New Teammate! Hood, Doors, and more!!!

February 25, was the first official work day for our newest teammate, Tyson Russell. He is a peer from our Automotive class, taught by Mr. Garcia, and an excellent artist. Along with helping in the construction of the Mazda, he will take the job of formulating a few renderings of paint schemes and designs.

Having introduced our latest member, here is an update on our progress:
1. Our original cardboard bumper has been scrapped and replaced with new one which has been made more aerodynamic for our rear wing.
2. The doors are mounted onto their permanent location.  We will remove them to add some reinforcements at a later date.
3. The hood pins and supports have been installed.  This means that the fiberglass hood won't warp, deform, or fly off and decapitate someone during high-speed runs.  That would be bad...
4. Possible paint schemes and designs have been discussed.

We cannot wait to see what our in-house artist comes up with; we will post a couple renderings as they are made.

Rotary Update

As of January 28, 2017, we have had a change of plans.  We are no longer working on the Volvo.  In its place we have a 1981 Mazda RX-7.  We found the frame parked in the back our Automotive instructor's shop and all the pieces stored in various locations.  In a previous life, the Mazda was one of Mr. Garcia's race-cars.  A couple of years ago, a crash rendered the banana shaped chassis uses-less.  All the salvable parts were put into storage around the shop.  Another RX-7 chassis was purchased, but, due to rust, the roof was chopped off.  Other than the purchase of the chassis and a few modifications to the body, nothing has been done to repair the car since the crash.  Our goal is to restore the once competitive race-car to its former glory (minus its roof!).

Over the past few Saturdays we have:
1. Moved the RX-7 into the shop
2. Removed paint and rust from the body panels and primed the vehicle
3. Located all the parts and components and cleaned most of them
4. Cut out the area for the gas-tank
5. Mocked-up front bumper and nose
6. Mocked-up rear firewall
7. Mocked-up trunk hood/cover
8. Mocked-up rear-end bumper

Update as of December 10, 2016

We spilt up into two "teams" this past weekend...

Team A: Gabe C. and a friend of ours

continued to strip the interior of the Volvo. We removed the dash and began removing the A/C tubing and system.

Team B: Gabe T. and Quinton worked on removing the turbo tubing, cylinder heads, and some other parts from the engine in preparation to exchange the camshaft for one with higher performance, as well as, to free up some space in the engine compartment (hard to tell in the photos). 

Future plans for the engine and surrounding area:

add a new camshaft,

insert new belts, 

install a bigger turbo, and

machine the heads to improve compression.

For the interior:

finish the removal of the A/C and excess wires;

install a roll-cage, a racing seat, and a harness; and

make new dashboard including gauges and a switchboard.

Update as of November 26, 2016

We worked both on the 25th and the 26th. What we did was most of stripping of the interior of the car. We had to remove the seats, carpet, and ceiling. We still haven't taken the dashboard out as you can see in the photos. Literally everything in the car has to come out.  The reason for removing everything is because of weight reasons. You may think that the interior might not weight that much but the seats of the car alone each weighed around 75+ lbs. the plastics, carpet, and ceiling removed about another 100lbs. Removing weight from the car means that your ever so important 0-60 time, power to weight ratio, drag times, and dead weight (weight that does nothing to improve the car's performance) are improved. We still have a little work to do interior-wise on the car. The photos are of the car as it stood on the 26th we will update when we do more work.

Introduction to our project

Here is the introduction for the project. Starting from the beginning. The team name is Team Volvo (its a work in progress) and consists of four main members Gabe Carvalho (age 14), Gabe Turner (age 15), Quinton Wiebe (age 15), and our Auto Tech teacher/mentor/spirit animal Raul Garcia (age unknown). The group got together around mid-October at our Auto Tech teacher's shop; after we had done what we were there to do one of us had the idea of making a race-car for a budget race up in Gainesville, Florida. We all thought it would be awesome to make one (or fail trying). Our current goal is to make a race-car out of the 1988-89 Volvo 780 Bertone we bought. We plan on racing in the Grassroots Motorsports $2017 Challenge; we encourage you to take a look at the link HERE for information on the race. A couple of photos and a video of the car as we first saw it are also added.

We will be updating this blog as we meet. We will post photos, videos, and text as we go along.