Pre-Nationals Update, Sept 2nd, 2013: It has been a very long week and we have been working hard on our Mustang every day since the test. A lot of things have been finished and cleaned up, and the crew is loading the car into the trailer now, at 10 pm the night before we drive to Miller. I will show a few pictures that are uploaded, but will do a better "catch up " post when we get back from the NASA Nationals...
The picture above shows the Kevlar honeycomb grill guard material and the air cleaner, in front of the radiator. If this honeycomb is damaged it can be quickly removed. It is a sacrificial material. A mesh grill out at the opening (high pressure area) would cause more airflow restriction than this stuff right at the radiator surface.
That's the front end all painted and ready for graphics. The guys at
Heritage Collision Center in Sherman, TX did a fantastic job for such a short window, and over a 3-day holiday weekend at that. There is some clean-up work to do, as they ran out of color and couldn't get anyone to open their stores to make more, so don't over-analyze the paint just yet. We will bring the car back after Nationals, sans stripes, and they will re-shoot the hood. For the insane time frame we gave them, however it looks fantastic!
Ryan has been working damn near around the clock getting all of the little fab work done. Jason, Ryan and I worked with the flares and they came out "pretty good" for our first time vacuum forming ABS. We will show more pics of the flares when we get back. We learned a lot with this set, and will apply this knowledge and tweak our forming equipment to get a cleaner looking set of flares soon.
Amy and Jason did the stripes in about an hour, and they look excellent. They look like the old graphics but are indeed all new on the fenders and hood. The stripes dive down into the hood ducts and look slick. Big NASA decals adorn the car front and back.
That's the crew, with me on the left, Amy, then Jason and Ryan (with his eyes closed!). Brandon is on a ladder getting the shot. The rest of our guys are at home, asleep, on this Monday Labor Day holiday. Ed was here earlier helping with the build, as usual, but this time sporting a busted knee. We're loading the trailer and Amy and I leave for our 22 hour tow in about 6 hours. Sleep? Not part of the plan.
We hope to have fun at this, our first NASA Nationals. I want to thank everyone at Vorshlag that helped with this 3 week "new aero thrash" and flares prototype work. The final results are beyond my expectations and I hope it all works as good at Miller as they did at our ECR test. I also I can put in some good laps and don't embarrass everyone! Fingers crossed.
More soon,