so i accidently bought a car and started a challenge team last night. have questions.

I'm generally not a fan of wings, but boy o boy, that works on your ride, along with the fat flairs, love it.  Beautiful job by you and your team.  Go flog it and have a ball.  And to all reading this, have a safe and enjoyable outing!!!

also, for those that are seeing "clipped text"....

Dusterbd13 wrote:

So, our last workday was the do or die day. The car needed to be finished, for all our sakes. So, if it wasn’t done, it wasn’t getting done before we packed it on the trailer and headed for gainesville. The list was long, the day was hot, and we were all ready to be finished with the project. We were close, though.

Steve started by getting out his roll of aluminum HVAC tape, and “re chroming” the grille. Came out fantastic. I reassembled emblems after detailing them with some various sharpies.

Dallas pulled the hood, flipped it over, cleaned and painted the underside. I went after all the spots of gray I had missed, was splotchy looking, etc. Dallas also crawled in between the cage tubes and touched up some that I wasn't flexible enough to reach. I spent some time bending up the interior fire suppression lines, and making a handle mount that was accessible from outside the car as per SCCA rules. While the paint was drying, Steve Dallas and I polished trim and reassembled the front. We also put the car in the air, and painted the entire suspension with semi gloss black rustoleum, as well as blacked out the window trim, and painted the air cleaner with some ,mostly empty cans of wrinkle black I found in the spray paint cabinet. Only one good nozzle, and 4 cans we were pretty sure were empty, but had just enough for a light coat. We added more rivets to the flares for visual balance, assembled the front clip, mounted the wing, and double checked all our work. We were SO busy that I didn't take many pictured during the work, but did take some of the end result.

In addition to this, we got our packing lists finalized, travel plans finalized, adopted a vinyl guy, etc. The vinyl guy is meeting us at the challenge with our custom cut logos and graphics, so no pictures of those until the race report.

So, without further ado, the moment we've ALL been waiting for: the completed car!

Awesomest AMC Spirit ever!!!!

sleepyhead said:

also, for those that are seeing "clipped text"....

Dusterbd13 wrote:

 The vinyl guy is meeting us at the challenge with our custom cut logos and graphics, so no pictures of those until the race report.

gee, wonder who that could be?  :p

awesome work, guys. that thing looks killer. stop sandbagging that you're worried about being DFL, you won't be. :-D

Bravo guys! So many people never make it this far. See you in Florida.

That's really impressive.  Good luck in FL.

So I just saved one of those images from page 33 as a desktop.  

Freaking awesome looking man.

In reply to sleepyhead :

Thanks! I fought with the text clipping for 20 minutes and gave up. I appreciate the assistance. 

John: thanks. Didn't really do a before and after comparison for myself. It really is a pretty radical change. 

Everyone else: thanks for taking the ride with us. Its been a long, strange trip. But totally worth it. Im so excited i can't sleep. Im also nervously awaiting to see how our car stacks up against the rest.

Stop being nervous and worry about having fun.  I'm bringing vinyl to tag your car too.  And several others.  

WOW!

Been reading all along, but seeing it all done drives it home. Wonderful job. Looking forward to the reports from the Challenge.

Now  I'm trying to picture my Thunderbird with those kinds of flairs... 

In reply to Mad_Ratel :

I have a few more sets of slicks if you want to force yourself to find out....

Patrick said:

Stop being nervous and worry about having fun.  I'm bringing vinyl to tag your car too.  And several others.  

Vinyl tagging you say? 

That thing looks fantastic! If you're not one of the top scorers in the concours I will be surprised.

That engine bay and interior look great too, should get a good haul of concours points!

What a complete and thorough build. The transformation is amazing and the detail work inside and out is spot on! Can't wait to see this thing run!

In reply to Dusterbd13 :

I wonder if it's a browser thing.  All I did was select, copy into Google Docs and then copy that into the post.  You're using some kind of word product, right?

I have been to many Challenges.  I have *not* seen many Challengers with a harder-hitting visual or a cleaner / more finished appearance.  Holy hell that car is sick!   

FWIW I was there when Wheels777 fired the Nova for the first time at the $2004 Challenge.  That moment changed the way I think about the Challenge.  Seeing these pix gave me the same feeling.  

Im using some document writer that came with my laptop. Not an official Microsoft product, near as i can tell. 

I think its wps or something like that. 

AngryCorvair said:

I have been to many Challenges.  I have *not* seen many Challengers with a harder-hitting visual or a cleaner / more finished appearance.  Holy hell that car is sick!   

FWIW I was there when Wheels777 fired the Nova for the first time at the $2004 Challenge.  That moment changed the way I think about the Challenge.  Seeing these pix gave me the same feeling.  

 

Dude....

Thank you.  That is incredibly high praise and i appreciate it. 

Thank you ALL for the feedback and being part of this ride. You have no idea how much it touches me.

Looking forward to watching this scream down and around the track. 

who says you can't go racing on a budget? I think this clearly proves them wrong. That is one hell of a package of performance and appearance bravo!!!!

This is one of those challenge builds that would still be awesome if it were built for $20,000. I wish I could be at the challenge this year to see it in person.

Seriously, the car looks to have been built at a race shop.  The paint and interior are clean and beautiful vs hacked looking.  I envision much much more slop in a challenge build. 

Just unbelievable... you guys did a awesome job, really raised the bar..