How many miles can you put on a track car?

[pseudo]

My current plan for my BRZ is to daily drive it for about 4 years while gradually turning it into a track car. By that 4 year mark, I will be settled in my career, and I should have the BRZ paid off. I put about 25k miles per year on my car, so around that time I will have 100k on the odo.

How many miles can you feasibly throw at a track car before rust and age become a factor? Is it reasonable for me to expect my BRZ to last me to 300k miles(with an engine and transmission rebuild being expected)?

[Mister]

Depends on where you are located. There is always a point when the car becomes too old and expensive to maintain, but that point is always hard to figure out.
I would say a lot depends on your location, but once it is no longer DD it should age reasonably well if you store it properly.

Look at a lot of the Miata guys...they drive the crap out of their cars on the track and some of them are extremely old cars with hundreds of thousand of miles on the chassis. If the twins develop a following the Miata has gotten, I could see it as an affordable track car for a long time, parts will get cheaper, and aside from annoyances (fuel pump, condensation, etc) the car is pretty solid.

[pseudo]

I do live in new hampshire, and will be driving it in the winter...

[strat61caster]

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/12/12/i...ng-rental-car/

As many as you're willing to pay for. There are cars that have been racing since the 50's with owners willing to pay the costs to keep them in good repair. I don't think your targets are unreasonable (especially since you're already budgeting for a full rebuild of the expensive bits) but by the time you get there it could be quite expensive, we have no idea what the next 15 years will bring for the auto industry.

Your plan is ok for now, don't be afraid to adjust when things change, and don't forget that there are many cars in much worse shape still banging out laps:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of_nSoDIDgA"]24 Hours of Lemons and the Mercedes C63 AMG Coupe - YouTube[/ame]

[WolfpackS2k]

I took my Integra GS-R to Roebling Road Raceway (in Georgia)in August one year. Car had 235k miles at the time, and the only prep I did was fresh oil, brake fluid flush and coolant flush.

Car ran like a top and the temp gauge never so much as budged.

[ntron1]

Originally Posted by WolfpackS2k

I took my Integra GS-R to Roebling Road Raceway (in Georgia)in August one year. Car had 235k miles at the time, and the only prep I did was fresh oil, brake fluid flush and coolant flush.

Car ran like a top and the temp gauge never so much as budged.

That's because the temp gauge was broken.....lol

[JNovo79]

My experience with bikes is that as long as you can keep finding parts to fix stuff with, you can keep something on the track a long time.

Its when you start doing serious mods to the motor that stuff might go boom every once in a while. I consider my bike reliable insofar as I only have to do a top end rebuild every 8 hours and a total teardown every 16 (no more odo, just hour gauge).

[Razz]

I know the faster you go on the track the more rust.

So it will rust away if you track it too much.

[spitz]

Well... if the DI issue strikes you, your car won't last more than a few track days =T

[bukit]

I bought a 2001 Corvette Z06 with 113K on it and turned it into track car. No issues whatsoever.

[smbstyle]

I know of an NSX with 60k TRACK miles, and it is holding up just fine with proper maintenance; I think a refreshed engine, trans and diff too, but still, 60k track miles is a TON.

The older these cars get, the cheaper parts will be. You can already get a longblock for under $3k that has hardly any miles at all, and the car has only been out for a little over a year. I was also looking at the cost of wheel hubs, which are about $80 a piece from Centric, which isn't too bad, and something I'd probably replace once a year or every other year depending on track use.

With my Miata, I planned on just throwing a new junkyard motor in it every 2 or 3 years, and when my first motor blew, it had 160k miles on it, and it didn't blow on the track, it blew on the street when the radiator fan went out and it overheated in traffic. I could get a new motor with less than 100k on it for $500 to $750, which I know my friend with an M3 pays for brake rotors every 6 months...

[WolfpackS2k]

Originally Posted by ntron1

That's because the temp gauge was broken.....lol

lol, dammit!

[bukit]

Just watch out for the walls

[SeanBlader]

Basically you pay to play. Track driving is relatively much easier than driving in traffic, you get a warm up lap, you get a cool down lap, you aren't idling very long at all, you aren't at a stop every few minutes, you aren't slipping the clutch every few minutes off of a dead stop either. You end up wearing out brakes a lot sooner, and you end up just doing maintenance on it a lot more because of the investment in track time. You don't want to find out the day before an event that your track car has a wheel bearing going out (done that).

It also depends on how well funded your track days are, if you're trailering the vehicle there, and can put the car on stands when it's not prepped for a track day, then you can save your tires a lot longer, and then you don't worry about rust at all once the car has ended it's street driving days.

Also you need to keep in mind when comparing the 86 to the Miata, that the latter was a HUGE phenomenon when it was released, they made an absolute TON of Miata's that sold in sunny dry areas of the country where rust doesn't exist. It's likely that the long term situation of the 86 doesn't even compare. You haven't seen them selling off dealer lots for 20k over MSRP because it's the hot new thing like the Miata was.

In the end you will realistically pay more for the mods, track days, and maintenance than you did on the car originally, and by then you may find a car that's more fun, capable, and reliable. On the other hand, I've yet to find a car that's more ridiculous outright fun than my MR2, so maybe the 86 really does continue to make it happen for you 20 years from now. I'd say it's more about the number of years that you want to drive it than it is the number of miles the car can actually take.