Team RD #27 Race Car

For those of you that haven’t followed the journal over on IWSTI, here’s a recap. The block got sent in for machining and a crack was found in the cylinder. Our options were to buy a completely new block or resort to some drastic (but awesome) measures to make this block a BEAST. Of course, we went the beastly route.

More info inside…

I know people have been dying for an update so I’m going to give you a half-assed one and an excuse. First, thanks to Enkei for all of the wheels!

Pics of the finished result inside…

Alright, you get 3 guesses about what this is for:

Here’s a a quick update coming your way. The car is officially back in my hands and it’s go-time for putting this thing back together.

Alright, here’s a 2-for-1 special coming your way. First up, we have paint update #5 with the finished interior. Then it’s on to dash flocking. Don’t know what “flocking” is? Stick around…

As I’ve said earlier, the inside of the car including the engine bay were painted with graphite zolatone. This paint isn’t like anything else, it’s water based (requires a sealer), extremely lightweight (no clear coat), and is 100% scratch resistant. It’s basically a black paint with millions of little white and silver flakes in it. The paint itself was originally created during some freak accident where chemicals were mixed incorrectly.

Here’s the engine bay:

This post was supposed to be an update with pictures of the exterior in the sun and some teaser pics of the inside. Sadly, when I got there I found out the interior was being painted tomorrow morning, not today, and they were just buffing the exterior. I didn’t even get to take any good pictures of the car as the only opportunity I had was when they were pushing it from one building to another. Sorry for the tease, but check back tomorrow for the interior pics.

First off, let’s do some mirror / reflection shots, shall we?

I just got back from the body shop. Sadly, the car was on the lift and the paint is curing right now so I couldn’t get any good pics of it. Once the paint has cured they’re going to color sand it, so this isn’t a fair representation of the finished product.

Here’s the actual paint:

It’s been a little less than 24 hours since I showed you guys pics of the car with the primer/sealer. It was blue, then it was white…now it’s black. This is what I saw when I got there:

Here’s the first update from the paint shop. The body work and primer is done, they’re sanding the car right now getting it perfectly smooth before paint.