After I finish all metal work and fit the nose to the front of the car I will be taking
the car to a body shop to have the fiberglass pieces put on and to have the body smoothed out and painted. Since the car is
going to be black it needs to be perfectly smooth so I am not going to "learn" how to do bodywork on my car and suffer after
it is painted and see all my inexperience showing through!
As far as how I am going to build my car I have recently made a major decision just last week (October
13th-ish). For the past two years I had all intentions of building the car as if it were real. That meant a functional blower,
a real 600 horsepower at the rear wheels as stated in the movie, and a functional fuel injection system. A reproduction fuel
injection throttle body and scoop are readily available as a non-functional unit and has even been engineered as a functional
unit with modern electronic fuel injection. Sure, the functional blower would not be "movie correct" as the one in the
movie wasn't even complete, but the fuel injection unit sitting on top of it would surely look the part. No replica has been
built this way yet and I was looking forward to being the first.
However to do this means incurring the cost of a real blower set-up, real reproduction electronic
fuel injection system, race quality engine components, a race ready manual transmission, extra beefy rear axle, and serious
beefing up of the chassis of the car. I figured this to come to about $10 - $13,000 just for this aspect on top of just building
a reliable car. It also means added time until my car would be finished.
What I have relinquished to doing with my car is to fabricate the fake blower that will have the
on-and-off switchable ability like in the movie, be more movie accurate, a more dependable car with less fear of breaking
something, and be able to finish it sooner. The engine will be a 351 Cleveland and I expect to build it to produce about 400 horsepower.
With the particular cylinder heads that the engine has I presume that torque will be quite high (perhaps around 425 ft. lbs.
or a little more) and that is even more important to me than the horsepower figure.
I will be posting progress pictures in another section as there is any to report. I don't plan on
doing too much in the winter....but then again.....
