NASCAR Question

[saleen385]

What would you guys pay to spend a week in a NASCAR engine shop and help/learn how to build the engines?

If the price was $2K for the week 40hrs. What would you expect to get out of it?

Thanks,
Jim

[VenturaAlfa]

It would be a fun experience :banana-dance: but I truly wouldn't expect to learn a whole lot. The teams these days are so secretive that I wouldn't expect to get much I could use in the future and I would be suspicious about how accurate the information was that I did get.

Particularly if your not an employee but more of a guest I would doubt they would give much in the way of valuable information that might get leaked to another team.

What would I pay? The question should be what are they willing to pay me to come work in the shop. Just standing around in a race shop would get boring really quickly. I would want to be working and if I'm working them I want to be paid.

Ventura Alfa

[slotguy]

Yes a lot of thing are kept secret from shop to shop but if you have ever worked on a real race car and have any knowledge of a stock car you could learn more than you think .even if you just stand there as you said you can take in a world of knowledge just by see those cars up close if you can comprehend what you are looking at and not thinking you arent getting paid the info you do walk away with could be priceless to a racer or a crew member.

tony

[Racie35]

A $2000.00 tour would only benefit them.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

That's how I made the connection to the Austin Healy group in Ontario in the early 60s, John. I just walked over to my school friend's house and started scraping a head to get old gaskets off. He was scraping the block, and I scraped the head, then because I was having fun, I scraped the valve cover gasket, too. His father owned the team, and he decided we worked together well enough to take us to the track. I even got to drive the car (Bugeye Sprite) a little that year. I learned about clutches at 11 years old on my great-grandfather's Farmall. The cheering from the rest of the team when I did a lap is a memory I'll remember when I can't remember anything else. I didn't tell them about the old tractor, as far as they knew I wouldn't be able to make the car move. The guys dropped me in the car, strapped me in and flipped the switch. I hit the button and took off.

Maybe that's why they want $2000?

[saleen385]

I work in a NASCAR engine shop and the reason I asked is we get a lot of people coming through for tours and the guys and I were talking about it. I did some research and noticed there are a lot of engine building schools advertised on the net that are just engine shops and not affiliated with a college. So we were just wondering if there is that much interest in something like that.

Thanks for the responses,

Jim

[Dodgefarmer]

[MichiganCur]

Probably wouldn't pay much.... I grew up in an engine shop, we built many high performance engines that did very well on the track. Tbh I don't think they'd share the top end tips and tricks. And beyond that, it's not something that I'd likely use... Yes you'll probably learn something, but the value of what you learn will really depend on your application of it.

[strangebrew]

A friend of mine here in Illinois owned a pretty successful engine shop & built some very good high performance engines. He moved down
south some time back to work in a shop that builds predominently truck series engines for several teams & some sprints. He was tied up with Carl Edwards for a time before Carl moved on. All I know is he spent a lot of time busting down engines, scraping gaskets & parts washing
before he got his fingers into the assembly process. (and he was an employee) I'd be surprised if your shop would share too much more than
basic performance stuff. Not to say that there isn't a lot to learn with that.
Just as an aside........his brother is one of the hotshoes in UMP mods down here & when NASCAR switched from the 6 cylinders, his brother's
mod buzzed past the V8's like nobody's business. Everybody here knew where those engines came from!

[VenturaAlfa]

Relating this back to slot cars and racing here goes:

We only have 1 hobby shop here in Ventura that sells 1/23 cars. It's run by a gentleman named Vern. For as long as I have known him (which is so long I won't say) he goes back to Indy, goes into the garage area and ends up with a job working on cars. He used to be one of the sponsors on Robby Gordon's team and a couple of others which is what gives him his in. Being in the hobby business he couldn't afford to sponsor anymore so now he goes back when the cars arrive at Indianapolis and walks around and talks to everybody until somebody hires him.

Two years ago he was a tire changer on a second tier team and last year he was the gas man on a similar team. Charlie Kimball is from here and Vern and I both raced in karting against Charlie. Vern has kept in touch and worked on that team from time to time.

So, the tour would be fun but if I really wanted to get to know things or work there Personally, I would go get a job with a team. Might be a truck or xfinity team but I'm sure I could still learn quite a bit.

Just my .02 worth

Ventura Alfa