After the design was finished I sprayed some black and white spraypaint into the bottle of my airbrush. I added some shadows and a fold to the bottom of the flag...
I used a big sheet of paper to trace the outline of the flag and taped it to the passenger side...
It almost matches. As a bonus, checkered flags do a good job hiding wavy quarter panels. 
Before I could paint the flames I had to sand out the cracks in the front bumper. The seller told us that the car had previous accident damage.The body shop that fixed this car painted red over cracking black paint. I hope he didn't pay much for such dismal body work...
You can see the cool hood pin plates that my dad made in this photo.
When that was done I used 1/8" 3M blue masking tape to lay out the flames starting from the middle of the hood out...
I freehanded the screamin' chicken onto some masking tape and cut him out with a razor blade...
I taped a large sheet of paper over the flames and traced them with a sharpie marker. I was careful to put marks on the paper to locate it on the opposite side of the hood...
The tracing is on the backside of the paper in this shot except for one spot.
Then I cut out the design and traced it onto the hood with a sharpie...
They turned out really well.....
Thanks Joey M. Here's the rest of the paint story.
After I sanded the nose down I filled the license plate holes in with some Bondo
I'll fast forward past all of the masking required for this design. tape, tapetape, taaaaape, and some more tape. sheesh! I prepped the surface with the same scotchbrite green and then a tack rag. I wiped it down with denatured alcohol. Finally it was time to spray. First the Valspar white...
Followed by Valspar "Gold Abundance"...
And finally Valspar Orange...
The blend between colors wasn't great right out of the can but I wasn't worried. I would use my airbrush to blend a little better.
These pictures were taken at about 3:00 AM on September 17th. The Challenge was looming and I was in full cram mode. Remember how I said earlier that my health would suffer from this? Well, when I came home after painting I had a panic attack that had me this close to calling 911. Let's be clear. I don't get panic attacks. I finally went to sleep but the next day I felt the same way. I went to the doc and got checked. It turns out that lack of sleep reduces your body's ability to deal with stress. I had to take it a little easier from here on out.
A few days later and well rested I finished up the flames. I used my spray can to airbrush bottle trick to add some yellow into the orange...
I also used the airbrush to blend the yellow into the white a little better. Here's what it looked like just before we peeled the tape...
I used some old baby blue pinstripe tape we had laying around the shop to outline the flames and give them some contrast on the red paint. This was a real pain because there were actually two pinstripes on the same backer and the tape kept getting tangled up...
Tape peeled and ready for her closeup...
We still had the nitrous and headlights to install as well as what seemed like a million little nit-pickey odds and ends. Stay tuned...
That is some outstanding work there. I can't shoot one color on a car and have it turn out that smooth. Color me impressed.
I'm kicking myself for not clearing over the paint but I was in a hurry. It would've looked better.
By the way, The Camaro in the background is a hard top V-6 automatic that we got in a package deal with a smashed-up LT-1 six speed for $700. Just sayin'.
I still have to download the rest of the build pictures from my camera and then I'll post them up.
As good as this car looks in the pictures, it even looks better in person.
Huge thumbs up to the Matts!!!
Costas
cars and such...
hrdlydangerous wrote: By the way, The Camaro in the background is a hard top V-6 automatic that we got in a package deal with a smashed-up LT-1 six speed for $700. Just sayin'. I still have to download the rest of the build pictures from my camera and then I'll post them up.
Sounds like a perfect car for you to load up and come along on the BABE rally with ;)
Stellar work on this car Matt, the attention to detail is excellent!
Great build thread, awesome work on the trans am, can't wait to read about it in the magazine.
I'm going to prod your mind again, since you seem to be rolling along nicely. How wide of tires do you think would fit under it? You've got 11" wides, correct? I can't seem to find anything over 9.5" anywhere for sell....
I would like to stuff as much rubber as I can under the camaro, offset a bit of that heft it has.....
In reply to accordionfolder:
The tires are 315/35 R17's on 17"x11" rims. I never measured the backspacing on the rims but I believe they're the Grand Sport offset and not the ZR-1 offset. There's a lot of good info about this on frrax.com. As far as finding cheap tires, make friends with someone running an ESP F-body. These are pretty much the go-to size for that class.
I have to get back to the shop and take more photos. You can tell I was feeling the heat because I didn't take many pictures during this stage of the build.
Here's one of the plate my dad made to mount the nitrous soleniods. He used ignition wire looms to keep the lines running neatly. He used the air temp sensor grommet to mount the nozzle and made another hole for the sensor...
I'll have to take a photo of the cool trigger he made for the W.O.T. switch.
MOAR!
Great work!
accordionfolder wrote: I'm going to prod your mind again, since you seem to be rolling along nicely. How wide of tires do you think would fit under it? You've got 11" wides, correct? I can't seem to find anything over 9.5" anywhere for sell.... I would like to stuff as much rubber as I can under the camaro, offset a bit of that heft it has.....
I believe the standard cheap wheel for the 4th gen is the Grand Sport knockoff with 56mm offset (maybe 50mm, can't remember). On my car I still need a 1/2 inch spacer at each corner to keep them from rubbing.
Great work so far! I may have missed it, but are you building this for the $2012 challenge?
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