Last night I went over the the shop and did some more finish sanding. I somehow managed to get the entire weekend free (except for going to the ASU vs Oregon Football game tonite) to work on the car. This makes me very happy since up till now the entire summer has been #1- too freaking hot and #2- I've been too busy with freaking work.
To recap what I have managed to get done this summer, since the car moved to Bill Kiblers shop.
 | I sanded most of the kilz primer off the car. |  | I reworked the tail light housing area to remove the (very difficult to
mold) lamp inserts. The new tail lamp housings will still hold the pair
of 4" truck style round LED's side by side, but I will machine the
aluminum housing out of one block of ali instead of individual round
tubes. The final product will look almost identical to the original
spun tubes, but laying up bodywork in that area will be easier and
mounting/aligning one larger housing will be much easier for
production. I will of course show photos of this when I have some
results. | 
| I re-worked the bodwork (AGAIN!) with 20 minute plaster to remove the majority of imperfections and problems that were pointed out by several fiberglass experts. And there are more minor shape changes. Lines, curves, etc that flow better.
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| Bill and I sprayed the car with a heavy coat of Laminex, which is a 2-part hi-fill epoxy primer (Kinda smelled like superglue). It has a catalyst that hardens the surface and makes it easy to sand, It can be sanded to a high gloss and I will probably be into at least 1200 grit by the time I am ready for the molds.
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| I sanded the entire car again (several times) using 80 grit by hand and 120 grit on a DA sander. Will the sanding ever end? It's ridiculous... Jim Williams has come over several times to offer moral support and to give a hand in sanding. This kind of help is very valuable to me, because as I mentioned earlier my back is quite damaged from an accident in my youth and the sanding motion really tears me up.
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| Wherever there were pinholes and voids I filled those in with red glazing putty.
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| Bill and I raised the car onto a rolling platform using a forklift so that I could more easily get to the lower areas of the car. (My back is extremely bad and I can't bend over to do any sanding, so having the car at height makes a big difference in how I can work on those lower areas.) In the process of lifting it several small cracks appeared in the bodywork. up near the windshield. We thought about that for a while. Is the chassis flexing too much? But then you have to realize that we are talking about a plaster body attached directly to the steel frame. Plaster is so brittle and fragile. We are talking about plaster that is only 1/16" thin in that area. so for only 2 hairline cracks to appear after lifting the entire car 5 feet in the air with a forklift is pretty good! Realize that the forks of the forklift did not go all the way across the car, so the frame was being stressed pretty good during the lift.
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| One of the positive side effects of having the car coated completely with a unified covering of primer is that the entire car sands at a similar rate. If there is one hard lesson that I have learned (and believe me, I have learned a LOT of hard lessons), it's that in order to achieve a perfect finish, the entire surface must be homogeneous. That is to say, you can't have part of it painted and part of it as the plaster because each material sands away at a different rate. You never get a straight panel! In fact, sanding a surface like that actually makes negative progress... Straight panels go to kaka in two or three quick swipes of sandpaper. That's terrible. So I think getting the car covered in one solid sandable primer surface was the biggest advance of the summer.
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| The car is now up on it's sturdy rolling stand. This stand was loaned to me by Neil over at ATV Racing. Neil is a great guy. His company builds the TAZ off-road sand rails (see photo). His company also makes a large number of ATV upgrades like exhaust, a-arms, engine upgrades, wheels, and more. That TAZ car is a Great machine. Did I tell you that I took a ride in one? It's a mid-engine 1,300Lb sand rail with 165Hp GM Ecotec motor mated to a CVT transmission of Bill Kibler's design. We took a quick spin on the street around his shop in Phoenix. I swear to God, that car had it's front wheels off the ground for a good 200 yards! When we came back around the block there were two solid black stripes the entire way down the block where the wheels had been spinning the entire way! That, my friends, is good power to weight! Remember -- 1,300Lbs/Mid-Engine/165Hp. Do those figures sound familiar? That's almost as light as La Bala. I gotta have me one of those CVT transmissions....
|  | I am currently fixing all the mistakes that my previous sanding efforts
created (read above paragraph about dissimilar materials) by using smooth paste bondo filler applied over top of
the hardened primer. I mix the bondo with cream hardener and this gives me about 5 minutes of workable time. Then it cheeses up for about 15 minutes and after that it can be sanded. Both of these materials (the bondo and the Laminex primer are Bondo products and they sand at an identical rate. Soby using a long block and 80 grit sandpaper I am able to achieve a pretty smooth and straight surface.
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So this weekend will be more filling and samding on those pesky side intakes.
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