Airbox assembly (continued)

Right side view. The airbox scoop tucks in pretty neatly under the rear engine cover and the lines come together for a pretty smooth transition. Again - not show car stuff, but fairly nice for a racer. (And much prettier than the huge gaping hole in the rear bodywork that I ran for testing at VIR earlier this month).

View of the airbox assembly installed on the car with the rear bodywork removed. The attraction of this approach is that the rear engine cover comes off and on easily and the airbox stays in place. No clumsy foam seals or leaky mating flanges to worry about. Clean neat and easy to work with...

So that more or less completes the 'build' part of this process.
Kinda anti-climatic, but there it is the car is "done".

So what is next?

This week:

- Hopefully my new Penske shocks will be done in time for the VIR races. I sent Eric Langbein a note Friday, and he tells me that he is still waiting on some parts from Penske, but will call them Monday morning. This part is starting to make me a little nervous. The car performed amazingly well at teh VIR test with the old Konis, but given Lathrop's comments on their less than ideal valving characteristics, I am anxious the swap the Penskes in ASAP. Assuming they arrive in time, I will have to redo corner weights and ride height once they are fitted.

- Gearing... I wish I had more data on the Hondas to work from here. I think I will reach out to a couple of fellow Honda FF racers this week for some more advice, but I am pretty sure I will want to start the VIR weekend on a different gear stack than the one I used for testing.

- Front Sway bar - Dan Greaves (former car owner) sent me a note on this blog a week or so ago that has me thinking. He tells me that there is a softer front bar in the boxes he gave me with the car. Since the car had pretty noticable understear at the VIR test I am tempted to pursue this option. I will run this idea by Steve Lathop this week as well, but I suspect that the softer bar is a better choice for the lighter non-winged setup the car runs now...

- Home Ec - I got an envelope full of driver suite patches in the mail earlier in the week, so I guess I have a date with the sewing kit in my future.

- Polishing - Once I give the new paint a chance to cure for a few days, I need to do a general rub down of the bodywork to remove the overspray and general grime from the last few weeks of work. The car looks pretty good as it sits now, but I always like to enter a weekend with a polished up and waxed car. Makes between session clean up easier (and makes the anal retentive owner happier) :)

So all-in-all things are really coming together. I would like to have the trailer all packed up by this time next week, and that is looking very doable about now. A couple of months ago this was just an ambitious dream, but it is rapidly becoming a reality. Lots of late nights in the garage have paid off and I am feeling more than a little self-satisfied about now. (with many thanks again to the long list of people who got me here)

Hopefully the race weekend at VIR will not be anti-climatic. The field of competitors is daunting, and I am approaching the weekend hopeful, but realistic. My testing showed some real promise, but the reality will come April 9th when the green flag drops. Hopefully I can hold up my end of this bargin and do the car some justice...

So over the coming weeks, this blog will be taking a bit of a turn in direction. No more late nights of car building and first time discovery. Now is where the "rubber meets the road" and we see how it all works. I will certainly keep on blogging, but the topics will be changing to car prep, packing up and BEST OF ALL - RACING!

I can't wait,
Sean