racing and safety Mr. AlpinA got some paint......

[Simeon]

Even your body shop wheels look pretty sweet. I suppose that you need to fit those arches around something. 

 

No oversprayed mis-matched steelies for you!

[markmac]

A little bit of the chicken/egg unfortunately, in order to accurately cut the inner wheel arch you really need it stuffed with the correct tire/wheel.  In a perfect world I would have had a back up set of crappy steelies with old rubber to use when it needed to be on the ground, no such .... just hoping they (the tires/wheels) aren't too jacked up.  They (the wheels) were one of the first things I "restored" many (many) years ago......they should have been the last.  I am thinking there is a chance I could have the car back next week, which would really make me happy.

[dang]

Nice!  Paint always feels like a turning point in my projects..

[craz_azn]

Hi Mark, car is looking fantastic! Looking forward to seeing more pics and progress soon!

 

 

[boxy02]

Really can't wait to see/hear this one in person!

[markmac]

Went up to Roseville yesterday to visit my father so I incorporated a trip to the body/paint shop to have a look at my car first hand.  I have to say its pretty damn cool.  It still needs to be wet sanded and polished but it really looks good.  They are starting to lay out the stripes that go on sides/hood/roof/decklid.  Inside trunk area gets granada red, under-hood granada red and interior satin black -that's the easy part  ... getting all the striping laid out not so much.  I should have it back early part of next year....but then I have been saying that for years now.

[danco_]

I saw this car about a month ago when I went to pick up the s50b32 e30 m3 from S&K. I remember recognizing the fenders, but not being able to pinpoint from where or why.

 

Looking stellar. 

 

[markmac]

Cool.  Its taken a lOOOOOOONg time to get to this point needless to say.  After I came to the realization that I was going to miss taking it to Monterey by a country mile (that would have been around June 1), no press.  He's pretty particular about the work on this and does most of it himself.  You can't tell from the pictures how low to the ground the car is, you probably noticed that when you were standing next to it.  Good or bad, the body work (and paint) is better on it now than when it came out of AlpinA's shop.  The squared off wheel arches, you either love-em or hate-em (initally I was a hater), they have grown on my now .... and its too late to make any changes.

 

 

[NickVyse]

to some extent the squared off arches define the car - looks fantastic mark, congratulations. are you adding the extra skirt before the rear wheel, or was that not original original? And what's the colour of the stripes, it's been so long I've forgotten!

[markmac]

Nick, I think your right about the arches.  I will be adding the arches at some point.  I made a set up a while back and the body guy has them, honestly i forgot to ask about them.  The car raced in one of the early races without them, then they can be seen in just about every pic thereafter.  Its odd they didn't have them on in that one race since they clearly had them designed and made up prior (the b/w photo is from the Geneva Car show 1974 before the car started racing).  The stripes are all red, same red as in the german flag.

 

[NickVyse]

the arches always make me think of an android character called Creighton in the UK comedy Red Dwarf...

 

Edited December 23, 2016 by NickVyse

[tisalover]

Mark, the car looks fantastic. The arches are cool, and uniquely original, no matter how you feel about Picasso and Bracq's cubist art explorations in the 1920s and 30s.. Please send us more pictures when the stripes etc. occur.  

 

Best regards, Peter

[evil02]

The car looks great!!     This has probably been covered but, what size wheels are on it (diameter and width). I would be interested in the wheel halves sizes as I am building a set of 3pc wheels right now.

thanks,

Dave

[markmac]

Wheel centers are AlpinA cast magnesium (15").  Barrels (rim halves) are BBS flat base.  No tire machines for these (unfortunately), have to be assembled around the tire - tedious and time consuming.  The rears are 11x15 and the fronts are 9x15 (or 9.5? sad, I don't recall for sure now).  Back in the day they say they ran 13 x 15 in the rear and 11 x 15 front.  When I was test fitting the body work everything was really tight at those dimensions, so I took the fronts and put them on the back and then bought some new BBS 4 (or 4.5"?) outer barrels.  Inner barrels are all 5".  The 11's are pretty substantial looking, the 13x15's are almost 'cartoonish' really.  A significant amount of work was done in the back of the car to allow this tire/wheel combo to fit (under the rules)

 

Dieter Quester driving at the Osterreichring in 1974 (12hrs Martha Grand National), which the car won, ran on two cylinders apparently the last two hours of the race.

[evil02]

Thank you for sharing.  I'm building wheels now and was wondering how wide yours are.    Do you know roughly how wide your flares are?

 

Also, are the front uprights much different than the road going version?  I was wondering how or if they beefed up anything to handle the extra forces that these tires put on them (sorry if you already shared this, I will try to search this site).

 

thanks,

Dave

Edited December 25, 2016 by evil02
added a question