Vinyl is on! Just about done.

[wastintime]

Hey everyone,
It isn't finished and we have a ton of sponsor logos to go on, but I thought everyone might get a kick out of seeing the base vinyl scheme that's going on our B-Spec Sonic.

*sigh*... now to rip it apart and try to get it done before our test date and the DC Auto Show...

 

[BoG233]

Sweet ! Can wait for the finished photos .

 

[Danny5]

Wow. That's pretty sedate

 

[buldog72]

Looks like you have the smallest garage known to man! Lol

 

[wastintime]

Looks like you have the smallest garage known to man! Lol

lol, that's our vinyl guy's place: I should probably mention that btw: http://www.racedayvinyl.com/

 

[wingman]

WOW, thats loud. Not that it looks bad, it looks good. What is Kaleidolinks?

Buldog72-I think my garage is smaller!

 

[wastintime]

WOW, thats loud. Not that it looks bad, it looks good. What is Kaleidolinks?

Buldog72-I think my garage is smaller!

Lol, well, race cars are supposed to be loud! In fact, once the new exhaust is on...

I'm glad you asked about KaleidoLINKS. I posted a little bit in the introduce yourself section, but. KaleidoLINKS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based in Washington, DC that works with low-income, minority, youth. We've got a lot of information on our website: www.kaleidolinks.org

I'm a pro-driver and ex-physicist, so I run a program for KaleidoLINKS called the "KL Racing Program" and basically I teach physics classes with a little chemistry and some other sciences mixed in, all pertaining to cars 2-3 days a week for the youth in the program, and then 2 days a week they come to our shop and build the race cars with us. They also serve as the pit crew when we actually compete and travel with us to tracks all over the country.

It's a really awesome program that I'm really proud to have created and be a part of... lol, even though it's frustrating as all hell some days.

We are supported/sponsored by GM. They have given us a free 2011 Camaro SS that we're currently running in OLOA and NASA TT series. They just gave us the 2012 Sonic hatch to race in the newly created SCCA B-Spec series, which hopefully we'll actually be running at the pro-level in 2013 in World Challenge depending on how things go.

Right now we're trying to get the Sonic and Camaro finished up for the DC Auto Show at the end of this month, and then ready for track testing. Unfortunately I don't think we have time to finish the Sonic, but it'll look decent for the display.

So, yeah... lol, some days I have a really cool job.


Here's a few photos I'd posted earlier of the Camaro... it's getting it's vinyl scheme redone to match the Sonic in a few days:

 

[Sonic]

Very nice. Great job on working with less fortunate kids, kudos to you!

 

[Daedalus]

Very cool from another DC local!

I never knew the B-Spec rules for the Sonic were released yet! Do the rules specify the 1.8 or 1.4t?

 

[wastintime]

Very cool from another DC local!

I never knew the B-Spec rules for the Sonic were released yet! Do the rules specify the 1.8 or 1.4t?

Nick,

I responded to your PM. The only Sonics that are legal to race are the 1.8s for two reasons, one the turbo causes a lot of problems as far as regulating people not cheating and two, only 5-speed transmissions are allowed in B-Spec.

 

[wastintime]

Alright now Almost all of the vinyl is on, we need to make a few changes to some of it, and the SCCA decals need to go on, but looking good. I don't think we'll have time to get the cage in before it has to be in the DC Auto Show, but... it'll still look impressive nonetheless.

 

[doreo]

what have you done to the car besides the obvious visuals?

 

[wastintime]

what have you done to the car besides the obvious visuals?

Right now, nothing. The first set of wheels is supposed to show up like the day of the DC Auto Show... that'll be interesting putting those on in front of everyone.

The cage is probably going in after the Auto Show, I can't see us getting it in beforehand at this point. The whole interior will be gone though. And there's honestly not much the B-Spec rules allow you to do beyond safety mods. In fact, we have to REDUCE our hp with a restrictor plate! If our petition passes we'll be adding coilovers and if it doesn't, we'll have to run the OEM shocks and wait for Chevy to come out with their Sonic suspension kit for B-Spec.

 

[HulkSonic]

Did you lay down the vinyl wording yourself or have someone else do it? I have access to a laser so i was thinking about doing something similar but with just the hood and with my forum name. I know that even with my friends help who does vinyl work itll take me at least a few days to get it just right and sonic worthy. Dont mean to steal your idea if it seems that way. I had this concept and have searched for the last few days to see if anyone had done this to try to get an organized layout.

 

[wastintime]

Did you lay down the vinyl wording yourself or have someone else do it? I have access to a laser so i was thinking about doing something similar but with just the hood and with my forum name. I know that even with my friends help who does vinyl work itll take me at least a few days to get it just right and sonic worthy. Dont mean to steal your idea if it seems that way. I had this concept and have searched for the last few days to see if anyone had done this to try to get an organized layout.

If you want vinyl to look really good, I wouldn't do it yourself unless you know you've done it before and it's going to come out perfectly. Obviously on a race car sometimes we end up slapping some vinyl on because we have to, and we don't really care how perfect it is because no one's going to notice it through the dirt, tire marks, dead bugs, oil, etc... that you pick up on track, anyway. Most good vinyl shops will lay the car out on PC, and have a template they're going off of... and then it's just patience and chemicals and heat guns. As far as the actual procedures they used, I have no idea, lol... but I'm sure it's like painting where the masking is 90% of the work, in vinyl it's the layout.

 

[HulkSonic]

oh alright thanks. Yeah ive done some vinyl work but not on a car, and we had to use slightly larger paper templates to lay down the lettering and shapes and it came out really good. So i figured if i do something similar on a larger scale it should come out ok

 

[sonicR]

Thank you for giving back and helping to outreach to the youth of dc. I too have roots back in that area. We have alot in common. Major kool points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[sonicR]

Are you running 15x7 if so.what kind?

 

[wastintime]

Thank you for giving back and helping to outreach to the youth of dc. I too have roots back in that area. We have alot in common. Major kool points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, we definitely appreciate hearing that. We're actually just about to gear up for the new school year, and there's some interesting stuff on the horizon with GM that I can't talk about until after the 15th.

As for the 15x7 question. Yes, that's the "spec" wheel we have to run. Unfortunately we've had some pretty big issues with B-Spec, the rules, on top of funding, so we ended up putting most of the Sonic events on the backburner for 2012. So, we ended up not really working much with wheels and unfortunately I don't have a good answer for you. I will say we're probably just about to order several sets in the next couple of months though. We'd had a wheel supplier, but a fellow driver turned us off to them after they were cracking and failing on several race cars. I can tell you I don't think there's really any decent 15x7 wheel out there for the cars, at least that I've seen pretty much everything that's going to really work wheel on the car would be a custom wheel at this point.

Because of the rules we're limited to, we can only run a 205 tire, so we weren't interested in offsets that would allow us to fit wider tires, in fact I believe there's easily room to probably run a 15x8 or 16x8 and fairly wide tires. In our case though, we were moving the wheel as close to the edge as possible so that basically the sidewall would be sticking out from the fender, but not the treaded portion of the tire. I think we measured and were looking at going down to like a 15x7 ET5 offset, which probably isn't the spec the average person is looking for.

 

[sonic hotness]

Awesome support great job