New to F600 and Central Florida

[rivetsandink]

Hello all! My name is Corey, I am 29 and a Graphic Artist/Designer now living in Tampa, FL. My wife and I moved down here in June from Ocean City, MD so that I could be closer to my kids who live in the Tampa area with their mother.

I plan to eventually get into F600, and I would like to know if there is anyone in the Tampa area I could offer a helping hand. I am planning a scratch build with the help of a few friends who have aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering degrees as well as FSAE experience, and I would like the opportunity to put in some work on one of these machines to get a better understanding of the overall design. I am new to F600 and open wheel racing in general, however I am not new to mechanics. I have been working on cars owned by myself, family, and friends since before I could drive, and I have spent time as a lower level technician for about 3 years.

I currently freelance from home so my availability is pretty much wide open.

[jim murphy]

Welcome to the best bang for the buck in formula car racing. I assume that you are a SCCA member. IF not, go to the HQ website - http://www.scca.com/ - here you will find your neareast region (chapter), probably Central Florida Region, join the club, learn how to get a race license (We can rent you a F600 for driver's school) and start networking with the region members for all that you will need locally.

While you are going through this part, start learning about the F600 class by reading all the threads here AND the threads on the forum where we mostly hang out at -
www.formula500.org/forum/.

Ask on both forums for the F600 or F500 drivers who live closest to you so that you can help them work on their cars between races and at races and get hands-on experience. Also, you are now not too far away from Daytona which will be hosting the Runoffs next Fall. In preparation for this, the local SCCA region will be hosting races at Daytona in May and August (too hot) for the Runoffs. You will need to be on a F600 driver's crew for both the May race and the Runoffs, thus the need to meet drivers now. Here is the race schedule for the Southeast - http://www.sedivracing.org/2015_Schedule.pdf

From this you can schedule yourself to be at the southeast races where your driver will be running or get on a crew of a driver who will be running at each race - this is where both forums are used for communicating.

All of this is to get you to become a thoroughly educated consumer BEFORE you start on any F600. Along the way you will be learning all you can on the various car makes that you run across in this process. IMHO, the best route, once you are thoroughly educated, is to select an used F600 to race (that is best for you), learn about the car while driving it for a season's worth of races while upgrading the chassis to improve its handling.

Once this car is the best that it can be, take all that you have learned and start building your own car. One tip - you will find that making a body for this car will be the most difficult part of the building process. I think the classified ads on both forums shows a F600 for sale in Florida, just go back far enough to find it, it might be right for you after you know what to look for.

HTH,
Jim

Partner, www.formula600racing.com
Been messing with these cars since 1982

[rivetsandink]

Thanks for the info! I have been studying this topic for a few months, and have already read through a large majority of the tech threads on both forums which has been a huge help in finding out about parts suppliers and some of the more technical aspects of these vehicles. I am interested in rental information, especially in reference to getting myself through Driver's School. I would like to get my license this year(2015) if possible, however in most cases I've found that renting a car for two weekends usually equals out to about the same amount of money I would have to spend to just buy a car in the first place. You should actually already have an email from me stating my interest in renting from you to get my license.

As far as the bodywork goes - I'm not scared. I've actually done a lot of fiberglass work in past, and have even been through the process of making my own prototypes for molds out of foam and clay. I would likely use a similar method to Jim Ludemann's for his F1000:

http://ludemannengineering.com/2013/...t-1-ribs-foam/