'73 Notchback Road Racer

[SwedeSport]

You can get the rc paint in a spray bomb. Or in a bottle.

[Luke]

You can get the rc paint in a spray bomb. Or in a bottle.

We just used rustoleum "paint for plastic" With a light scotchbrite scuff it seems to stick pretty well. You cut the border around the edge on the lexan backing paper carefully on the inside of the window and peel only that outside border off, spray black, and then peel the rest off and install.

[DrewP]

I won't have many updates for a while, I did land the job I interviewed for. I'm going to be working as a fabricator and junior engineer for this R&D company.

We have a decent machine shop and assembly and welding areas, and it's a very small company, about 15 people. The owner takes on projects and is down in the shop with the rest of the engineers.

The plan is to save up for a few months and lease myself a decent size workspace to finish up the yellow car, and to take on a few customer's projects as they come up. This also means I will be able to take on more long term / tuning projects and not have to worry so much about simple routine maintenance.

I flat-towed the car to my apartment middle of this week, and rented a nearby storage unit to stash everything until I can find a workspace close to home to move in to.

[squaab99t]

That's rockin' Glad you were able to find work in this employment environment. Although it is getting better in some areas.
Interesting work by the looks of the website. Good luck, should be fun.

[DrewP]

I was pretty impressed too - they hired another machinist type this week, and the project manager said he was looking to add another 2 engineers soon as well.

25% growth the way things are going is pretty amazing, they have pretty steady projects coming in. Most of our clients are other engineering firms who either can't do the proper analysis for their needs (we make a lot of measuring and calibration/test equipment) or need it in a hurry.

It's about a 35 mile commute for me, but I go against traffic both ways and it's a very engaging place.

Couple of the guys have auto backgrounds too, and everyone is a big technical dork, not your standard moppy headed engineering types.

And I don't have to speak in broken Spanish all day! Everybody wins!

[nutcase]

Nice one :D

[sweedspeeduk]

Good News on the Job front

[Geoff]

That looks like a good job! Have fun!

[99Super]

Congrats on the job, sounds like a good one!
Opposite-flow commutes...love 'em!

john

[DrewP]

For more details see this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2337

But the moral is, I leased a tidy industrial space to work on the cars in, and got the two 99's and almost all of my stuff over there, so work can re-commence on the race car.

[DrewP]

David and I worked on the white car over the weekend some, got the interior out, gave it the first of many baths, and found the water pump leaking like a seive and the sump full of chocolatey gel..... very gross...

But David also brought over his set of corner scales....



As it sits the car weighs 1,910 lbs.

As it sits it's got about a 63/37 weight distribution front to rear, with about a 40 lb difference between the front wheels, and about a 10 lb difference on the rear wheels.

Exhaust, fuel, and mounting the battery pretty far back will help that some.






This is with:

-'89 front and rear suspension
-'89 brakes
-16v engine, 5-speed gearbox, cast iron turbo exhaust manifold
-Polycarb front, rear, and front side windows
-5.5" wide Ronal 8-spoke wheels with 195/55 street tires
-Front bumper frame only, complete rear bumper
-No battery
-No wiring
-No fluids
-No exhaust after the manifold
-No brake lines
-No pedals
-No mirrors

We're thinking the remaining parts should be in the ~200 lb neighborhood.


Otherwise everything is in and mounted.

[Geoff]

Wow, pretty good! You need to make a fiberglass hood and trunk to try to get it down to VW weight.

You could mount the mirrors on the rear quarter panels to move weight back ;-)

[Jordan]

That's lighter than I was expecting. I really need to get my car up on the scales.

[DrewP]

It's lighter than I was expecting too! The weight distribution is about as horrible as I thought it'd be though....

[DrewP]

A little bit of early 1970's levity for the race car.

I love period correct touches, and I thought these George McGovern presidential campaign stickers would do a good job of adding a bit of early '70's west coast liberal SAAB owner humor to the car.

McGovern ran the democratic ticket against Nixon's re-election in '72. He ran an anti-Vietnam-war campaign and advocated pulling out of Vietnam on the condition of the return of captured American POW's, and would have given amnesty to draft evaders, as well as shrinking the defense budget by about a third to better fund social programs.


I thought it was funny, and fits the car.