Jackets Racing: Steve Fox. Body Work. Cost Report.

Steve Fox (Michigan competition chief design judge) came to Cedarville on March 13th to give a presentation on learning from the past. It was a great time for our team to get feedback on our design and change some things before it was too late. The team enjoyed showing off all of our hard work and learned a lot.

Body work is a labor of love. For anyone that has never made body panels before be prepared for a lot of sanding. Currently I'm in the process of making the male mold for the body and sidepod. We started out with a SolidWorks 3-D drawing of the car, then I took that and made cross section drawings of the car every 4.5 inches and cut out stations using MDF board. Once the stations were in place we covered it in foam insulation to connect the stations together. Last night I started filling the cracks and covering the foam in drywall paste. Today has been lots of sanding and more filling with drywall paste. We are still a long way from a completed painted body panel but I'm just going to keep sanding.

As part of our competition we are required to make up a cost report of every single thing that is on our car. This is an insanely tedious task but it must be done. The real problem is that is taking away time from putting our car together. It is also turning out that something that are saving us money like making a carbon fiber intake instead of a rapid prototype is actually costing a lot more in our report. This is because the report is costed out over 1,000 cars instead of just 1 and for us the labor is free.

- Wes