84 900 F Prepared Notchback

[SwedeSport]

Last summer I dragged home this 86 16v Notchback. No title, so all its good for is a race/track only car. Found it on Craigslist for a couple hundred bucks. The intention is to make a E Prepared hillclimber out of it, and then if it lasts a season or two, swap in a turbo and run a season or 2 in F Prepared. I am preparing my 86 8v car to go hillclimb, but only expect to campaign that car (carefully) to get my hillclimb licensing requirements. This car will be one that I can go all out with (and not have to baby my daily driver). I expect to have this car ready for the start of the 2011 season in the end of May 2011.

I am on the hunt for a few items to get started.

I plan to use a piece of semi rigid rubber, between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, approx 10 inches wide, by about 10 feet long as an airdam.
I want to wrap it around the front of the car and rivet it to the front fascia. It will extend down to almost the pavement. It needs to be rigid enough to hold its shape while moving thru the air but needs to give upon contact with the pavement. I found a few suppliers of industrial rubber, but wanted to get opinions on material choices/ suppliers from the forum.

I am going to use the stock corner signals and a set of 79 headlight bezels. Im gonna mount them on the car and wrap them in the same vinyl that is used for doing signs and vehicle graphics. I'll use sign panel plastic to make tabs. Ill then fiberglass over the pieces to create a 1 piece lightweight copy of the signal/bezel combo that just pop rivets to the body. Ill do the same for the rear lights. What I need from the forum on this is a good used 79 bezel for the drivers side. Anyone have one of these to spare?

I am working on a set of fender flares that will pop rivet onto the sides of the car. They are a glorified set of airflow flares that have been widened to accomodate the wide tires. I am going to run a set of 15x8 MRW Ultra Star wheels in black, with a set of Hankook Ventus F200 tires 215/ 580/ 15. I'll need some clearance for those. These flares will be able to be cut down and used on street cars or cars with normal size tires. I would like to see some pics of flares from your projects.


Last I am doing smoked plexi rear and side windows, and clear lexan front windshield and door windows. All are 1/8 inch material. These will be pop riveted to the car with some sort of weatherstrip as a spacer. The easiest way is to rivet them to the flange but that creates a sunken glass look. I would like to make them more flush with the body. The door windows will be removeable since some classes require no (or open) windows in the doors. Again I want some pics of your projects to see what others have done.

[Geoff]

Rubber can get heavy for an airdam, depending on how much you need to use. I'd recommend as thin as you can for the bottom lip. I have a plastic airdam I built out of a piece from a huge compost bin (its probably either polypropylene or polyethylene)

Its lightweight and I attached it to the back of the bumper with 1" x 1/8" aluminum strips so when it gets bent back (every time I drive it) I can pull it forward again. Sometimes the pavement pounders build the airdams real stiff with a soft lower lip.

For the windows people typically just rivet in to the flange. Spacing them out flat might look neat but really doesn't gain you anything but looks.
For a gasket try LEXEL (made for adhering to lexan/polycarbonate).
You can paint the outer 1 or 2" of the edge of the polycarbonate to give it more of a clean look

[SwedeSport]

I requested a sample of SBR/Gum rubber skirtboard. I found an online supplier, www.rubbercal.com. I asked for a piece of the 1/8 thick and 1/4 thick material. This stuff is used as conveyer skirting or wiping, as well as snowplow edge blade. They say it is rather abrasion resistant so it should hold up. Its 65-75 durometer and weighs 1lb per square foot at 1/8 inch thick. I plan to cut it down so that it is only about 6 inches high across the front but 10 inches up the sides so I can get into some fender metal. I would guess that if the 1/8 inch material is rigid enough the whole shebang should be less than 5 lbs including fasteners.

I was going to use some firm foam weatherstrip to space the windows out. I understand there is no real benefit to performance, but some of the cars at the hill last year were real rats in terms of workmanship and appearance. I'm all about a little extra effort to make it look like I care about what I'm doing.

[Geoff]

The windows would look pretty slick if they were flush. Do it if you can. :-)

A 1/8" thick polypropylene or polyethylene airdam would weigh in around 1.5lb with hardware and would be stiffer (the wind won't fold it back as easy). Add a thin rubber strip along the bottom and you'll probably be less than 2.5lb. The more weight you can keep off the front of these cars the better, they're so front heavy! When I put my lights on the tail starts hanging out a whole lot more.

