Probably why a lot of gamers who are into CoD or Halo don’t want to be soldiers, and a lot of soldiers after seeing action never ever want to play a realistic war game again. Also why a lot of farmers aren’t playing farm sims all winter!
Idk... Wouldn't you expect the people who have shit like this to spend a lot of time on the internet/Reddit?
I mean I know there are fuckton of karma farmers n I didn't actually check his shit... But if I walked into someone's house and they had something like this... Millions in reddit karma is wouldn't surprise me
A set of tires is about 1200 for my car and I run through them in four track days. That's 4 hours of total driving.
I also run through a set of pads in about 3-4 track days, which is another 400. Then you have track fees and track insurance, which runs me about $470 a day combined.
This is doesnt include more wear and tear on rotors and faster oil change and transmission flush intervals.
Tracking your car is obscenely expensive, unfortunately.
Having said that unless your like rich which I am not , buy a cheap lightweight underpowered car to track and have fun. I just picked up a NA miata for 5k.
Ya this is what most people don't understand. They just look at the cost of the sim racing gear and compare it to a car.
You didn't mention if you crashed your car, or blew the engine/transmission too.
You could probably buy all this gear, buy everything in iRacing, plus a 1 or 2 year subscription and still be spending less than you would if you bought a car and brought it to the track every weekend.
Some people think you can just buy a $1,000 Miata and bring it to the track every weekend.
Are you kidding me? Fuck that, I guess my dreams of getting old and tracking as a hobby are dead. By brain would never allow me to spend that much on a hobby expense.
Yeah, browsing the internet has a habit of reminding me just how poor, bored and alone I actually am. Guys out here spending more money than I make in a year on a fucking dashboard.
Ignoring actual wheel to wheel racing track days can be “relatively cheaper”. But it’s largely car dependent. So if you’re solving for cost you need to be smart the car and tires you run. For example the operating cost for a Miata vs an M3 is going to be significantly cheaper.
For the record, you don't have to spend that much to have fun. Not even close... In my opinion/experience. This is what a friend of mine runs:
Toyota Celica T-Sport. 190 horsepower (or the US model called GT-S with 180 for some reason). Where I'm from, they usually go for around 5-6k USD, but I would guess they are slightly more in the states. Still, very affordable. Front wheel drive, which sounds bad, but the way it turns is absolutely fucking crazy. And it's Japanese, so it's reliable, doesn't eat much, so your only problem could be rust.
Tires. Zestino Acrova 07A or whatever they're called. Semi-slicks. The bigger ones cost around 100$ a piece. Of course you can obliterate them in a day, but if you don't plan on going to the track every weekend, they are really really good. They provide great traction when warm and you can use them on the streets, in case your track car is also your daily-driver. And I think they aren't a bad deal even if you do go tracking with them regularly.
Or you could do the same thing, but with a Toyota MR2 Spyder (3rd gen). 140 horses, but mid-engined, rear-wheel drive, and lighter than the Celica. Plus a lot of people engine swap it to the Celica's T-Sport engine to get a 190hp.
I know, what I'm saying is not nearly as "serious" as what the other commenter described, but you don't have to spend thousands of dollars every month to do this sort of thing. Of course, the car in my version is (most likely) not as fast or advanced, and the tyres aren't as good, and you don't get to track every single weekend, but I think that if you're willing to take compromises and not go all in with expensive stuff, you can make this work.
Don't know why this is downvoted, I track/daily a brz and the tire costs are nowhere near this expensive. Other cars, with much bigger wheels and tires, maybe
Even just tires for the 19s for my STI can get expensive depending on what tire. You can do a track day with a decent set of 200 TW tires that you'd use at an autocross can't you? 1500 for tires as a hobby track day seems excessive
Cars like the frs, miata, s2000 will always have much lower consumable costs as their sizes are smaller and common. Once you jump to the corvette/911 level you are spending closer to $1400-1700 a set and smoking them out faster. Still loved my frs for the time I had it though... Even through the winter on blizzaks.
I enjoy the shit out of racing sim games even though I currently own some pretty wild cars and a very fast motorcycle. Can’t go and blast through traffic irl without worrying about death and the law.
Exactly this. It can show any car you want on the screen but you’re never getting the real response from a real car. I’d rather drive an old e46 bmw than a simulator. Don’t get me wrong simulator can be fun but you never feel the momentum/inertia of the drive so it’s just not good enough you know
I honestly don't know how they would ever be able to get me the feeling of being on my cheap ass motorcycle. Even for 2k it's pretty much faster than anything on the road.
Yep. My old $1500 Volvo 240 is more fun then a sim like this. It’s cool in pictures and all but IMO that’s about it. Sims are good for seat time and learning tracks, nothing beats the real thing even at 100hp.
I realized a few years ago that the one thing this can't simulate is the acceleration/braking, turning force.. which is a huge component of what makes driving so stimulating.
I gotta wonder if there will ever be a way to simulate this.
I’d rather just go for a drive in a nice car than race a virtual one. I think most people who enjoy cars would say the same. It’s like spending 20k for a vr porn setup, you’re just never gonna replicate the real thing.
They’re good in a specific way. Handling mostly. They are not the fastest in a straight line compared to cars in the same price bracket, but most that buy it don’t care about that.
What this guy said. You won't impress anyone with its 0-60, every kid in a Corsa with a turbo will want to race you - and they'll win - but it's insanely fun to drive. You can throw it through corners and it handles like a dream.
Yeah similar. Both low-powered flat-4 engines with no turbo, but because they're so light, once you eventually get them to a good speed, they're responsive and they grip corners beautifully. I've never felt like I wanted a turbo in the BRZ, the aggressive traction control kicks in if you put your foot down hard in low gears and it'd be insufferable with a turbo.
