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Have you ever noticed how your car runs the best right after it has been cleaned? Streetcars have always rewarded their owners for keeping them clean. In my opinion racecars require a different type of attention. Racecars are of a slightly different DMEset than your average streetcar. To a racecar there is nothing worse than being mistaken for one of their more mundane looking counterparts. They are kind of like people in this respect. There are those that strive on being dressed perfectly (streetcars) where there are those that dress in a slightly more utilitarian style (racecars). Racecars require FLASH. It is a well-known fact that a cool vinyl makeover makes a racecar go faster. For the past few years we have encountered a rather boring and plain looking black 968 at many of the races. The only favor the owner has done for his car was to give it big, orange numbers (very Halloween). At one race there was also another black 968 with orange numbers. When all you buy from your local sign shop is numbers they tend to be plain old Helvetica type and that is what both 968’s had. Also in the past few races we have come to embrace Jeff McCarthy into the Team Northeast group of friend racers. It all started when I couldn’t get him out of my rearview mirror in the 2003 Glen Sprint race. He is a good driver from Vermont and has a very well set-up car by Carl Pottle of Racer’s Edge, but his car is really dull looking. Jeff has also joined the Northeast Region. So this month in “Article and a Makeover” we are going to take Jeff McCarthy’s 968 plain ol’ racecar and give it a complete makeover. The car arrived at my place looking fairly self-conscious having had its only orange vinyl rudely stripped away. The only thing it was clinging too was the white Club Racing decals on the front fenders. I promptly relieved it of those too leaving a naked, blank canvas in my driveway. First step was to message the body with good quality paint cleaner to freshen up the surface and prepare it for its new clothes. In a few earlier emails back and forth with Jeff he decided to go with a design I had done a couple years ago for Sean Houlihan’s GT 3S 944 Turbo. Since Sean has disappeared off the face of the earth (where are you?) and the car hasn’t been seen in 2 years I agreed to do the design on Jeff’s car. Typically I will not repeat a design unless the drivers request matching (but different colors) cars. When we did Sean’s car he was a little afraid to get too wild with the colors so we did a medium blue and chrome yellow on his black Turbo. Jeff on the other hand let me do the colors I originally wanted to do on Sean’s car. Lime green and orange with white numbers. I was right. Sean you should have let me do those colors. So Jeff and I started with the center 2 stripes that would be the basis for the rest of the vinyl. The majority of the vinyl is lime green with orange as an accent or maybe “violator” would be a better word. This design is a symmetrical series of shapes that interlock slightly with each other. That requires doing both sides exactly the same or it can be very obvious to others and distracting to the owner. So Jeff and I had 2 yard sticks and a cloth tape measure to make sure we line up the many pieces. We did the passenger side first just to see how everything was working and then we repeated it on the driver side. It also is a small reward and exciting for the owner to see half the car complete. At this point the grin came across Jeff’s face and never left. It can be hard to do a car with the owner right there when it come to making corrections but Jeff was open to everything I did. When I apply vinyl I usually like to apply it dry. This works well with smaller pieces like the checks on my car and any logos. Jeff’s design was made up of 10 foot long pieces up to 10-12" wide in places. For this I use a special spray-on liquid (smells like vanilla) that allows you to reposition and get the larger pieces where you want them. It was a lifesaver. I did Sean’s car dry. Jeff’s came out much better. Also the 968 was a great body to work on. There are no ridges in the hood; everything is made up of smooth shapes. There is however one feature on the 968 that is a pain in the vinyl. That is the many plastic pieces along the bottom edge of the car and the seams where they meet. I will bring some vinyl pieces to our next race at Mosport and try to clean those up a bit but other than that the car came out phenomenal. As with all Porsches there are many compound curves that make up the beautiful bodies and the 968 is no exception. The most troublesome are the way the tops of the front fenders blend into the sides of the front fenders. Vinyl doesn’t always do what it’s told regardless of how much heat you use. This area required a bit of manual altering of the vinyl (freehand cutting) and the end results were better than the original shape. One of the cool little details is the Club Racing logos placed diagonally on the tops of the fenders. It just gives it a nice look. The actual application of this design was about 5 hours. There are a number of preliminary steps that have to be done before the vinyl can be applied. When the vinyl cutter is done with a sheet it has to “weeded”. That means the vinyl you intend to use stays but you have to remove the rest. On Jeff’s design this was no big deal because we were applying large pieces of vinyl. The sheet of white required a bit more work because it had some smaller type and his numbers. The check designs on my car took a bit more time do each sheet but it required less vinyl. Then when all the sheets are weeded they have to have a sheet of adhesive applied to the top of the vinyl. In Jeff’s case there were six 10' sheets (4 lime green and 2 orange) and a 6' piece of white. Applying the top adhesive called Transfer paper can be a real chore when it is 10' long. Jeff helped me do this before we started the application. This is a fairly complex design because we had to match both sides with a lot of vinyl. Bruce Hauben’s first RS America was a lot simpler in design but harder to put the asymmetrical design over the bulges of the 911 body. When we were done there were a couple of pieces left that we decided not to apply. Sometimes it is hard to know when to stop. I think we stopped at the perfect time. As you will notice (other than Jeff’s grin) that it makes the 968 look really flat, low and aggressive. This will really show up in someone’s rearview mirror. Probably mine! If any of you are interested in getting some vinyl work done for you race/DE car I would be glad to help you out but there are some things you need to be aware of. A roll of 24" vinyl (the size of my cutter) is about 30' long and cost between $45 and $52. I charge $50/hour to apply the vinyl. I typically don’t charge to design your car because I have a few ideas that I haven’t tried yet but if you have some wild idea to make a 944 Turbo look like a turtle (Peter?!) than I will charge you to try and make that work (which of course it won’t). Jeff’s car cost him on the low side of $500. But I keep the files and if he crashes or scrapes someone we can replace pieces easily. A technique that I used on my car is I took the blue vinyl that I was going to use on the side checks and had it scanned in at the paint store and painted the nose that blue and did the vinyl checks starting at the front door edges. I really like a 2-color car but this adds about $500 to the cost if say you run into your buddy in Turn 11 at the Glen. See ya! |
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