Opus

I bought the car in late 2010. To get done with all the fab and paint probably took a year. Getting it all together took until summer 2012. Did some testing in 2012 which required some rethinking. Finally had it out in april of this year. Been to the track about 6 times this year. Stay tuned for more pics and build notes. One thing's for sure... Race cars are never finished.

Yes it is at Tremblant. Thank you for the kind words. Where are you located? Je m'attends que tu parles français aussi?

I had to stop working on my race car in order to help out a friend who had an engine failure on his FIA L20 Datsun 710. I ended up redoing the engine, rear end and several odds and ends. This stopped progress on my car for at least 3 Months.

Small preview.

The shell starting to take shape. I made a couple of door skins in aluminum and rolled a bead into them. I had previously mocked up the false floor to cover the exhaust tunnel. A little style with the grip tape can't hurt. The panel work is simple in a satin black aluminum. The mocked up dash with some crappy gauges. I extended the steering shaft as I'm going to be sitting pretty far back. No I'm not that tall. I just prefer to be behind the B pillar in my race cars.

As with any build there are going to be some side line projects which are done just for the hell of it. I have to keep the metal hood and trunk to respect the vintage rules so I decided to swiss cheese them. It isn't worth the effort for weight savings. Maybe 1.5 lbs max. Gives it a period correct look though. The amount of deburring required was just stupid. I don't think I'll attempt that again.

My wife wanted to have a say in the build, so I let her choose the color. I of course retained Veto rights and agreed on the dark blue she chose. Being the moron that I am, I sprayed it directly on top of the light colored primer which required quite a few coats to get right. Live and learn , I guess.

I'll mention right now that I love virtually every part of race car builds except body work. Worst part is I suck at it. You'll never see me doing concourse cars. I kept some of the old character of the car including the removable rad support for quick and easy engine swaps. I pray I don't have to use that feature too often. For anyone who doesn't know what your doing (like me). High build primer is your friend. and you can honestly say that that you're not using bondo.

I didn't have any nice doors. It was difficult to find any in my area to a decided to re-skin the ones I had. It's race car so they didn't have to be perfect and it would allow me to practice my sheet metal work. No Perfect but good enough for my purposes. I'll get some nice replacement doors one day.

It has been raced out west in the past. I found the car In Richmond Hill, Ontario. I'm based just out side Montreal so we race at Mont Tremblant, Calabogie, Mosport, Watkins Glen, Loudon NH, Lime Rock. I do most of my testing at Sanair, Quebec and Autodrome St Eustache. Vintage series tend to frown on the modern cages because they don't want to stiffen the chassis to gain some advantage. I ignore this as I've seen too many accidents in my life. As far as I'm concerned keep the driver safe under any condition. The only thing I respect is the rule preventing us from going forward of the firewall and behind the rear axle line. Brackets to the shell between those points....no problem Time for some primer

Had to cut apart the front strut towers. My buddy Tom decided to take this upon himself to fabricate. He has helped me with all the chassis modifications and repair. Between the 2 of us I believe we've done about 20 cages. Then we had to direct our attention to the trunk area. While we trudged along with the fabrication I managed to talk to the previous owners of the car, one by one. Eventually it became clear that this car had been built from a 1968 2 door car and had been first raced in June of 1969. It had never been street driven! Of course we have to fabricate some adjustability into the car. I tried to keep some of the original character, so the previous owners could still identify their past touches. All the while kinda adding some of my own. As can be expected with any race car it will have some history. That history included the odd happy dance on the roof, right? The layers of paint on this thing was ridiculous. There mus have been 100 lbs of paint on this car. not including the bondo! Then I had to get some primer onto the bare metal, which had up to this point only been coated with metal prep.

So I've been lurking around here and decided to show off a bit of what I have been up to. I found this 510 which had been last raced in 1989. It actually had the doors from another well known race car around here from the 70's It was is poor shape but at least it wasn't rusty The cage was scary. It had to be cut out. Can't believe that some thought that this could save their life. So I cut out all of the poor modifications and cage and sandblasted as much of the underside,floors and engine bay as possible. Epoxy paint made that really difficult. Then we could start the cage work. I think I got a little carried away with it, but I have a family to come home to following a race weekend. More to come..............

Anyone know how is the fit and finish of parts from Aero Carbon fiber in San Ysidro California? I'm looking for people with personal experiences with them.

Ca18det. Same work as Sr, less weight and same power potential. Best of all s13 guys are discarding them for nothing. To the person who will mention the difference in torque, we are talking about a 510 install not s13. There's more than sufficient torque to begin with.

I like that Idea. I've had people not like my dash because it's not period correct. If you check out my build page(In the projects section) you'd see that period correct cages suck and are the formula for disaster. Thanks to all for the feedback.