Roadkill Crop Duster 440
Where are they getting the 20k from? I did not read the article but would be curious as to where the money was spent....
JW
Link to the article that talks about all the iterations of the car. It's pretty easy to figure out where the money would have to go.
Roadkill's Budget Duster Goes 11s! But Is It Too Cheap?
I did not know they had done some upgrades. The episode if I remember correctly showed the car running high 12.30's. That is the basis for what I am trying to replicate and would go about it somewhat different though keeping the RB theme which is fine. Not the actual components they have put on it. Those Cragars alone will eat away at some bennies....
For their ET they didn't need put TTI's on it. Schumachers would have been a good fit without all the drama but hey it is part of their allure. Give me a plain jane Duster like that and in one year you will get that time slip and a little more. But to duplicate that car in it's current state for under 10k it won't happen unless you have a nice stockpile of parts in the waiting which doesn't goes against the total cost of the build.
JW
That's the problem with the Roadkill Duster. If you just watch a few episodes you'd think you could just toss some random junk parts together and have it all work great. Except, most of the parts weren't junk, and it still didn't work great. Not for very long anyway. They ended up breaking, replacing, and upgrading all kinds of stuff later that would cost money. Well, all of it would cost normal people money. And most of the stuff they had to go back and fix is stuff that everyone would have to address if you actually drove the car any amount. Like the fuel system. They ended up needing a new tank, new 3/8" lines, new pump, pressure regulator, etc because that had fuel issues the whole time that they didn't talk about until the end.
Their rear axle set up alone could cost close to a couple grand if somehow magically an A-body 8 3/4 with strange axles, 4.10 gears and disk brakes didn't just land in your lap. Find a suregrip 4:10 chunk of any kind for less than $500, in ANY condition. A-body 8 3/4's are getting $1k or more by themselves. There are more cost effective ways to do that if you can weld (8.8 out of an explorer, for example), but that's not what they did.
It's cool that they built a car that wasn't some perfect show queen and pounded on it. But if you start looking too closely at what they did, they didn't do it on the cheap, they just left the outside ugly. Some of the stuff they would have spent a ton of money on isn't necessary to have fun (500 hp 383!), and some of the stuff they skipped wouldn't have cost that much but will kill the car (or the driver) down the road (subframe connectors, chassis improvements, etc). Doesn't have to be pretty, but some of the stuff they skipped makes the longevity and safety of the car a big question mark.