[SwedeSport]

A few weeks ago while gutting and stripping the car I cut out the lip at the sunroof opening and fitted a roof panel that I cut out of a 900 destined for the scrap yard. This past week I welded it in place. After some hammer and dolly time, and a fair amount of filling and sanding, I got the roof done. I hope to get the rest of the holes in the body welded up and mudded. (locks, side markers, antenna hole, washer jets etc). Im gonna try to snot the metal in place and get all the grinding done tomorrow. And filled and cheese grated Saturday. Guess that means that Im block sanding it all Sunday. I just want to get enough of the body work done that I can hose the spots with some sealer primer and stick it back outside for a while. I am leaving off the bumpers, so the rear valence needs a rolled pan to finish that out. The front needs the bumper stubs cut off, and some grilles made to cover the openings. Ill use a piece of tube welded between the bumper stubs for crash protection, somewhat like the bumperettes on a 70-73 Camaro. But tuck them behind the factory turbo fascia for a clean look. Wanna thrash on it and make some progress before I pull my 17 foot sailboat in the shop to get the interior bulkheads glued up.

[SwedeSport]

Tinkering with Corel. This is sort of what I am imagining.

[SwedeSport]

Got my rubber sample, they sent out a 1/4 inch by 2 inch dia piece and it has considerable weight. The 1/8th inch material is gonna naturally be lighter. They advertise 1 lb per sq foot for 1/8 inch. I actually found an alternative in the stock car world. There is a rolled plastic sheet, .070 thick 24 inches by 10 feet. I emailed to try to get weight info. They say the stuff is virtually indestructable. Comes in a few different colors too. Its rather cheap too, at about 30 bucks shipped to the door. At that rate Ill probably just order it , I can find uses for it if it does not work for the airdam. Might be a good option for underbody protection sheeting on a rally car.

I moved the car out of the shop yesterday, gotta get the tan 86 in the shop for a few days to repair some minor issues. I'm gonna take a month off from the car stuff to work on getting my boat project advanced a little. Gotta get my Honda CM250 cafe racer running too as spring is right around the corner. I expect to be updating this post on a regular basis as the project will be ongoing from a planning standpoint. Ill be back on the tan 86 project for a while in May/June as the hillclimb is at the end of June.

[Geoff]

Those stock car guys are good for cheap stuff

[Luke]

I've used that roll plastic stuff before, its very handy. Its pretty flimsy but ok for secondary underbody protection, use 1/8" or 3/16" UHMW for the main panels. For a front spoiler it would work well it its just a short leading edge for a more substantial backing above. 3 or 4" deep would be the max if unsupported from behind...

[SwedeSport]

I ordered the 1/8 inch x 10" x 10' roll of skirtboard rubber from Rubbercal. It came the other day, its gonna be too flimsy to do what I intended. I may still use it, but only for a small strip across the bottom. Back to the drawing board.

[hutch]

I am working on a set of fender flares that will pop rivet onto the sides of the car. They are a glorified set of airflow flares that have been widened to accomodate the wide tires.

Any pics of these? I've been doing some research into mold making and want to start trying my own this summer based off a set of normal SPG flares but have realized that mounting them is going to be tricky.

[SwedeSport]

Have not done a whole lot with this project in the last few months. The flares I was working on are a widened set of airflow flares. They extend all the way to the rockers, so one could run them on a car without airflow bumpers, or an spg center section. They can be cut down and installed on a full airflow car as well. Maybe even on a standard spg. I was going to put them on an 85 900 that I have been restoring slowly, but decided on something different for that car. I was intending on using the set Im fabbing for the 86 notchback race car, and possibly the 99. They are nowhere near completion, but I suppose I could snap some "in progress" shots. one should be able to fit a 15x8 rim and tire under them. Since they will be primarily for a racecar, they would just pop rivet on to the body just like the replica S&R flares I saw on here.

Ill get a few mock up shots this week.

[jfoo13]

I searched high and low for fender flare options when I was thinking about going with an 8 inch wheel. The hard edged rally flares are not my favorite style and there are not many options. The datsun style flares are more my style. I found this picture on Garaget.org of flares I was going to mimic - just posting them here for inspiration. I ended up going with 7inch wheels and they fit great.

[SwedeSport]

Those look to be a copy of the Airflow flares, although real airflow flares stop at the top of the bumper, and the spg center section. The pictured set is exactly what Im going for. The difference would be about an inch more width, and a pop rivet flange. Im not even close to where I want to be with them. They were intended to be airflow replicas, but I ditched the airflow project. They will not be a "show quality" replica, but could be fine tuned for a nicely finished car. I need to fit my wheel/tire combo, and set the approximate ride height in order to finish shaping and fitting the flareset. Ill then attach them to the car, bondo em in, and pull molds.

[hutch]

That looks pretty good, did you make them from scratch or did you have a set of airflow flares laying around? I had a set that I sold and unfortunately didn't have this idea in my head or I would have tried to make a mold of them before getting rid of them. I want these to fit with the SPG kit thats going on my car so the plan was to make a mold of the SPG flares I have to get the shape right and the mounting points close to correct, thought I don't like the way they are mounted as is so I'd like to think of a better way if possible, and then make them an inch or two wider. I'm most likely never going to run wider wheels than the Shelbys so I don't need them to be massive but I think about airflow flare size would be great.