Builds&gt;&gt;rtr-x Progress: Part Three

A couple weeks ago I headed out to California for a "meeting of the minds" of sorts. Since the build of the car is moving so rapidly from concept to reality, we had to regroup and make sure we were all on the same page. Most importantly, we had to land on a direction of the metal-work details on the body such as trim, drip rails, the custom metal work on the rear, as well as window-mounting options. This proved to be one of the most important meetings yet; the RTR-X plan really evolved from concept to reality as a result.

Gary has been rockin' and rollin' on the chassis, working long hours and weekends to meet his deadline. His work is top-knotch and I am very happy to be working with someone as passionate as him on this project.

We also got to play with our Kinsler ITB setup, as well as the new 2011 Ford 5.0 engine!

While it might seem minor, one of the toughest decisions I had was deciding on what to do with the drip rails and the window trim. I really do not love the factory drip rails because they protrude so far off the body, and factory window trim just doesn't work with a build of this magnitude either. My initial plan was to cut the drip rail short and make trim out of carbon, tucking it closer to the body. However, that is not going to work out for many reasons. I do not like the fully-shaved look, as the trim creates lines that the car needs to maintain its classic look in my opinion.

After going over some references of trim and window mounting options with the team, it was decided that we would go with a bead-style drip rail that will be body color. It will accomplish both of my goals of getting rid of the protruding rail and factory trim, while keeping the important body line. Both the front and rear windows will be flush-mounted which should look sick.

Now that a decision was made on the trim and drip rails it was time to
decipher Andy's "artistic license" from the rendering to reality. To me
it is very important to do as much body work on the car as possible
with metal, rather then the easier option of fiberglass. Mark Delong, who is a metal wizard from San Diego, came up to meet with us and get a
plan in action.

Here we are discussing the rear of the car and the metal work required to get the look desired.

Here Mark is showing us what could be done with the fenders to match what Andy has done on the rendering. We are still up in the air if we will just implement the scoop from the rendering on the factory fenders, or if we will add some material to mimic Andy's "artistic license". STAY TUNED!

Kinsler sent us an ITB setup for mock-up. Seriously a work of art!!!

We set the Kinsler setup on our mock-up 2011 5.0 motor and took some
measurements to get an idea of what we were working with and see what
kind of issues we would run into, if any. Concept to reality!!! Well… we are getting there at least!

Last order of business was to go over some colors for the wheels and the body. Martin from Liquid Powder Coats in Pennsylvania sent some samples of powder coat for the wheels. I was not dead-set on matching the wheel centers to the body color, so I wanted to check out some dark green metallics as an option.

Here are the colors we landed on. The bright green will be the color of the wheel lips and the pin stripes. The dark green metallic will be the wheel centers, and the dark graphite metallic will be the body color. What do you guys think?