Radical racer in the US
Discussion
Found this forum indirectly and since there are very few people left in the US racing Radicals, I thought I'd troll the forum.
I have a 2000 Prosport (chassis 90) which was raced in the US in the SCCA D-Sports class. It was the first Radical in the US to win a regional and nationals race but it's window of competitiveness has long since closed.
I run it in 3-hour endurance races in California in the "west coast enduro championship" with the organization "NASA" (National Auto Sport Association). I have a built ZX-10 race motor and a custom dry-sump system as well as a xenon light setup (most of our races are at night).
It's been fun trying to take a beat-up old race car and make it competitive in endurance races and we've won half our races and DNFed the other half ;)
I purchased the car in 2003 and basically stripped it down and rebuilt it. IIRC, there isn't one single part of the car I haven't had apart or replaced.
Here is a gallery of random pictures from the garage:
http://pictureposter.allbrand.nu/pictures/nasa+racer/Radical/showall
Here are some race pictures:
http://pictureposter.allbrand.nu/pictures/nasa+racer/Buttonwillow+1004/showall
cheers!
I have a 2000 Prosport (chassis 90) which was raced in the US in the SCCA D-Sports class. It was the first Radical in the US to win a regional and nationals race but it's window of competitiveness has long since closed.
I run it in 3-hour endurance races in California in the "west coast enduro championship" with the organization "NASA" (National Auto Sport Association). I have a built ZX-10 race motor and a custom dry-sump system as well as a xenon light setup (most of our races are at night).
It's been fun trying to take a beat-up old race car and make it competitive in endurance races and we've won half our races and DNFed the other half ;)
I purchased the car in 2003 and basically stripped it down and rebuilt it. IIRC, there isn't one single part of the car I haven't had apart or replaced.
Here is a gallery of random pictures from the garage:
http://pictureposter.allbrand.nu/pictures/nasa+racer/Radical/showall
Here are some race pictures:
http://pictureposter.allbrand.nu/pictures/nasa+racer/Buttonwillow+1004/showall
cheers!
thanks!
Some of my earliest jobs were working for car restoration folks and I painted all the cars at the Jim Russell school at Riverside back in the early 80s so it was nice to put those VERY rusty skills to work again.
The hardest part was that the car had an "Earl Scheib" paint job. Some emergency body repairs in the past had lead to this job. I don't think they have Earl Scheib in the UK but picture the world's least expensive paintjob where they barely wash the car before painting it (and forget sanding/prepping) and get paint all over the wheels/tires.
The trouble we had was that whatever the formula of this paint is which allows it to stick to anything (including a waxed car) made it horrendously difficult to strip. Found a paint stripper in Canada which was safe on fiberglass and paid my nephew to literally strip the paint off. He got pretty sick of that stripper and acetone!
But the good news was that the underlying Gelcoat hadn't been sanded so the sidepods were simply stripped and polished (and the orange swoosh painted on) though I had to paint the upper bodywork. Was incredibly difficult to get a paint match, finally got a reasonably close computer match.
It was a lot of work but satisfying and the main thing is that when there's body damage (which, fortunately there's only been a little of) I have all the colors and equipment to fix it properly.
I got my fiberglass skills from building R/C aircraft including a 1/4 scale Spitfire MkI
Some of my earliest jobs were working for car restoration folks and I painted all the cars at the Jim Russell school at Riverside back in the early 80s so it was nice to put those VERY rusty skills to work again.
The hardest part was that the car had an "Earl Scheib" paint job. Some emergency body repairs in the past had lead to this job. I don't think they have Earl Scheib in the UK but picture the world's least expensive paintjob where they barely wash the car before painting it (and forget sanding/prepping) and get paint all over the wheels/tires.
The trouble we had was that whatever the formula of this paint is which allows it to stick to anything (including a waxed car) made it horrendously difficult to strip. Found a paint stripper in Canada which was safe on fiberglass and paid my nephew to literally strip the paint off. He got pretty sick of that stripper and acetone!
But the good news was that the underlying Gelcoat hadn't been sanded so the sidepods were simply stripped and polished (and the orange swoosh painted on) though I had to paint the upper bodywork. Was incredibly difficult to get a paint match, finally got a reasonably close computer match.
It was a lot of work but satisfying and the main thing is that when there's body damage (which, fortunately there's only been a little of) I have all the colors and equipment to fix it properly.
I got my fiberglass skills from building R/C aircraft including a 1/4 scale Spitfire MkI
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