Hey Everyone, just sharing this recent build and race we did.
I found a salvage, but mostly complete '04 manual coupe for sale about 5 hours away for $750 and decided it would be perfect for our next Lemons build. The Lemons folks have been begging for someone to bring a Crossfire for years, so that also helped convince us.
I guess the story is that the guy bought it as a parts car a few years ago, didn't use much from it, then sold his other crossfires and had no need for it. It had most of the interior stripped out, but it was all stored nicely and in good shape (that helps offset the Lemons budget), and needed some front end work from the crash. It was also missing the front fenders and bumper cover, but everything else was there. It even started and drove onto the trailer!
It would have been ideal to find another scrap yard crossfire to get a front end from, but all the crossfires that popped up lately have also had front end damage, so we ended up fabbing an upper radiator mount and hood support, and sourcing some fenders from another scrap yard crossfire. The radiator was a giant 3-row aftermarket $100 Chinese radiator meant for a turbo supra (we run one in our other car and it cools a v8 just fine, and it was much cheaper than a Crossfire radiator)
I then built a roll cage for it. It was pretty tough to get the seat mounted low enough to give good head clearance with the cage, but eventually I managed to make it work. I had to cut a lot of the transmission tunnel out and remove the rear catalytic convertors to get the Sparco seat centered on the wheel. I also kept the doors intact so the power windows would still work, makes it nice for hauling to events in weather and outdoor storage.
This was the first cage I'd built and it turned out great, got compliments from the tech inspector. I also HAD to run the "Crossfire" sill plates, just to keep it classy.
My kid, future race car driver!
In a cost savings move for the first race, I re-machined the hubs for a 5x114 pattern with lug studs instead of bolts so we could run some of the many sets of 17x9 Mustang wheels and used race tires we had laying around from our other car. It worked great, so its tempting to keep running these wheels. I'll be sticking with 17's regardless just due to tire price, 18's are much more expensive.
