Supercharger Performance and Engine Performance Parts

My friend and I were having a heated discussion about automotive enthusiasts. He claims that all we do is waste money on cars to try and get some internet fame and maybe girls when it would be better to just spend that money socializing, spending more time with people and meeting girls.

Through this argument it came to my attention, that if you wanted to you could in fact make a decent side business racing cars. I’m sure that having a profitable and fun side business, especially in these tough economic times will be a very attractive proposition for many of our readers.

The key to the success of any business, even a hobby-business, is to go into it with a business mentality. In every business, we find that the most successful individuals have a few of the following characteristics:

1- Business leaders are always looking for the most impact by answering this question:

“What is the least I can do, that will give me the best results?”

2- Business owners understand their business, and always stay in touch with what’s going on.

3- You have to make money, and that simply means that your revenues exceed your expense; or in games where winning is based on probability (such as horse racing, gambling, and the stock market), that the size of the pot multiplied by the probability of winning is greater than your expenses.

4- Beating your competition starts in the strategy room, not on the playing field.

When we translate these four simple rules to car racing we get the following:

1- For every car make and model, you can find a forum or a knowledge group that will give you minimal expense combination of power adders that will give you the most power per dollar.

For example, I was talking to my friend online the other day and he was telling about the 99 SLK 230 Kompressor that his dad bought. One of the things he said about the car was that it was a bit down on power; otherwise it would be a really fun roadster. Since I know this car very well I told him about adding an ASP overdrive crank pulley, and a supersprint (or supersprint replica) header. The total cost outlay for these two modifications is around 1400 dollars and the total added horsepower is over 40 dyno proven rear wheel horsepower. Increasing your car’s horsepower and acceleration by 20 to 25% through the use of only two simple modifications is golden when you want to go racing. A car like this (with a stock sounding engine and a stock exhaust) can catch some people off guard if we were racing for money. Another good example is taking a car like a Toyota Supra or a less known 3000GT VR4 and elevating it’s power figures from 300 factory horses to well over 450 hp with the addition of no more than 2000 dollars in power adders and Basic Power Upgrades (BPU).

2- Staying in touch with your business when it comes to racing means two things:

a. Knowing the insides of your rule book which may allow you to be one step ahead of the competition with an upgrade, weight reduction, or modification that your competition isn’t yet aware of.

b. Being up to date on the cars that you will probably face when you go out racing. Knowing the local big shots, what modifications they have, and what times they runs is really valuable information. Also, knowing the potential of cars around you (especially if equipped with what seems like minimal power adders which may be very effective such as in the SLK and VR4 examples I gave above) will save you a lot of wasted money and energy racing cars that you have no business racing.

3- If you’re racing for 100 dollars a race on grudge matches at your local drag strip, then spending another 900 dollars to get a slightly more efficient turbocharger may not be the wisest place to spend your money because it will take you 9 wins to get your money back from that additional modification. Similarly, people that are caught with the ‘mod bug’ that continuously keep upgrading their cars, continuously keep pushing the limits of their engine and transmission, and continuously keep replacing broken parts, will never make any money racing.

The key to racing is having a limited and fixed investment budget. Use this money wisely to buy as much speed and deception that you can for that money; then focus on getting your money back by utilizing your speed, deception, negotiation and consistency to make more money back than you put in.

Similarly, if you have a realistic 1 in 10 shot at winning a 10,000 dollar race then investing more than 1000 dollars to equip your car for that race is financially an expensive decision.

How does this work out?

If you have a 1 in 10 shot of winning 10,000 dollars that means you will probably have to race 10 times to win 1 race. This means that if you spend 1000 dollars on your equipment preparing for every one of those races that when you eventually win, you will only break even…. Having spent 10,000 and won 10,000.

Study the odds, find the number of true competitors that would classify as being IN YOUR LEAGUE, find the odds based on that information, and then you can figure out your total racing and investment budget that will still allow you to make money.

4- Beating your competition starts in the strategy room….

A big portion of making money racing is setting up the right races, with the right stakes, and the right pot at the end of the race. Using your powers of deception, scheming, plotting and research to setting up a profitable streak of races (with the occasional loss for good measure) will give you an advantage over looking for the random pickup race vs a random competitor with a car you know absolutely nothing about.

A lot of grudge matches nowadays are setup on the internet in chat rooms, messageboards, and car forums. In this environment you get to stake out your competition or even research them on other related boards before you commit to a race.

The key here is not catching people off guard, but rather setting up races where you are neither significantly outclassed nor significantly under-classed and the reason is as follows:

If I know this group of cars runs a 12 second quarter mile, and I know you’ve raced all three of them and lost, then that makes anyone with a 12.0 or faster car confident that they can take you and you become prey for people that want an easy kill that know for sure that they are faster than you.

Similarly, if you are notoriously known for killing a large group of seriously fast cars, then you will end in the situation of not finding anyone who wants to race you, and when they do, the stakes will be high. The thing is, the combination of scarce races, high stakes, and a good chance that the other person has overbuild his car because he knows you will give him a run for his money, sets it up that if you get into a losing streak that you will lose A LOT of money.

The key to good racing is racing always in your class… If you have a mixed record of wins and losses between cars that are supposed 13.0 to 12.0 second cars then any race with a car in that range is a fair race, the races will be frequent, the odds will be fair, and if you are consistent with repetitive small wins and the occasional lose you stand to make a lot more money in the long run than you would in high stakes races.

This is exactly similar to a conservative stock market strategy where you look for a consistent 5 to 12% return on your money year in and year out, where, in the long run you end up a millionaire. This works great especially in comparison to a person who goes into a streak of 1000:1 highly risky tech stock IPOs and ends up losing his entire fortune within a few years.

Another reason to stick to conservative stakes racing, is that people that race the high stakes races are always being tested, and since the stakes are so high they get pushed into a continuous habit of upgrading their car (afraid that they will lose the next race) which totally contradicts what we talked about in step #3 about having a fixed investment budget to keep your costs low (or limited) which means you can recoup them from your winnings.

There are two thoughts I want to close with here:

1- I am in no way condoning illegal street-racing here. Many tracks will allow you to setup grudge matches on grudge nights, where you can call out whomever you want and race them in a safe and fair environment. Even so, the rules stated here can be applied to regulated racing such as autox-ing and bracket racing. As long as you study the rule book, your odds, the size of the pot, and the competition, and keep your investment in line with your probable earnings, then eventually you stand to make some money from something that is already a fun and rewarding hobby.

2- I know this is a very generalized guide on making money racing. If you want to read a more specific example of how I would build up my own car to take it grudge match drag-racing, then you can order a copy of my e-book

“Make money racing your grandmother’s car”

… where I talk more in depth about setting up virtually any car to become a successful and consistent race car for the least amount of money and the maximum possible rewards.

Turn your passion into a side income for $24.99

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