talking with an engineer friend of mine, he said what i wanted to do (build car in stages) just wouldn't do. he contends that as soon as you start to put serious brakes and race rubber on the car, you'll overstress the factory unibody. So by the time your ready to build the simple rollbar into a full cage, there won't be any car left to attatch it to. any thoughts?

also, how limiting is the strut suspension and have any of you converted to a different configuration? if so, what?

A race car is a car that every time you drive it, you wear a helmet. Anything else is a street car with pretentions. When building a race car, the general method is as follows:

1. Make it safe - chassis repair/strengthening, roll cage, racing seats, strong seat mounts, racing harness, fire system, brake lines, MC, rotors, calipers, throttle linkage, wheels, tires, etc.

2. Make it reliable - replace and/or repair all suspension, steering, driveline, engine, components including fasteners. Upgrade engine, transmission, and differential mounting and cooling. Add brake cooling.

3. Make it repeatable - test and tune the car to make sure it does the right thing at the right time, every time. Any suspension, engine, or driveline adjustability works as designed.

4. Make it fast - start upgrading to get more speed without affecting 1, 2, or 3 above.

In your case, you are still at step 1 so the chassis and brakes need to be done before taking the car on the track.

To address your suspension question there are a few options, I have gone the Tokico route, others have gone other routes including coilovers from places like Arizona Z car. Go check out the Suspension forum on this site and you will find a ton of information on this subject.

It depends what kind of racing you are referring to. There are guys around here that race a stock car to ones with highly modded cars. Try the search utility or browse the racing forums.

You need to first decide what kind of racing you want to do, then find out what kind of modifications are allowed. Then you can determine if you are going to end up with a tube frame car or a modified unibody car.