Shoot Me Now

Another short post with a lot of pictures. Here are photos from my photo shoot with the car.

14 Blistering Hours

So yesterday I suddenly got the urge to drive down to Nevada. What!? That's right, randomly I decided to drive down to Summit Racing for two reasons. 1. I decided that the shipping costs for the parts I was needing would come to about the same cost as gas money for driving down there ( I was wrong, really wrong. But that's okay because...) 2. I needed a vacation.

Now, spending 14 hours total driving, just to spend 2-3 hours in Sparks, NV may not seem like much of a vacation to most people, but trust me when I say I say that leaving Idaho for a good 17 hours was worth it. Especially when I haven't left this state in 3+ years. Luckily the seats in my Explorer Sport are SUPER comfortable, and 14 hours of driving was no sweat. One thing I really do like about Fords is how comfortable their seats are. The only thing I had to do was make sure I stayed awake while driving...

...which was not a problem thanks to my assortment of energy drinks and snacks. The drive down there helped with all the beautiful scenery to look at. Look! I found Mustang, NV.

After the 7 hour drive to Sparks, I finally found Summit Racing, which was everything I hoped it would be and more!

 So the entire reason I headed down to Summit Racing was for Racing Seats for Bryci and to pick up the rollcage. Shipping for these items would've come close to $100, and I spent about $160 in gas. So yes, I did spend more, but I like I said it was worth the trip. Plus now I know that my Explorer can take the drive. I also found the stock airbox that I've been needing to get for Bryci, found that lying on the ground at Pick-N-Pull with the single Escort GT that was there out of 20 other Escorts, which was pretty lucky too because I left all my tools in Idaho!

Double Duty

Wow, I certainly got quite a bit done over the weekend. Right after I had finished gutting out the entire rear of the car I got a call from a guy from Twin Falls wanting to know if I still had the bucket seats for sale. So I headed down and took about 10 minutes to get the seats out of the car and sold them for $10. He got a great deal, because the seats were actually in really nice shape, they just needed to be cleaned a little bit, and I would much rather have sold them for only $40 than just end up throwing them in the trash.

So after I got the seats out I decided to start on the front half of the interior, since I wasn't originally planning on tackling that project for a while, but since the seats were already gone, why not? While I was tearing out the carpet and had the center console apart I noticed how long the shift lever was and decided that needed to change. So I got my grinder (I want to hug whoever invented the grinder, it takes care of EVERYTHING! For example this evening I used it to cut some unnecessary speaker wire, and also used it to open a plastic package because I didn't have scissors or a knife on me).

Speaking of using a grinder to cut open plastic packages, I used it to open up the hood pin assembly package I bought earlier this evening after I got off work. Got the hood pins installed and removed the factory latch.

After I was finished with the hood pins I returned to the interior and got the emergency brake fixed, the lap belts out, got the headliner out, and also removed the track that the shoulder belts traveled on. I'm Still trying to decide exactly what I'm going to do with the sunroof assembly. I can't decide whether to just replace it with a metal roof and keep the functionality of it, or just remove the whole time entirely and weld the hole shut. Tough decision.

So in summary almost all of the interior is finished. Just have to make a final decision on that sunroof, and get some racing seats in the car. Tomorrow I'll be working on the engine again, trying to start getting that water pump removed. I can't wait, I'm just such a big fan of how tightly they packed that engine in there.

Garage Queen

I finally got my garage the other day and got Bryci inside so I could start working on her. I've been working on her all day long and I have to say that I have made substantial progress. I got a lot more done today than I was expecting. I took out the radiator and fan assembly so I could have some more room to work in the engine bay. I honestly don't think they could have gotten that 1.8L any tighter in that engine bay.

I got the heat shield off of the exhaust manifold and removed the A/C condenser and all the piping with it. I still have to removed the A/C accumulator, but that doesn't need to be removed immediately, though I'm planning on getting it out of there as well before I officially get started on the water pump.

  After I got all that out of the engine bay I started to lose some weight off the back of the car (the A/C and accessories adding up to almost 75lbs alone), so I got busy ripping out EVERYTHING I could possibly rip out in the rear of the car.

Before

After

I've still got a lot of cleaning up to do. I have to remove the hundreds of feet of speaker wire that the previous owners had in the car. That's all that I got finished tonight, just removed all the interior panels, seats and seatbelts, then I had to go check out the Boise Roadster Show, but I've got tomorrow off so I'll post up what I get finished tomorrow.

Paint Splatter

I'm pretty excited, I get my garage at my apartment complex tomorrow, so I can get Bryci in there and start getting her race ready. First I have to replace the water pump and actually get her running again, then I'll start tearing out what I don't need from the interior. So...if you need any interior parts for an Escort just let me know. Below is a basic design that I'm going for with the car, keep in mind that it is pretty basic.

Day 1

Alright well thanks for checking out my blog. This is me, Brad K. Pedersen. I am Paint Splatter GraphX, and I am a new and upcoming rally racer. This blog is just a look at my journey from the start of my rally career to wherever I end up. I'll be posting along as I go about my car and what I'm doing to it to get it ready to rally. My car will not be ready to race until half way into the season, but I think that a few practice races before next season couldn't hurt? I am getting a garage to park my rally car in tomorrow and I'll be able to start working on it there. I bought a 1991 Escort GT, which has the Mazda 1.8L in it, and I'll say the thing is pretty quick, and that was with about 100lbs of subs in the back of it. No joke. When I'm done getting everything out of the car it'll be even quicker! Thanks to my friend Ariel Rose, who will be my co-pilot and Navigator for my racing season. She's about as excited as I am to start rallying so I definitely know that no matter how we'll do when it actually comes down to the racing that we'll both have a lot of fun!







 Here she is as she sits right now. Her name is Bryci, and below is a basic paint design I have that will be applied.