SRT-8 Daytona Clone

The last couple of weekends have been spent working on the modifications to the right side fender and finalizing the attachment points for the fenders and the nose. While I still have a lot of knick knacks to take care of I am pretty happy with the way it is starting to shape up. I also lopped off 2 1/2" from the length of the front air dam. It was WAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!! too big.

For anyone who is curious about how I went about shaping the fender scoops there are a couple of tools that I used that are kind of specialty to the metal working trade.  More than a few here will have heard about them but for those of you who have not. The blue tool on the floor stand is an Eckold shrinker /stretcher. Brand new this is a pretty pricey tool. About $3500.00 but I got lucky and a guy at work wanted rid of his and I paid about half of that. It has two sets of heads. With one set when you place a piece of metal in the jaws and push the arm down it grips the metal and spreads it apart. That would be the stretching operation. The other as the name would imply grips the metal and forces it to bunch together. There are cheaper models of which I have a set and they are great for shaping metal flanges of no more than 1" but to get in deeper to a piece  you need this set up.  The other tool is the English wheel. This is an inexpensive model ($2500.00) that works for most applications.  In the hands of someone who has used it for years you can form some really elaborate panels. This device stretches the metal by placing the metal between two rolling steel wheels and cranking up the pressure on the metal between the dies. As you roll the metal back and forth between the dies it spreads the metal out.  I am using it here mostly just to smooth the part out.