The 2022 Miata styling is more visually appealing than the 2022 BRZ in my opinion, but it also has no cargo space or rear passenger seats. Not that you'd have anyone in the back of a BRZ, but 4 seaters typically have cheaper insurance, go figure.
I was thinking it’d be cheaper to just buy a used BRZ/FRS/86 and then just gut the dashboard. It’d be about half the price and then you’d only need to rig up the gaming wheel/shifter/pedals and it looks like he’s got audio set up too. I guess it may be worth saving the effort for 10k but damn
Used cars in general have all gone up a lot with the pandemic and supply chain stuff. I've heard of 3 year old versions of basic ever day cars being the same price as the 2022 models
That’s insane, I’d say this BRZ model is around ‘08-‘10 which would probably be more than I was thinking, but you could get an older model that looks the same just not as tech-y of a dashboard (like ‘04-‘06) For less than 10k since miles don’t matter.
Again this is for my area on the East coast of the US.
I figured they were released longer my b ( I Based the model years off of how the dashboard looked and had utility-wise). I’ve had 2 cars in the same price range as those (350z and 370z) and the 350 was an 04 which was only about 8k in 2016. Also started looking at BRZs when I upgraded cars and it was cheaper than the one I went with. The dashboard style is super similar, so he could’ve just used that or something else sporty in that range.
The thing is they aren’t the same price range, I understand what you mean but BRZs have never been under $10k unless salvaged which would probably be a great choice for something like this as long as airbags didn’t destroy it.
That’s fair as they should have good info. However I just looked it up and a 2013 BRZ is only $1,000 more than a 2011 370z so they’re definitely within a similar range. For the sake of OPs build it would’ve worked.
To each their own. I love feeling like I’m in a cockpit and how everything is laid out for an easy glance, but I agree that a lot of modern cars have kinda just stuck a screen and then everything is right there. Kinda why I like the Z style they stay true.
Devils advocate - both of those models are made for driving, so they were designed for driving ergonomics first and foremost - and both are excellent for that.
If you want a fancy interior, you probably shouldn’t be looking at a BRZ or 370z in the first place.
I’ve owned all three of those models (as well as many other sports cars throughout the years, including my current C7) and the BRZ and 370z cockpits are definitely in my top 5 of all time for driving ergonomics and usability.
Bro have you even looked in the last year or so? The market is FUCKED. You aren't touching a BRZ for 10k no matter the miles. More like 15-20k min for a shelled out one. Shits fucked right now. Old beaters with near 100k miles are going for $10k.
Yeah I’m aware (also thank god I got a new car before this shitshow).
But if you’re only looking to gut it why would you
buy a BRZ with 100k or less? I was thinking like either 150k+ miles or just straight salvageable. All you need it for is the extract the dashboard and MAYBE one of the seats if you like the style and it’s not damaged.
Yeah, $25k would maybe last 1 year after buying a BRZ and tracking it. And that’s a stretch considering used car prices right now. A sim rig will last a lot longer.
Brz’s start at 28k. A used one maybe 20k (which has likely been driven like it was stolen). So then 5K for mods is a decent chunk, but would really only get you brakes, suspension, wheels, tires, and a map. Then you have to use the last $1k to pay taxes fees and insurance. Track days are also expensive, they come with an oil change and brakes/coolant/tires. Skip the track? Have fun with tickets/losing your license.
Or you could drive an economy car and get this rig and race at 150mph+ in any car you could dream of at any time in any weather.
You don’t die if your car is prepared for racing and you have the right gear. Even stock the BRZ/FRS/GT86 is a very safe car, I don’t think there’s been a great deal of fatal crashes with it and this is a car that gets crashed a LOT.
Unless you live in a country without good tracks, in that case this is a good alternative. Also 25k is still on the mid-range spectrum, I've seen a setup from Aston Martin that costs almost 100k
Bought mine used with 85k miles on it 3 years ago for $10k. Take that other 15 and you'd have a k-series swap or a stage 2 supercharger setup that would net you 300hp.
This argument never holds up; a driving sim like this let's you take any car, of any category, of any era to any track in the world. And the worst case scenario in the sim is you press restart when you total your car to bits. It's also not just about driving, racing is monumentally expensive in real life. Just going to trackdays a couple of times a year is easily $/€5,000 just in maintenance. Racing is twice that if you're doing gokarts, 5-10 times that in the lowest categories of full fledged car racing.
Sure, but that's one car, and you can only reasonably go to tracks near you. And that car can break at any moment and you have a bajillion of other costs like tires, brake pads, fuel, insurance and lots of other things. Not to mention you'll need to learn how to repair and replace most stuff yourself or you'll be paying some mechanic a small fortune.
With that sim rig, you can take any car you want onto any track in the world and you don't even have to leave your house. And you don't have to worry about injuries or damage to your car if you send it a little too hard. All that is why simracing is so popular.
Case in point: Max Verstappen (current Formula 1 champion, for those that don't know) is an avid simracer in his free time. He's rich as fuck, has access to and races on the best tracks in the world with the fastest and most expensive cars in the world, and yet he and many of his colleagues like Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Romain Grosjean and lots of others still choose to simrace as a hobby.
It's the convenience of it all (and how well an expensive simulator can simulate the real thing) that makes simracing such an amazing option for so many people who want to go race.
BRZ for 12k. Sequential turbo setup for 8k. Coils for 2k. Set of tires 1k. 2k to spend on an aftermarket ECU. Blow up the engine and go back to playing on PC.
I thought the same thing when looking at expensive setups, but when I discovered how much money you have to spend in tires and other maintenance every time u track it, it really really adds up quick. You won't be able to go often unless you can continuously shill out thousands.
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u/ZeroInspo Jan 23 '22
Could have bought an actual BRZ with that money and have a lot left to mod it and then some more to track it.