As someone who has gone the "build from scratch" route, I absolutely concur with Bill! To get the car reliable, safe and sorted you will spend at least twice as much to build than you would to buy. Its fine to build if you have the skills and desire, but don't do it to save money.

Consider as well that with a dependable, sorted car you can focus much more of your time and energy to learning how to drive and race, not worrying about the car, or if it's handling correctly.

I feel I was fortunate in that I was able to build the car over one winter and get it on the track early spring for my school. But it has been a constant battle getting handling and cooling sorted out, among other things. This is the end of my third season and I have to this point been continually tuning. The car is locally competitive, but not nationally. So I'm now moving on to another car and will either keep the old stuff for spare parts, or sell it as a w2w starter car.

While the knowledge you gain from doing all the prep work is invaluable, I also know many people who never made it to track because of grossly underestimating the resources and amount of work required to build from scratch.

Jeff