More progress! We took the weekend off from playing to get the spoiler built and wrap up some other miscellaneous things. Of course, the SCCA event on Sunday had lovely dry, warm weather, but so it goes.
Little items included chasing down a leak in the front which turned out to be accumulated rain water, swapping rear brake pads to Wilwood Polymatrix Bs from a stock compound, and doing some interior cleaning.
The big ticket item was out back, and I'm extremely happy with the results.
After scrounging our scrap pile, we didn't have a suitable piece of aluminum, so we hit up OnlineMetals for a piece cut to our specs. This provided us with a square, straight-edged piece, and eliminated a ton of work - all for around $60. The material itself is .100" thick 6061-T6.
We sourced two pairs of Wehr's struts from Performance Bodies to provide the strength for the setup, along with some piano hinge from the Lowe's cabinetry department for lower mounts.
Our secondary decklid was swapped on (the tail-less look is still cool for drag racing and the street, so drilling into the painted one wasn't an attractive option), and the marks we made previously for the template were recreated.
Each mounting screw required a hole all the way through both layers, which was then opened to 5/8" on the inside to accommodate a washer - 4 separate drilling tasks per screw.
Placement was determined in part by how the inner structure is made - we lucked out with the holes falling outside the weatherstrip for the most part.
With the hinges in place, the blade was sat in position and marked for some additional clearancing. We added a relief cut at each hinge, allowing the aluminum to sit down over each and flush with the deck.
Once everything was happy there, we marked and drilled holes for the hinges, starting from the center and working out.
Finally, we placed the outside struts in about the spot that felt right and attached them to the blade, then moved to the bottom side of the decklid to evaluate our options. This ended up being our one 'oops', as they were a bit too short to make it where they needed to be on the deck. The secondary holes will be useful if we ever want to stand it up higher, at least.
Our original plan was to use 4 struts, but looking at the beefy hardware included and how busy things got with all 4 of them up there, we settled on 3. There is some give in the blade thanks to the tolerances of the rod ends, but nothing too bad.
With 16 #10 screws on the bottom, and the 3 rod ends having 1/4" screws in them, I don't think we have anything to worry about strength-wise. Nights this week will be about getting it painted along with getting some of the interior pieces (shifter boot cover, dead pedal, and gas pedal cover) that never got finished out properly coated in black as well.
Last item of business was safety-related - I've had a HANS for a while, but never had gotten my non-drilled Impact helmet prepped for it. Turned out to be pretty easy. Along with a firesuit and some schweet Alpinestars gloves, we are officially ready for the road course.
Next weekend will serve as final assembly, then it's on to a mid-week Optima test and tune set up by the local Camaro club on the 24th.
Optima and the 28th of March coming up fast!