This isn't the '73 RSR...this is the 1980 Daytona-winning Liqui-Moly 935, another restoration that's underway at Gunnar. Today's group project was getting the lower surfaces of this car stripped, de-rusted and ready for paint. Once the underside of this car is painted it can come off the "rotisserie", and the '73 RSR will go on the rotisserie so that work can be carried out on its lower surfaces.

The work on the RSR today was primarily in the fuel cell area, which was modified heavily when the car was first raced, in order to fit a somewhat oversize fuel cell. Here Rene is preparing those areas for restoration.

Here we're looking at the inside front of the chassis, where Kevin has cut out one of the areas that had been modified, in preparation for redoing that area back to the original shape. You can see the oil cooler through the hole.

The current fuel cell is a bit grotty at the moment, but will be like-new soon enough.

Above you see two of the ID numbers for the RSR. The top one - the serial number - is a bit unique, in that it can be seen at all. Typically teams preparing RSR's cut this entire area away to fit the fuel cell, but when this car was prepared it was only cut back part way, leaving the first part of the serial number. Below that you see the car's Production Number, which is located at the lower center of the dashboard.

No, this isn't a Jackson Pollak masterpiece, it's the edge of one of the RSR doors, which has had chemical paint stripper applied to start to remove what appears to be at least four separate layers of different-colored paint from the car's past. This work is a bit like Archeology, because you discover all the car's past lives, one layer at a time...

This is the mostly disassembled steering column. Photos are taken at every stage to assist in remembering where all the various parts went prior to disassembly. Some of these parts will be sent out for plating or restored in-house.

<<< Previous Update | Next Update >>>