Tow Vehicle

So I've been looking around for a truck for awhile now to use as a tow vehicle for the race car. I've been using my Dad's F250 and I like the truck so I've kept my eyes open for something similar. I eventually found a 97 Diesel F250 which I think will suit towing a littler better. She's old and has her ugly side but she runs strong and the transmission shifts well. Aside from the minor electrical issues I think she will be a good truck once I get the kinks worked out.

Decals

Race cars need stickers... I mean come on. So the company I work for decided to sponsor me a bit. Nothing crazy but every little bit helps. I got some decals made up and slapped those babies on the side. My friend Nick from work helped me out (He also owns a family business called Silver Fox Signs).

We applied the decals wet for the most part, soaking the back of the decal with a water/soap mixture. We lined them up and used a squeegee to push out the bubbles and make sure the vinyl was in good contact with the paint. About 30 minutes later we were finished. I think it looks pretty nice.

Exhaust

Thursday night seems like a good night to build an exhaust. So I did. Thank god FedEx got a clue and delivered my mandrel bends on time - without any fuss. (Long story about FedEx and not delivering stuff - for another time.)

The stock exhaust is extremely restrictive and being an off-road, trailered only car, I have no need for items like; catalytic converters, resonators, non-mandrel bent 1.5" tubing. I ordered up some 2.5" mild steel thin wall tubing from Columbia River (http://www.mandrel-bends.com/). I was passed to that site by a friend awhile back - they offer good consistent products for good prices. I also had to run to Napa to get a 10' strait section of pipe which would of been killer on shipping.

So the goal with all my exhausts is mainly to make them as short and as strait as possible to maintain flow and reduce turbulence. The downside is I have to mate it to my aftermarket axle back for those tracks with noise restrictions. I'm going to add a little strait pipe to bypass the muffler for all the rest.

I started with the largest strait section first, putting it on jack stands trying to get it as close to the body as possible. The transmission cross member required me to jog it out a little and then make a hard 90 back into the header. I cut a few 45 degree bends at strategic points and joined them with pie cuts (cuts of a mandrel corner). At the tail section I made a small jog just to locate the main strait section to the rearward flange to mate with the stock axle back. Top it off with an o2 sensor bung and called it a night. (My dog felt the need to try to clean my new exhaust... sigh)

Overlays

Decided to throw on some yellow vinyl overlays on my headlights... This really serves two purposes - 1) It counts as "Taping your headlights". A lot of racing/HPDE clubs will have you put tape over glass headlights to keep the shrapnel down if you were to hit someone or something. The overlay is like one big piece of tape. 2) The yellow hue allows me to be seen a lot better in the rain or in low light situations. If I ever race in rain, fog, humid summer day... whatever - I'll be able to let the driver in front of me know I'm there.

The installation was kind of crude. I used a heat gun to stretch the vinyl over the headlight and sprayed the back adhesive with some water to give me a little time to position/push out the bubbles. It was a little tedious and didn't come out perfect but I'll make due.

Cage Padding

Installed my roll bar padding last night. Stuff cost me an arm and a leg but it's required by safety regulations to have it. Bad part is, since I have to have an instructor as I run with these new clubs, I need to have it installed on both the driver and passenger sides of the car... so $300+ later, I have the padding...

The install was pretty strait forward. I used the 1" SFI certified high density padding and just cut it to length with a hack saw and notched where the padding crossed pipes with a 2" hole saw. I started with the longest pieces first. All the straits with minimal overlap of other pipes - so the a-pillar tubes, top door bars, rocker bars, etc. Then I worked from longest to shortest to make sure I was using my padding resourcefully. There are a lot of bars in this cage, haha. and even with 40 feet of padding, I still had to cannibalize some extra from my endurance car.

I secured the padding with black zip ties that were included in the package (they are horribly dry and brittle, but I made it work). I'll most likely replace them down the road with a thicker zip tie to get a tighter fit.

Action Shots

Finally found some pictures from the SCCA Auto-X on the 11th. These aren't the best and I'm working on getting some video, but they work. Interestingly enough they do show the full body roll on both images as I'm hard into a corner - virtually none haha. I've been thinking about coming down in the rear about another 1/2 inch, but I'll 1) need to wait until RaceComp sends me my new springs and 2) see the other side of the body roll (fully compressed) to see if I'm too close to the fenders.

Side Windows

So over the weekend I put in some temporary lexan side windows mainly for transporting the car. I bought some C channel aluminum, screwed it to the inside of the door and set the lexan down in. When you close the door you can tuck the lexan under the weather stripping to make a fairly water tight seal. I may have to apply a bit of tape to the vertical face at the rear of the window just to make sure it is sealed and doesn't fly off during towing. Still trying to diagnose why my damn STRI oil pressure gauge won't work - I think the sensor has failed which really frustrates me. But I guess that's part of it haha.