And at the end of the day, here is where we are at.

The roof is nearly prepped for molding, one more round of sanding and spray putty and she should be good.

The roof scoop is done.  This is for driver cooling.

Another view.

The side skirts on the drivers side are getting close to completion too.

Another view of the skirts.

So what do you do 3 hrs after you cut the rear of the car off, when you realize that you really need the wheel arch flares on the car so that you can match the side skirts to them?  A few pop rivets, a strip of alloy tube and some masking tape of course!

Also began the initial design of the new front bumper.  From the original car lines, out to the edge of the new bumper, you can see how much wider we’re making it.  Its going to look epic!

Also started experimenting with some new aero designs for the rear end…

Not sure of the downforce to drag ratio on this one though…

As we were talking about the amount of work required to patch up JC’s stock rear end, vs just making a fibreglass one now –  the back fell off!

Although, I do admit to having an angle grinder in my hand when it fell off…..

The rear of the car looks SICK like this!  We are defiantly going to have to do Jacks hill without any bodywork, and go into the open wheeler’s class and knock them off in their own class 🙂

The molds are off!  They came up really great, very happy.

Above is the whole left rear of the car, below the boot and rear section – from the back of the mold.

Rear end, from the inside – you can see the mold lines from the lights 🙂

You can see the shine on the molds – we have not even cleaned them or polished them yet!

The back of the car has had sections of paint pulled off, a rear 1/4 window broke and the wheel flares came off……  JC was going to run the stock rear end for a bit this year – now we need to work on that too….  😦

Still waiting for the rear to dry, so work continues on the doors and skirts.

These pics better show the ducts that I was talking about in the last post.

Got lots of other little bits cleaned up tonight as well.

All of the layers are on the rear end molds!

Next, we wait a few days for everything to harden fully, before we can remove them to see what we got.

So, in the mean time we started on the doors and side skirts.

The bottom section of the ‘door’ will be  a big duct, exiting the front wheel wells, and then re-entering the rear wheel area, for brake ducts, diff coolers etc.

One side 100% complete

The other side has 4 out of 5 layers completed.

The work continues…

Second door mold cleaned up.

Door skins layed up.

More soon…

The body is 99% done, we are just perfecting the finish.  One more night of spray putty and sanding and she should be done.

The other side.  We’ve added our own custom touches to the body, to keep it standard, but different…

JC hard at work…

The mold of the door skin after just being laid  up.  Hopefully it comes off cleanly.

We started on the door to get our techniques perfected before we start on the main car body.

More soon.

Work continues getting the body perfect before the mold is taken.

Most of the body is complete, just a few tiny little bits to do

View of the other side.

One door smoothed, and ready for having its mold taken.

Other door very close to being done.

Another few hours of work and it will be ready to have the molds done, just need to get this whole Christmas thing out of the way 🙂

…for the blue Silvia.

Work started today prepping the rear bodywork of a 180sx getting ready to make a mold of it, to make fiberglass rear bodywork.

When finished it will have a 180 rear, and it wont be blue any more…

It was a hot day, and a slippery track, but we managed to do quite well.

• 1st in class for the day
• New class record for the long circuit at Waneroo (Fastest ever lap by a car with a roof in the Speed Event Series competition!)
• 2nd Outright for the day

This meant that we not only won our class for the whole year, but also managed to get 3rd outright for the year behind two of the open wheelers.

A huge thanks to Simon at GTI Performance Centre for the motor and gearbox that are in the car now, could not have completed these final two events of the year without your help.

I also need to thank the family for putting up with me for another year 🙂

All packed, now its time to deliver…

The first order of business was some cleaning up of the shed – something that was VERY much needed.

Spent 6hrs cleaning up the floor, packing tools away, putting things back on shelves and it was time to do some real work.

In the last few events, I’ve had issues with the buttons on the steering wheel that operate the functions in the dash.  So, two new buttons installed – hopefully the issues are now fixed.

Continuing with the electrical theme, I re-did the master feed wires from the battery.  The starter motor is now not part of the circuit that has the 100 amp breaker on it, as I was tripping the breaker when cranking the car over for longer periods of time.  So there is now a new battery kill switch, and the other items have been modified to make it all a little better, and a little lighter.

Then it was onto the starter switch.  This was sticking on some times, so its been replaced with a new button, as previewed a few weeks ago.

Next up is a new ignition switch which I picked up today, then the electrics are done (for now anyway – some ideas for next year are in my head for further reducing weight.)

Also make some mods to the passenger window, finishing it up to a nicer standard than it was at Pemberton, where I was very limited on prep time.

The front wheels are off, ready to change the front end wheel alignment – taking some camber our.  Starting this is tonight’s job, but its not a fast job…..

Then its just a bunch of clean-up items to be ready for Thursday scrutineering …  checking oil, bleeding brakes, coolant levels etc.

Time to get back into it again!

My start switch is playing up and sticking on, so needed a new one.  Found this sexy thing at Jaycar 🙂

Had a good weekend away in Pemberton, unfortunately the weather was not on my side.  I only ended up with one dry run, and one damp run, then it rained very, very hard and the organisers cancelled the rest of the event.

I ended up with the class win, and third outright.  I should be happy with this, but I’m not as I went down there to win the event outright.

Having a new motor, different gearbox and different diff ratio that I’d never driven on, meant that the first run was getting used to all of this, and so was not fast enough and made a number of gear selection mistakes.  As this was the only mostly dry run that I got all day, then that was the run that counted and I couldn’t beat that time on the second run, which was after a passing shower of rain.

Maybe next time…

The tune is done.  Ended up with another 50hp than we had before at the same boost pressure and a lot more torque (450 nm now, from the old 350 odd).  The little turbo is the limitation now for more horsepower.

It will be run like it is for most likely all of next year, then at that stage I hope to be able to get a larger turbo and wind some more power out of it.

Bed time…