Planning on doing the Texas version of the Lemons race in November in a rusty 1602. What was your final weight? Is that an extra radiator in the passenger seat area? Why, did you maintain a radiator in the stock location also? Really like the reinforcement under the front finders and nose. Did it help? Did core car (sans safety) really come under $500? My team are all National SCCA racers and I've done NASA's 25 @ Thunderhill several times, did the Lemons race reward driving skill or is it just a bash fest?

TIA
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Never too late to have a happy childhood

We're not sure what the final weight was, but if I had to guess I'd say it was at least a couple hundred lbs. more than a factory car. You save weight by removing the glass and interior, but we added more than we removed by building front and rear superstructures along with the roll cage. The structure in the trunk rivals something seen in NASCAR and was a chore to build, but it definitely worked. We took a number of hard hits that onlt resulted in a few small dents in the sheet metal. Also, because we cut the stock springs the bumper height is nowhere near many other cars on the track. For instance, the late '60's Plymounth Fury pitted next to us had very large bumpers whose height matched up with our headlight buckets.
As rough as the cars look post race, the race is actually quite safe and well run. Intentional contact or "rubbing" will get you swiftly booted from the race. Aggressive driving resulting in contact will also get you black flagged and punished appropriately. Incedental contact is usually chalked up to "sh!t happens". Smoother and more alert drivers will surely do better. With the wide range of driver skills and size, HP, and handling characteristics of different cars, some contact is bound to happen. Most cars don't have any brake lights which probably makes matters worse. We installed a pair of high mount brake lights in the rear window shelf as an effort to prevent being hit in the rear. We still took a few shots to the back end, but we believe the lights probably saved us a few more.
The radiator in the front seat is the only one we ran. With the waterpump snout so close to the original radiator we were afraid a love tap to the small bumber front end would end our weekend.
I bought the car a few years ago as a complete parts car for $275. I sold a few things off it, installed some bigger sway bars, a used Weber 32/36 and an E-bay Stahl header, wrecking yard 320 brakes, etc. At the end of the day it probably wasn't worth much more than the $500 limit.
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Bret @ Glass from the Past
www.caferacingparts.com
971-207-2824