New Livery

[Eric Little]

Our off season started in March and I have been bored. So, since I am not a huge fan of the yellow that my car was painted when I bought it, I decided to change it. I went with orange and blue. Like many things in racing, I decided to do the work myself. I strongly advise against this. Take out a loan... Take a second job... Cook meth in your basement and sell it... Any way you can, get the money and pay someone else to do it. Total job was about 80 hours. 36 hours just to strip the old paint and body filler (yeah, don't get me started about body filler and its use on a race car). Prime, paint, and polish was roughly as many hours to arrive at the approximate 80 hours.

While I was at it, I used the same paint and my own design to do the helmet. I then used pearl in the clear coat to change the color so that it was a similar orange and blue but not identical.

Oh, before you ask, the nose is a DB-1 nose. It was rebuilt by me because of this:

https://youtu.be/wAwi0KGPEN8?t=767

That little off course excursion busted up the lower lip of the front of the nose. I decided without a mold, making the traditional lip at the bottom of the DB-1 would be impossible. So I made my version of what I could recall a DB-3 nose looks like. The compound curves were created with masking tape which was used as a mold. From there, a lot of itching, swearing, and sticking my hands to everything, and it was finally done (oh how I love fiber glass). I am happy to say, it weighs the same as my new nose even after all the work so looks like my repairs were efficient.

Finally, if you are looking to lose weight from your car, this may help you. With several old coats of paint and the previously mentioned body filler (shiver) removed and painted with a reasonable number of coats, the body work lost 7 pounds. I lost 80 hours of my life I will never get back but that is nearly a pound every 10 hours.

Hope you enjoy. Can't wait to go race it at the end of August.

Eric Little

[swiftdrivr]

Nice work! thanks for the tip. I have to paint mine this winter. I think I can learn to cook meth, or sell encyclopedias

[nomis]

I heard there is good money in meth, what's an encyclopaedia ? Guess I could google that !
Good work you didn't mention the grin on your face looking at what you had achieved, that's priceless

[Eric Little]

So the problem with doing paint work is that once you finish the body, you realize that other things are letting down the overall look. Sure the lower a-arm should be refinished and the rockers the same.... and the frame could use a new finish but the frame is mostly hidden by body work and there isn't much showing of the suspension. So what is letting it down? Well...

Yep, the wheels. I am not fond of the dark dull grey and the outer aluminum edge has seen brighter days. I really like Panasports so it is not a new wheel I need, just a new look.

With an orange and blue body, where does one go with wheel color? I didn't like the grey and even darker would be worse so black was out. Silver for me just doesn't do it and gold would look out of place on orange and blue.

The choice was obvious. You figured it out already didn't you?

PURPLE!!!!!!!

And by Purple I mean copper (Sorry froggy).



All I need now are my new radial Hoosiers and I will get a complete car shot so you can see how it all looks together.

Now with this done, I will have to do the frame and suspension as my next project to complete the look.... Crap!

Eric Little

[swiftdrivr]

The wheels look sharp. How about a picture of the wheels on the car?

[Eric Little]

The wheels look sharp. How about a picture of the wheels on the car?

Thanks. I will have a full car shot with the refinished wheels hopefully within the coming weeks. It appears that there are no R60a radials out here in the west at the moment so they are being ordered and shipped from Zimbabwe (that is where Hoosier is made right? I am sure it is because my geography skills are excellent). More important than the full car shot is that I need to test them to get the setup correct for the radial since I have been running the bias AR from day one.

At the moment, the car is on stands, the second set of wheels are being stripped to get them into the same condition as the photo above, and I managed to drop a wheel landing on edge on one of the painted wheels so I get to repair that one while doing the second set.

At least doing the repair is a bit easier since I have a second set to paint anyhow. More in a while.

Eric Little

[Offcamber1]

Nifty job on the helmet too!

[Eric Little]

For my adoring fans.... sorry... fan... I need to remember that the 's' makes it plural. Here is the full car shot with the newly refinished wheels. I like the result.

I also have to share another improvement that I made. Those that know the Swift know there is a plate that holds the air filter in the air box. When I bought my car, that plate had been hacked up pretty bad. To hold it in and keep air from passing by the filter was zip ties and duct tape. Not my idea of efficient. So I changed it. I glassed out the plate to make it larger, drilled four holes with blind nut plates and used wheather seal to seal the plate to the air box. No more tape (I still use two zip ties because where they are located, they are more practical).

This also made me realize how the name Swift came about. When Mr. Bruns was a wee young lad, he had a cat. He loved that cat. Years later, after crafting the plate (see pictures below) he was reminded of that cat... Swift. And so the name stuck.

It might be a good thing that Mr. Bruns doesn't follow this racing stuff any longer.

Eric Little

[RussMcB]

Looks good, Eric. I'd add a white or light silver stripe between the two colors. You could use vinyl - easy to experiment/remove/replace.

I say white because it could tie up with other white things on the car (and helmet), or silver to match the wheel trim.

[swiftdrivr]

Really nice!

[Purple Frog]

It pains me to say this: It does look nice. But, where I come from those are the colors of the hated Florida Gaytors. (Real men don't wear orange)

You will make it pop if you run down to AutoZone and buy some narrow white pinstripe tape as mentioned above and use it to divide the two colors. It will make it stand out just like the white border around your numbers.

You've done good.

[Eric Little]

So many nice comments from you all. Thank you so much.

I had been advised to add white or silver when I was at the design stage. But I didn't want to add a third color and have to spray another set of coats (while I have painted before, this was the first undertaking of this size so I wanted to keep it simple). The vinyl stripe idea is a good one and I do agree that the color separation would add a lot visually. I have already been online looking for material and think it would not be too tough to do.

Now if my stupid driver can just keep the car on the track, it might even last a while.

Eric Little