[soundman98]

if you're new to cars, learn on the car first. this is an excellent vehicle for learning anything on. it's somewhat easy to work on, parts are plentiful, and the chassis is very responsive to showing you what does and doesn't work. but you need to have the seat time beforehand to feel the car out to be able to feel the difference.

wheels are fun to change, but are entirely aesthetic until you've reached the upper echelon of any motorsports racing category that the weight can actually make you a faster driver. a fast driver can make better wheels faster, but better wheels don't make a faster driver.

motors are interesting, but keep in mind that the subaru built the original motor to be 100% reliable well over 100k miles. once you start changing parts, or adding power, the entire motor with all it's tiny parts, reliability becomes a gigantic question mark. and once you start diving into the aftermarket to solve all the reliability question marks, that means yet another component that has a lead time if it fails. it's also a race to 'the weakest link'. sure, you can upgrade the block, the connecting rods, the pistons, the valves. but no one makes an aftermarket bolt-on oil upgrade for this motor. no one makes better timing chain guides. no one makes an improved '500hp' wheel bearing...

there's a thread in the performance section on the driveshafts that went haywire because it turns out that the oem drive shaft is still one of the best options, despite not being rated for big power. every drive shaft has a critical speed maximum.

it's a question of what you want to break when something breaks. i like to keep my breaks to things that are easily accessible.

my car might be boring being stock, but i can guarantee that if any common part fails, i can just run down to the auto parts store or the dealership and get a replacement. it'll be in stock, and have the car ready to go by the end of the day.

but aftermarket, you now need to deal with specific brands, specific parts, and they're always on the opposite side of the country.

i learned this a while back with r/c trucks. every hobby shop stocks the stock traxxas parts. they're only nylon, and launching the truck off a 10' halfpipe breaks a lot of things, no matter how fun it is. so this leads to the rabbit hole of searching out all the aluminum/titanium parts that make up the truck to make it survive 'falling in style' from 20' up. but most of those parts are at least 1-2 weeks out for every single order.

so i ended up facing a choice. i was going to keep going to the skate park with the truck, and i was going to keep launching it off the halfpipe.. i could keep the stock nylon parts, let them break, replace as needed, ready to keep doing it every day repeatedly, or i could upgrade everything to much stiffer parts, and likely be down for many weeks at a time waiting by the front door for the replacement.

i was mostly breaking a-arms, shocks, a-arm mounts, and drive shafts. as soon as i upgraded any of these few parts to a stiffer version, it would transfer the shock load to other parts. so then instead of just those few parts right near the wheels that were easy to access, now i'd need to replace the more central and buried components like the main chassis rails, the shock mounts, and the center drive shafts. all of which are much more difficult to get to.

so that was how i decided to intentionally keep using the stock traxxas truck parts, despite knowing they would break, and knowing how they would break-- because they were easy to replace.


cars aren't all that different really. once you exceed the design parameters of the original manufacturer, you're on a journey by yourself. everything wears faster. suddenly parts that were considered 'lifetime' need to be replaced, and sometimes replaced often.

you've done a nice job of figuring out your costs to build what you want. but keep in mind that the initial build is only part of the equation.

you're going to have recurring costs. and there will be down time for the vehicle while a BOV suddenly sticks, or an engine tune suddenly doesn't work out that takes weeks to figure out with a tuner.

a custom-built, custom-powered car like that could easily start costing closer to $80k over the course of 4-6 years of ownership, and you might only get to drive it every other 6 months over that 6 years. you need to have somewhere to park the car while working on it, and you need to have another reliable vehicle to deal with the down time a build like this could take.

what it's worth to you is a personal question. maybe all that's worth it. but to a lot of people, myself included, it's not.