the most important part of a race car is obviously its paint job

The turbo minivan's transformation from junkyard reject to Probably Quite Stoppable Racing Mystery Machine is now, mostly*, complete.

Here she is, in all her exterior high-gloss enamelled glory:

From mystery machine

*except for the seat. We'll probably need a seat.

Also we'll eventually need to attach the newly-created exhaust system with something other than zip ties.

It took all weekend to finish the paint job - green on saturday, orange on sunday. (It took me about five hours per side to lay down the initial coat on the lettering.) We originally had fancy plans of using a projector to get the initial shape, but I was too impatient to wait until it got dark, so I ended up free-handing most of it.

Rob doing the final outlining:

From mystery machine

Laz rollering a second coat with a sawed-off 1-inch roller:

From mystery machine

From mystery machine

From mystery machine

From mystery machine

Meanwhile, Rob worked on fabricating an exhaust system, the vehicle's original sawzalled-off-at-the-header exhaust system not really passing muster under the new Rule 3.24:

• 3.24: Exhaust System: A professional-quality exhaust system is required. Exhaust outlets and tubing must be designed, routed, and maintained to avoid heating the fuel tank(s) and/or fuel-system components. Fuel heating is extremely dangerous and must be avoided at all times.
• 3.24.1: Exhaust system may not dump ahead of the driver, and must not allow undue levels of exhaust to reach the driver's compartment.

After we installed a real exhaust with a muffler and everything, it no longer sounds nearly as bad-assed. However, it now LOOKS AWESOME, which is not something I ever thought I'd say.