In reply to Claff :
This is impressive. I'd been thinking of grafting a 1st gen F150 Lightning front clip to the Expedition to make a "phantom" Expedition Lightning. I just want to echo vwcorvette's comment to you last week, "C'mon, man- you've got this"!
Getting down to the wire. Fortunately, a Miata is a pretty simple car aside from all the wacky stuff I did to it. Got it sitting on four wheels now.
Intercooler needs to go in so I can finagle the piping into shape.
I installed the stock shifter, then it somehow fell out and got lost, so I made a new one.
Air cleaner mounted via short bits of tubing. Camera won't focus for E36 M3.
The more I look at this thing, the more I'm amused by it. And that was really the only goal building this.
I have two big question marks as we wind down this thing. I'm debating adding the truck's rear spoiler to the top of the tailgate, but I think it'll look kind of silly way up in the air. I might try it leaned way down to reduce drag... which might have been a good thing to decide before shooting paint.
The other debate is how to deal with windows in the rear of the body. Having the tinted originals from the Expedition will make this look much more like a SUV than leaving them open or just putting clear plastic in the openings, but they need a lot of trimming to fit around the truck bed.
Priority 1 is masking the two-tone and shooting the orange bottom half of the body, and when that's done, on to decals which will make or break this thing as a real NASCAR effort. It might not be all that well-built, and certainly not as ambitious as other builds in this thread, but I'm enjoying it.
In reply to Claff :
I think 1. You leave the windows out for the Friday night local short track look. Or, 2. Cover with "sheet metal" and have more surface for sponsor decals!
Yes you should put the spoiler on up their. Because DOWN FORCE!
Where I'm at so far:
There may be issues placing the body on the chassis. The turbo manifold just might be in the way! Tune in tomorrow for the latest update to Bad, Mean, and Wild.
Man the Expedition and BMW are sooo rad!!
I have bumpers.
I'm down to 5 parts left to glue on now...
In reply to Javelin :
I REALLY want to see this car IRL at full scale. Get on it. Have you started the build thread yet?
In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :
I added it to the bottom of the list of all the other builds I've already started in my head.
Getting closer with the two-tone. Masked and shot orange last night.
Now we have Schrödinger's Two Tone: until it's unmasked, it might be a beautiful crisp line between the two colors with no leaks anywhere where it's not supposed to be... or it could be a hot mess. Stay tuned!
FWIW I appreciate the encouraging words regarding this build.
In reply to Claff :
Looks hot so far!
My multiple color trick is to mask, spray clear, and then spray color. If there's any bleed through the tape, it will be clear. That's what I did on the Matador.
In reply to Javelin :
Wait? What? Nobody ever told me this. That's genius.
Closer. But my concerns about the turbo set up and mating the body and chassis were not the problem. The turbo will interfere with the hood however. May have to go Roadkill stylz and leave the hood off. Intercooler and filters arrived today.
In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :
Didn't I when I built the Matador last February? Pretty sure I did, but that was also 3,662 years ago.
In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :
Hood off is required for Pro Street anyway so...
In reply to Javelin :
But then I'll need more chrome.
vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Javelin :
But then I'll need more chrome.
Chrome is like salt. Use sparingly.
It's technically done, but there's a couple of things I want to do to it tomorrow.
Good news, masking (and unmasking) went well.
One of the conundrums I had was the separation between white and orange. The original Hooters car had a black, or possibly brown, stripe just north of the orange. I knew I wasn't capable of painting a thin line down the middle of the body, and certainly not a straight one. So I cut slightly thicker (scale-wise) strips of electrical tape and put it right on the white/orange border. This allowed me to not worry about how that stripe was going to lay across the taillights and front bumper contours, and it also masked the kinda clunky edge between the two colors. Hopefully it continues to lay flat and not pop up along some seams, especially around the front fender openings. I see in these pics there are a couple bits that need to be redone, no big whup.
I need to put some black paint around the edge of the windshield, then detail the grille openings up front, then put on a whole bunch of decals.
In reply to Claff :
That looks so sharp!
Whelp... 36 hours to go and I've got the day off from work. The thrash begins.
getting bogged down in the details.
Unsure of how many 'Bluetooth' components the final product will have.
It's 3am and I'm gonna call it for the night. The engine is mounted and the crossmember is fabbed. a few parts need to be painted still but we're moving along.
As I suspected I had to cheat the belts, but it looks like I'll be able to rig up a working exhaust system. The radiator hose should fit too...
First thing in the morning I have to wrap up the interior. The roll bars need their final trim and to be fitted, the seat needs some adjustments. after that, box stock suspension assembly, and custom driveshafts.
then... body drop.
Submitted for approval: the first entry into NASCAR's SUV Series
For some reason, my photography is especially lousy today, but on the plus side it might mask some of my mistakes
I knew I was asking for trouble when my attempt at "build it wild" was going to be wild because of custom bodywork, and I really lack the patience for bodywork, but here we are. With a two-month window, there will be plenty of time for test-fitting, measure-thrice-cut-once, and all the time in the world to smooth things out before paint, right?
Wrong! Procrastination was the name of the game. I had the chassis built with three weeks to spare, but I never went back to touch up all the details and scrapes. The body turned into a week-long thrash just finished up this morning, and I'm being generous when I say "finished." No windows, all kinds of gaps that should be filled, wonky windshield fitment. On the plus side, the paint went on smoothly and the decals behaved themselves except where the right rear HOOTERS shipped when being trimmed. I can fix that with paint later.
I haven't ruled out making windows either, though with summer coming that might have to wait until November, at which time I'll have moved on to something else.
Hopefully this doesn't drag down the quality of this thread's builds too badly. Have a great summer, and I'll be ready to do this all over again when the weather gets cold again.
In reply to Claff :
That looks so wild
I present the Porsche Pacer!
You'll need to log in to post.
