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Day 3: Its just not the same.

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Well, the Lights, Motors, Action audition was a blast. The cars are little 1200lbs. fiberglass bodied cars with hiyabusa engines. They drive 100% different than anything I’ve ever driven before. As far as the audition goes, I’m pretty sure I bombed it, but personally speaking I think I did great. Considering that I have never done many of those manuvers before EVER, I was actually proud of myself for some of the attempts I made at left and right 90s, 180s, rollbacks and drifting. I absolutely blew the doughnuts, and the rest of the audition wasn’t great either, but for me personally, it was a big achievement. I just hope my uncle doesn’t get too embarassed that I didn’t live up to any of the hype that they might have thought a “professional class” driver should.

Afterwards, I headed over to the shop, but since I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, and had sat in a fire suit and full nomex undergarments for several hours, I wasn’t feeling that great. I rushed to Subway for a meatball sub and some soup, but it wasn’t in time to stop the migraine that came with that hunger nausea, and I spent a few hours in the office with the lights off and my eyes closed.

After it finally went away it was back to finalizing fabrication to the chassis before paint. Eddie, Dennis and I fixed the throttle cable/pedal, added bars to the rear motorplate mount, remounted the seat, shortened and lowered the steering wheel, and ground off the rest of the old and no longer in use tabs, etc. Tomorrow, we’ll make an aluminum cover for the firewall to help cover all the holes in the exsisting wall.

Exhausted, and still not feeling all that great, I arrived home around 2:33 am.

Mission Impossible: Day 2

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Day One ending at 4:30am meant that Day two was already blurring together, and I was none too eager to see the good old Florida sunshine pouring through my window at 8:30am. So after some good conversation with Mami, I got up and dressed and headed over to Panera Bread to grab something to eat and work on some web business before I headed over to the shop.

Today wasn’t as productive as the marathon that was day one, but I still feel good about the progress made. I was sanding the front engine carriage to smooth the surfaces, Eddie was busy fabricating a few changes to my seat mount and throttle pedal stop, and Josue had the unenviable task of working with the fiberglass again and finishing the strengthening and mating of the chassis to the body. Being that I had little sleep, and the prep work needed to dry, I called it an early night as I need to be up early tomorrow.

One of the other reasons I came down to Florida was to attend the qualifer audition session for Disney MGM’sLights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt show. My uncle, who was a stunt man for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at MGM for many years, was one of the people who brought this Euro-Disney based auto stunt show to Walt Disney World in Orlando. I’ve heard many great stories about the fun he has on the job driving these cars, and always wanted a chance to try and take part. Though drag racing is about the polar opposite from the induced chaos of drifting and stunt driving, drivers of any motorsport employ the same principals of vehicle control, so I thought I’d try something different and give it a go.

The qualifier starts tomorrow at 8am and lasts all morning and into the afternoon. I’ll be suited up in a firesuit and driving their practice cars in a series of test moves. I’m really excited to see how it will feel to do a different style of driving. We’ll see how it goes…

Wish me luck, please!

Mission Impossible: Day 1

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After watching the season closing race for the TARE team this weekend in Holt, FL’s Heads-Up Nationals, I headed down to Orlando with a pick-up truck full of racecar parts on a mission.

The mission? To FINISH MY RACECAR. (finally!) This project has encountered every delay and countless setbacks, and at times, it has felt like it was trying to do impossible…. so, I have decided that I am not leaving Florida until this car is on display in the Brisk Booth at the PRI show in December. Brisk has been very patient with me as I have continued to work at getting this car back out, and I really want to make this thing shine for them.
I wish I could illustrate how much of an undertaking this project is, so I’ll try my best to keep a running update while I am down here.

Day One:

The biggest undertaking is going to be getting the body work done on the car and getting it ready for paint. So I’ve spent all today stripping the car down to nothing and removing the sheet metal work so that it can get sent out to powder coating. Meanwhile, Josue has gone out to get some fiberglass resin and the rest of the paint prep supplies so we can get the interior painted and prep the body for the exterior paint.

The fiberglass body is thin in some areas, so we reinforced those areas and mated the body to the chassis mounts. The doors will need some fitting work as well as the front end. After disassembling everything from the car, including pulling the mock up block, I moved the car outside and took a bucket of degreaser to all the bars and engine carriage. Once it was dry, I went to work cutting out old tabs that were no longer in use and grinding down spots where things had been moved, cut out or replaced so it was all smooth.

Its been awhile since I’ve worked out in the shop all day long in thrash mode like this, and I’m one tired chica. By the time I finally leave the shop it was 3am, and I didn’t get to bed until 4:30am. And on to the next day… bright and early!