cost £800 plus, I say plus because you still need to collect it if it's all GRP. As said before steel sheet is cheaper and you can make the bonnet,scuttle,sides,rear panel your self. If you think about it all you really need to buy in the way of GRP parts in either second hand or seconds is a nose £60-120 , front arches £20-60 and the rear arches £60-150. My Dads locost now 15 yrs old has a pair of twin wheel Transit spray booth wheel covers used as a pair rear arches, a Robin Hood nose and a pair of £30 cycle wings.
You also need to consider the use of ebay/B&Q ect very carefully, I am guilty of this let me explain. If you find parts on ebay and compare the prices buy as much from the same seller as possible,one is cheaper than the other but if you buy X from here, Y from there by the time you've paid both postage costs you may just as well brought the higher price item from the same seller. Planning is also key when it comes to saving money, say I need another 2x 50mm m8 nuts and bolts to fit this part, do you look on ebay and pay the postage, go to B&Q and pay over the odds plus fuel or when you started planning your build you brought in bulk and over length? You can cut set screws and bolts down but you can't add to them, so you buy 100-200 M8 bolts at 100mm long and cut them to the size you want rather than buy 10x30mm- 10x40mm ect. Pay one delivery cost at the start then it costs nothing in postage or fuel later.
People ask me why I don't have a Roadster after 5 years of building chassis and wishbones, short answer is after making the same mistakes as every body else I simply can't afford to make one and finish it. The other companies that have come and gone have been set up with massive running costs and over heads, an industrial unit round here is £500-600 a month plus rates which brings it to around £1100-1200 a month. When people come and collect their parts from me I can see their faces as they walk in to my workshop which is a former cow shed and on hot days smells like one too, this costs me £240 a month and some periods during the winter I only just make the rent.

The book is called 'build a sports car on a budget' as I tell every body I met it's not called 'build a sports car for free' if you can afford to build a car in 6 weeks then good for you, but if it's going to take you 3-5 years then you need to make more parts your self or save up for them. All you need is a little faith that you will finish it one day and it will be worth it.

[TheArf]

Jason there is absolutely nothing wrong with learning on the job, provided you are man enough to realise when you are struggling there is nothing wrong with asking for help, and I think everyone will agree we have all had to ask for help and this is the place to ask.
I have got the John Dickens book on fiberglass but I bought the D.V.D. as John shows and explains as he is doing the demos.
I bought some panels from a guy on here he was straight and told me they were Saturn seconds, he was packing up due to ill health, so I will be aiming to get them sorted out and up to standard using Johns knowledge

Good luck keep building

Arfon

[skov]

Have to admit, if I'd known in advance just how much it was going to cost me I never would have started...
The real sting was the best part of a grand to get it on the road (£450 IVA, £90 retest, £120 tax, £55 registration, £150 insurance, couple of tanks of fuel...)
Do I regret it? Absolutely not!
It might have been frustrating at times, but overall I loved the build process, and learned lots of new skills.
I've also ended up owning the most entertaining vehicle I've ever driven, greatly enhanced by the smugness that comes with having built it myself

It's not for everyone though and I can see why many people give up.
It requires a massive amount of commitment, both in time and cash to build one of these. If you don't keep completely focused on it from start to end there's a good chance it'll never get finished. Two years into the project I was starting to get a bit weary, and if I wasn't as close to the end as I was I could have quite easily given up.

I would warn against too much penny pinching, I wasted a fair bit of cash buying cheap parts/tools that weren't up to the job and then having to buy the thing I should have got in the first place anyway...
I'll be very impressed if you manage it for £2.5k. Mine was very much a budget build (and looks it) and I easily spent double that.

[Stot]

£250 was a long time ago and when scrappies didnt know the premium of things people use to build kit cars. eBay has made it a sellers market for kit parts now. I think its possible to do it for £2,500 if you are careful and use as much scrap and second hand parts for things as possible. Freecycle can be a source of things like filing cabinets which can be cut up into panels etc example. Also with and MX5 Donor you can make most of your money back selling the parts you dont use on. My donor actually paid for its self and some other bits once I had sold most of it off and I still have a descent hood in the shed!

I think like Skov Ill be at double that too when im done and I've managed to save quite a lot of money in places in my eyes.

Cheers
Stot

[K4KEV]

Key word here Jason PATIENCE and lots of it ...I spent the last 3 yrs grabbing bargains when I could mainly off ebay. some things I knew I would not be using for ages and also in the mean time I found stuff I did not need any more and flogged it ....yep on ebay.....you will be fine as long as you take it one step at a time and don't expect the build to be finished in any particular time frame, that is how it happened to me, so steady away mate you will get there in the end.

[twinturbo]

The SVA and IVA not only added directly to the cost but also indirectly.

U trim,
Padded dash,
Correct Lighting,
Correct Mirrors,
Quiet Exhaust,
Dash lights,
Tank Vent,
Grill,
Correct arches,
Steerign being spot on,
Emissions controls,

Etc...

I bought all the expensive stuff early on, probably 3 years ago by now... I just can't get motivated to get out there and plod on. I do something big and then don't finish the last little bit off.

TT