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Thanks for all the mentions here guys.

The most complete Car9 is Seattle Tom's and he has a really nice build log. He was the first builder and has put extra effort into it to help future builders. I don't know much about requirements for roll cages used in drag racing. Typically a track may set a requirement that once you break a certain time, you need a real cage. So you need to decide how fast you want to go and then very carefully build something that is compliant. The cage on Car9 was designed after reading the SCCA and other road racing organizations rules.

Size is a major consideration in these cars, so the modern powerplants with their over head cams struggle to fit and make their owners struggle a lot to make them fit. The technology available now for the push rod engines makes getting power pretty easy. I think the vintage crowd is now wringing about 575 from 302s with stock iron heads that are ported. Aluminum heads and flywheel are reasonable cost, save a bunch of weight and don't require expensive porting. They know a lot about cams these days, it's not the same scene as 25 or more years ago.

In the picture above I think the smaller motor is a Chevy and it's a whole step larger than a 302.

My one comment on power levels etc. is that once you have a car that will burn rubber to 100 MPH, it starts to get a bit dicey. The problems come when you are trying to put power down but not planning on spinning the tires, somewhere around 100 it starts to get hard to tell wether your rear end is hooked up or not and if it breaks loose and takes you a second or two to figure it out, that can be rough. Maybe not a car you could lend a friend for a try for instance...

So you can figure that out ahead of time, look at the weight on the rear tires and then figure the motor torque times the gear reduction times the rear reduction. If you have 1000 ft.-lbs. at the tire and the car weighs 2000... A 450 HP motor will put way more than 1000 ft. -lbs. on the rear tires, if I remember right.

The IRS will be much more pleasant to drive in especially if the car is light. Serious drag or track use probably votes for the solid axle. Then you get to read up a bunch on how to design and tune it.

There's a place that sells a version of Richmond, I think, with dog gears. That's what I want. Serious business. The dog box is what I miss the most about my formula car..

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
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