racerbob4
Well-known member
I've been on the journal now for a couple of weeks and I didn't know this forum existed until my son found you people. He is building his dream house in Arlington, VA and will have two garages, one attached to the house and one stand alone in the back yard dedicated to his race shop. He currently lives in another house in Arlington that also has a garage and a three car carport which has been very good as a race shop. I raced sports cars for many years and when my son turned 8 I started taking him with me to the local track and he was in charge of gas and tire pressures and did a great job.
His last year in college I had to sell my race car to get the money to pay for his last year of school and retired from racing, but didn't know it at that time. He got a scholorship for his masters in Computer Science and when he graduated he had some money left over and immediately bought a Mazda RX3 to race in SCCA road racing. So I decided to give him some help for a year and in drivers school he was extremely fast considering the quality of the car and was near the track record for his class. We ran that car for a year and he finished 2nd in class in the MARRS championship and then we decided to build our own Mazda RX7. He won the MARRS that year in a faster class and decided he wanted to race in the National program which means you go to different tracks. That was in 1998 in a Camaro that we bought and the next year won the T2 Championship at Mid Ohio. In 2003 he bought another stock Camaro and we raced that with some sucess for two years.
I approached Nissan about running one of their new 350Z cars and they were very enthusiastic and gave us a car. We are now on our second 350Z which is a 2007 model with more horsepower and last September he came in 3rd in the rain at Road America, Wisconsin at the National Championships. I've enjoyed being his crew and never bought another race car for myself and the son has been racing for 16 years now and its been fun and interesting.
On to the garage......the contractor expects to complete the whole project in about 2 months and yesterday the electrician finished up the rough-in for the garage and will have inspection this week. The race garage is only 24 x 24 because the county limits how much land you can cover with a building or driveway. We also have a concrete slap next to the garage to park our 28' enclosed trailer which carries the car and a golf cart as well as a small tent and amost a ton of spares and things like jack and jack stands. The garage is two story with one side full height inside, approximately 16'-9" clear so we can install a lift. The other side is normal height with a storage space above accesed by an exterior stair. The main garage door is a motorized roll up. At this time we are planing on insulatiing all of it but will be doing some of the final work ourselves. All electrical outlets are quads and set 48" above the floor. We wil build a working countertop at 39" high. We alredy ordered enought Rocksolid floor kits to do both garages and will do that ourself. We will heat the garage with two 220V heaters, one currently in the present garage and will buy another one once we take occupancy. Future plans are for an airconditioner but thats a year or two away. Current plans are to use OSB for the walls and paint them with gloss paint in a light color for reflectance, and maybe a racing stripe around the perimiter. Lighting is being discussed with the electrician to get the best lighting at the least cost. So far a Challenger looks like the best lift but we need one strong enough to put our Ford 250 Super Duty crew cab on it for changing oil and minor work. Great truck. My son plans on renting out the current house but keeping the garage and using it for long term storage. We usually always had a tire sponsor, Goodyear is the current one, so we have a lot of tires and also have 4 sets of wheels for the race car plus cases of racing oil so we need storage. We keep our costs down with several sponsors, some with us for as long as 15 years. This year we are planning on having two sets of tools, one for the trailer to use at the track and one set inside the garage. We are shopping for a larger tool box for the garage and have about half of the tools we want to stock it with. Most of our tools are the older craftsman which work fine for part-time mechanics but our torque wrenches are snap-on.
We are also going to add to the 3 shelf units we have that are great for storing cargo boxes and room for 4 race tires on top of each unit. The current garage has old kitchen cabinets but we want to do somthing a little nicer this time. My background is that I am a retired architect but also have a contractors licence so I have some useful background for the house and garage construction. When things get a little further along maybe I can get my son to put some pictures of our garage on the Journal. I really appreciate all the great ideas I see in here.
His last year in college I had to sell my race car to get the money to pay for his last year of school and retired from racing, but didn't know it at that time. He got a scholorship for his masters in Computer Science and when he graduated he had some money left over and immediately bought a Mazda RX3 to race in SCCA road racing. So I decided to give him some help for a year and in drivers school he was extremely fast considering the quality of the car and was near the track record for his class. We ran that car for a year and he finished 2nd in class in the MARRS championship and then we decided to build our own Mazda RX7. He won the MARRS that year in a faster class and decided he wanted to race in the National program which means you go to different tracks. That was in 1998 in a Camaro that we bought and the next year won the T2 Championship at Mid Ohio. In 2003 he bought another stock Camaro and we raced that with some sucess for two years.
I approached Nissan about running one of their new 350Z cars and they were very enthusiastic and gave us a car. We are now on our second 350Z which is a 2007 model with more horsepower and last September he came in 3rd in the rain at Road America, Wisconsin at the National Championships. I've enjoyed being his crew and never bought another race car for myself and the son has been racing for 16 years now and its been fun and interesting.
On to the garage......the contractor expects to complete the whole project in about 2 months and yesterday the electrician finished up the rough-in for the garage and will have inspection this week. The race garage is only 24 x 24 because the county limits how much land you can cover with a building or driveway. We also have a concrete slap next to the garage to park our 28' enclosed trailer which carries the car and a golf cart as well as a small tent and amost a ton of spares and things like jack and jack stands. The garage is two story with one side full height inside, approximately 16'-9" clear so we can install a lift. The other side is normal height with a storage space above accesed by an exterior stair. The main garage door is a motorized roll up. At this time we are planing on insulatiing all of it but will be doing some of the final work ourselves. All electrical outlets are quads and set 48" above the floor. We wil build a working countertop at 39" high. We alredy ordered enought Rocksolid floor kits to do both garages and will do that ourself. We will heat the garage with two 220V heaters, one currently in the present garage and will buy another one once we take occupancy. Future plans are for an airconditioner but thats a year or two away. Current plans are to use OSB for the walls and paint them with gloss paint in a light color for reflectance, and maybe a racing stripe around the perimiter. Lighting is being discussed with the electrician to get the best lighting at the least cost. So far a Challenger looks like the best lift but we need one strong enough to put our Ford 250 Super Duty crew cab on it for changing oil and minor work. Great truck. My son plans on renting out the current house but keeping the garage and using it for long term storage. We usually always had a tire sponsor, Goodyear is the current one, so we have a lot of tires and also have 4 sets of wheels for the race car plus cases of racing oil so we need storage. We keep our costs down with several sponsors, some with us for as long as 15 years. This year we are planning on having two sets of tools, one for the trailer to use at the track and one set inside the garage. We are shopping for a larger tool box for the garage and have about half of the tools we want to stock it with. Most of our tools are the older craftsman which work fine for part-time mechanics but our torque wrenches are snap-on.
We are also going to add to the 3 shelf units we have that are great for storing cargo boxes and room for 4 race tires on top of each unit. The current garage has old kitchen cabinets but we want to do somthing a little nicer this time. My background is that I am a retired architect but also have a contractors licence so I have some useful background for the house and garage construction. When things get a little further along maybe I can get my son to put some pictures of our garage on the Journal. I really appreciate all the great ideas I see in here.