Unfortunately, I'm still up in the air on this year's Drag Week car, after the rules change in the Modified class that prohibits non-stock strut front suspensions. After emailing David Freiburger and Rob Kinnan twice last week I finally heard from Freiburger this week. He asked me to send him some information on the Fatman strut conversion kit that I used, and also some photos of the front suspension of the car. I did that, but so far nothing back from the Hot Rod guys. I think they are on a magazine deadline, and also Power Tour starts this coming weekend, so I imagine that they are just buried in work. But I sure would like to know if they are going to allow my car in Modified or not.
If they don't, I've kind of narrowed down my options to going back with the Galaxie, doing a quick Pinto, or buying a race ready Fox body roller and grafting in the SOHC prior to the event. I've been looking a little more closely at the Fairmont/Zephyr cars, and have identified a couple that have the equipment I need. They seem to be available and relatively inexpensive, and I like the idea of running one of those cars rather than a Fox body Mustang. So I think that if the Shelby clone is a no go in Modified, I can recover in time to go off in another direction if necessary. Assuming, of course, that the guys from Hot Rod let me know in some reasonable time frame. Tick, tick, tick...
In the meantime, I'm still proceeding with the Shelby clone, especially since with the bodywork partially completed there's a bunch of bare metal exposed, and I can't leave it like that for any extended period. This weekend with the extra day tomorrow I've been trying to get the lion's share of the bodywork done, and as of right now things are going more or less according to plan. I had all the bodywork roughed in by Friday night, so I spent the day Saturday doing touch up on the bodywork and DAing the whole car. This took most of the day, but by Saturday evening I had the car all cleaned off with wax and grease remover and ready for the first coat of primer-surfacer. Photo below:
I'm using PPG products on this paint job, so I mixed up some K36/K201 primer surfacer and sprayed the car on Saturday, paying particular attention to the areas with bodywork. You can really honk this stuff on there and get a high film build thickness, which makes it a lot easier to straighten out the bodywork. This morning when I went out to the shop the car looked like this:
Today I spent the day wet sanding the whole car with 240 grit, looking for body problems to correct. The big problem I found was with the driver's side windshield pillar. The car had been hit here at some point in the past, and when Steve and I were working on it last weekend we discovered a bunch of old bondo here. Some of it was cracked so it had to come out, and when I did the work on it prior to shooting the primer I didn't get the shape just right; from the front it kind of looked like it had a hook in it. So I spent a fair amount of time this afternoon reworking that area, but I have it roughed in successfully now and it looks good from all angles. At the end of the day the car looked like this:
Tomorrow with the day off I plan to continue the bodywork, panel by panel, and fill any pinholes or scratches to basically complete all the filler work. Tomorrow night I should be able to put on a second coat of primer surfacer, and then the car will be one good wet sanding operation away from being ready for paint. I'm going to try to get Steve and/or Jerry to come over next weekend and give the car a once over, because it is always good to have another set of eyes on a car before paint (especially when the primary bodywork person is sick of sanding LOL!).
I'll post another update next Sunday (June already!) and hopefully by then I'll know whether I'm going to Drag Week with this car, or if I'll have to switch gears and go another route.
