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Show Car Buildoff: Painting Basics

When news of the Show Car Buildoff began circulating, the team at DuPont Hot Hues saw it as an excellent opportunity to not only become involved, but also to provide a sound platform to help all of us better understand what is involved in painting a car. The color selection is a process in and of itself, but having a better understanding of the characteristics of the materials used, how to use them and what is involved in using them is helpful as well.

Snake-Bitten

What Do You Do When You Want the Power and Performance of a Dodge Viper but Need the Utility and Space of a Quad-Cab Pickup? Well, you can buy a Dodge Viper and you can buy a Dodge Ram pickup, or you could buy a Dodge Ram SRT-10. The Ram SRT-10 is a limited-edition pickup that Dodge built as a regular cab from 2004 to 2006 and in a Quad Cab from 2005 to 2006. These trucks appear to be the result of some aggressive engineering, combining the racing pedigree of the Viper with a pickup truck, resulting in outstanding performance—and it works!

CRATE OPPORTUNITIES

If you’ve ever imagined a time when you could simply pick up the phone or send an e-mail to General Motors and order the engine of your dreams, pull it out of a box delivered to your door and plug it into the car of your dreams, then stop dreaming as that time has come. While it’s not new information that GM Performance Parts provides an assortment of engines to choose from, it’s never been easier to select the one that is best for your budget and the intended purpose of your car.

EARLY-IMPALA LS2 SWAP

Low in its architecture and functionally beautiful, the LS2 engine is an ideal replacement for a previous generation of Chevy powerplants. It offers good
performance, greatly improved economy and plenty of support from an industry leaders.

Easy Out

In this day and age, getting the most power out of your late-model truck or SUV is both difficult and easy. Now that we have covered ourselves technically, we will give you the reasoning behind this convoluted theory. New vehicles are hard to work on but easy to upgrade. See? That was easy.

LS is MORE

When GM introduced the Gen III small block in the F-body, it rekindled a dying performance flame with its new-generation small block. While the Gen I small block actually kick-started the hobby and got it into gear, it’s the latest family of small-block engines that has grabbed the attention of enthusiasts everywhere—and for good reason.

Choosing The Right Cam

Cam-speak is a language all its own. Well, maybe not from a linguistic point of view, but it is a specialized dialect of car-guy talk. Although spoken by a good portion of enthusiasts, Cam-speak is really fully understood by only a handful of those same enthusiasts, as it is a very specialized, nuanced dialect. Those who do not speak the lingo can instantly be singled out. Those who are fluent in cam-speak are listened to intently, even when those listening do not fully comprehend whatʼs being said and how to apply it to their particular applications. Few within our ranks are particularly fluent in this highly specialized jargon.

Boost in a Box

While at LS Fest, we noticed several drivers spending a lot of time tuning their rides before hitting the track, dialing them in to try and gain an edge over the competition. This left us puzzled. If you’re looking for an edge, there’s no better way to optimize your performance with E85 than with a flex fuel system from Advanced Fuel Dynamics.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

Honda did the right thing in refreshing the looks of the aging DC2 Integra platform, but somewhere along the retooling process, the terrific driving experience for which the Integra was known was lost somewhere. The Integra Type-R was a no-frills, high-performance sport compact that bordered on being a street-legal racecar, but without the loud exhaust or kidney-bruising ride; the RSX Type-S just doesn’t have the feel that the older Integra had—instead of being razor sharp and agile, the RSX feels numbed and subdued by comparison.

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