veritech-z

For some reason my scanner always warps my images, so trust me when I say this looks much better in person. Anyway, Brad, we totally want you to draw! Everybody in!

Man, they must have started giving out hateraide samples early today! Reserve judgement until it's up, if you please!

Sigh...It hurts when you taste so good...everybody wants to take a bite. I've got a good one coming after I'm off work. It's a g-nose with inverted headlights like the Mach 5. Let's see how THAT goes over. *edit* As for maverick: I can't get into the megamouth, especially with no intercooler in there to fill the space. It needs something to break up the hole, maybe a rack of rally lights? I like the flares and hood though.

Hoke, that's a great picture! Did you build a rig, or hang out the window to take that?

The trailers for snakes on a plane featured some of the worst looking cgi since Han Solo stepped on Jabba the Hutt's tail...that alone makes me not want to spend the bucks. I'll probably wait until Blockbuster Video is just giving it away on DVD like they did with Anacondas: Curse of the Blood Orchid. I can't wait for THIS to come out:

I've thought about trying to use flares from a Nissan frontier pickup, but I don't have a set to try it out...

Hey Ollie, don't be such a negative Nancy! Instead of picking us down, why not join the fun and put something up for a change? Throw some of your ideas out. I promise we won't be mean!

Let me apologize for the atrocious coloring job, but markers were never my thing...don't know what posessed me to use them this time. I'm not feeling the widebody thing as much these days, so I did mine with a slight flare, just an updated front clip. I like the G35 vents in the fascia, and I always liked the slim fiberglass shelf-style front bumpers.

You probably aren't going to see it too much under the fuel injection intake manifold anyway. I'm really just doing it to be different, got to have a little WTF?! in your life, right? I'm also planning to put the turbo exhaust forward, and run my "downpipe" around the front so I can do my passenger side WWII fighter plane style exhaust in the fender. As for the reference I promised earlier from Skunkworks: page 202-204 describes the design team getting around the challenges of choosing materials to build the blackbird out of. Ben Rich (then a designer on the project) determined that painting the plane black would lower wing temperatures by 35 degrees which would allow them to use the lower grade titanium that was available at the time without having to worry about it losing strength from the heat. The impetus for this decision was the fact that the only supplier in the US that was milling sheets of titanium didn't have much in the way of quality control, and lowering the temperature gave them a buffer. According to Ben Rich, the only factor in using black paint was heat control, prior to that it was going to be polished. The radar absorbency was a side effect, but because it worked so well it made the transition to the F-117 program. However, later in the book, it is made very clear that the majority of the stealth capability of that plane was the shape of the fuselage, and only to an extremely lesser degree to the absorbency of the ferrous paint.

What you've got is a g-nose style front end, but the actual g-nose is more pieces than that. It's desirable because it cleans up the aerodynamics a lot, but for a street car where that's not that important, it comes down to taste. I go back and forth with whether I like it or not. I think the look great on seriously lowered cars, but on a relatively stock suspension they look a bit awkward to me.

The G-nose looks like your wife? I'm not looking forward to when my vision gets THAT bad.... OTM, is this open for all sketchers, or just comments? I've got some ideas too, but they are going in a totally different direction than yours.

is that piece open at the front of the wheel, or is it flaring out to cover the spinning tire? To me it looks like it's Baja bug or Lotus 7 inspired with the way you have what I assume is the front fender coming into the door? How is the door going to open without a big notch in the flare? Marty McFly style possibly?

If you really wanted to be cool you could do a top mount, like I'm planning to do...except you could duct the airflow from the front so that it comes from under the intercooler and out the hood, instead of in from the hood scoop down into the engine bay...

That was me, sorry about that! I was using it as an example of black paint being used to shed heat in an extreme circumstance, and BJ wasn't buying it, and hilarity ensued... *edit*OTM, if you don't have it already, you should go pick up Maximum Boost by Corky Bell, it has a lot of cool pictures of different intercooler placement ideas (including a close up of the porsche intercooler I mentioned and also a bottom mount intercooler)

I remember that test as well, and if I recall correctly, they determined that a thin coat of paint had no effect on the air temperature.

This was my favorite part...

I win again! Woo Hoo! Post another one Aux, this is fun!

I like when he puts his turn signal on to get out of the subway...Garrett, the italian job predates these commercials by like 20years...

That book was written by the guy that designed the engine nose cones for the blackbird, and went on to be the director of the Lockheed skunkworks during the stealth fighter plane design. I'll post the passage where he talks about that when I get home. The idea of visual camoflage on something traveling mach 3+ seems a little silly, don't you think?

Supposedly black paint won't affect the cooling. Black absorbs heat quicker than other colors, but also radiates it just as fast, that's why the SR-71 is painted black to shed the heat generated by traveling at those speeds. In the book "Skunkworks" by Ben Rich, they talk about making that decision to paint the plane flat black instead of polishing it in order to help with the heat issue. If you are at all concerned about the effect of paint, go to www.swaintech.com and get one of the heat dump intercooler/radiator coatings done.

Hey OTM, good luck with the space age materials, but you probably don't want to mount it that close to the road. Ever try and lay your face on the road in the middle of the day? That air down there isn't all that cool is what I'm saying. You'd be better off doing it like porsche used to, and putting it in the fender behind the wheel with a screen over it to block debris. So long as you duct it appropriately it would work just fine. Make sure you have and entry and exit path figured out.

Look on the bright side: better a hand than an ankle! I broke my ankle in three places once skateboarding, and not only do you have the pain of the break, you also lose the use of your hands for anything other than using the crutches. Hope you get better soon!

I'll get something going for you skater, I've designed a few tats for people over the years. What style do you want? Stock car, animated looking, super modified? more like the datsun/z logo? just kick something freestyle and tell me if you dig it? Pm me a pic of your z, or point me to some z's you like, and that might be helpful. Also, where is it going, that matters for size/shape of the tattoo for me.

I'd always heard the 260 was only made for one year...I'd believe that the e is for fuel injection, I'm just curious now...