How much does your 07 car "cost"?

[Jersey Tom]

This is purely from my own curiosity.. as well all know the cost report is a load of BS anyway I'm wondering what we all claim our cars cost.

Car 99 - Univ of Colorado, Boulder: $20,000

[jwill211]

We didn't finish our 07 car in time, but I can say that us being a first year team in 06 with an unbelievably tight budget we built the whole thing for around $8,500-9,000, over half of that out of our pockets never to be seen again.

The heart and soul you pour into it to make it to competition with about 4 guys doing all the work, travel planning, student government haggling, etc......priceless.

Would I do it again? in a heart beat.

[cmeissen]

Right around $17000 for us on the cost report, probably built the car for about $3000. Sucks when you start in debt from the previous year. I think if we tweaked are cost report we could probably get it to 14-15k, but we didn't have the time.

[Jersey Tom]

Sucks when you start in debt from the previous year.

Ohhh believe me I know. Think we started this year 1-2k in the hole.. at one point it was 6-7k negative when the university double-billed us for our $5000 travel card expenses from Detroit in 06!

We never have enough money (and yes I know, thats our bad). I've gotten away with only having dropped about $1000 in personal money overe the past 3 years. Back in the days of the '01 car I'd say more than half the car funding came out of pocket!

[chassisMAN!]

Overall I think we have about 7K canadian into ours, and i beleive the cost report was in the 19-20K range. We havent had to spend any money out of our pocket so far, except for the trip to CALI. this is our first car as well


DURMACH UOIT MOTORSPORTS

[MikeDutsa]

I'm surprised that most teams have to cost their car at more than they spend on it. Do you all get a ton of parts donated or what? We have(had, its gone now), comparitivly what appears to be a pretty hefty budget. This year we have spent 20k building, but the cost report says 13k. The diffrence is due most likely to some rapid proto stuff that costs a lot, but represents a part that can be made very cheeply.

I dont believe that the cost report is BS at all, it represents 10% of the total points available, and it was closer to 30% of the points we scored in 06. so as far as points go i think it is well worth the time.

Best luck to you all in cali.

Mike D
UTSA

[Fyhr]

Our first year car is rather cheaply built, mild steel frame, no carbon anywhere. Just rather simple, very little CNC (only uprights and diffmounts) ended up at 20k.

Suppose we haven't really got the hang of costing a cheap car just yet.

[Mike Flitcraft]

Due to having to make two frames, and nearly every part twice...you really don't want to know. North of $35,000......

[JerryLH3]

A rough guesstimate would be between $15,000 and $20,000. We do get a lot of discounts and donated material, but if you add up everything that was used throughout the year and the real costs of things the cost report standardizes (engines and materials), it has to be more than the cost report total.

[Jersey Tom]

I'm surprised that most teams have to cost their car at more than they spend on it. Do you all get a ton of parts donated or what?

I calculated out that I did about $15-20k worth of CNC machining for free this year. Uprights, hubs, dry sump components, wheel nuts, miscellaneous flanges and fittings, body molds, wheel centers, etc.

Multiple sets of tires donated.. ~$1600
Had a spare 600 F4i layin around.. ~800
Used differential from 06 car.. ~$2700
Had to borrow rims from CSU last minute.. ~$1200
Used muffler from 06 car (didnt work).. ~$400
Discount on dampers..
Discount on radiator..
Discount on fan..
Rod ends and spherical bearings half price..

It all adds up.

There are definitely some things on cost report that makes it cheaper than reality.. like aluminum costing $.75 / lb when in reality all the billet stock I got was around $8.00/lb. Bargain compared to McMaster which charges $16.00/lb!

We wound up purchasing roughly $15,000 worth of stuff this year. Had we actually done fundraising (team was very small this year and we crammed about 2.5 years of development and manufacturing into 1 year) and been able to buy all the parts we needed without scavenging, would have been $20k +

Of course if you cost out the cost of 9-12 engineers working overtime (well some of us anyway) for 2 semesters straight the project quickly bills at some hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Biggy72]

Cost report wise this year we came in at $16,500, down from $21,000 last year mostly because of things we learned from research more so than having a cheaper car. Actual budget wise we were close to $32,000 with about $20,000 coming from our university account. Most of the $20,000 came from fund raisers and begging people for money. The rest was either out of pocket or donated (labor or parts/materials). We don't have a cnc mill, engine dyno, or many other tools we could use to cut down our budget so quite a few things had to be outsourced. so quite a few things had to be outsourced.

[BamaJeff]

I believe our cost report was in the $13k-14k range. Total ballpark on actual cost is $19k-20k.

Probably way off though...

[Nitesh]

Our cost report's a bit upward of $12K; up from last year by a couple of grands..


actual expense on the vehicle is about 15K with stuff like ECU being reused from previous year. A lot of meny goes into the vehicle transportation and air tickets... relly burns a hole in the pockets...

[RotoryHeaven7]

Originally posted by Mike Flitcraft:
Due to having to make two frames, and nearly every part twice...you really don't want to know. North of $35,000......

It was actually about $25K, but some of that includes material that will be used for the next few years cars.

[Mike Flitcraft]

*doh*

Forgot about the bulk materials.