I am going to reawaken this thread because, as some of you may now know, I bought this car and turned it into the Bugatti type 32 for the 2021 Challenge.
It all started with a Tuesday evening video chat with the GRM/Challenge guys, hosted by John Hoopes. The idea of the Bugatti got stuck in my head as the antithesis of the aero cars I have been working on for the past 25 years. It seemed like a good way to make a backhanded joke to myself. So, I reached out to A_Florida_Man back in the spring and offered to make some space in his storage and bring the car to the Challenge. After a month or so he called me back and asked if I was serious. At that point I described my crazy idea and he agreed to the purchase.
Somewhere in late June of 2021 I drove an empty trailer the Gainesville area and loaded up the car and all the spares and bit that came with it. There was a lot of stuff not attached to the car.
Once home I managed to get it into my garage, which was a challenge due to my long term project and all the tools that filled the 2nd bay. Over the course of the next few weeks I was able to sort thru everything and made a plan to get the car running before doing any body work. That sounded like it should be easy, since there were two complete intake assemblies, one distributor and three ECUs. Of course the 35 year old injection system did not want to play nice, but I was able to get the car fired up and the break in done. The car was able to move under its own power but it was not right.
While I pondered the next steps for the engine, I got started on the bodywork. This began with removing anything that did not look like a Type 32 Bugatti, which was everything, except the windshield frame and roll hoop. Since the car is titled and has the possibility of being registered in North Carolina I did not want to take it beyond what is possible for a street car. The next step was to build a skeleton to mimic the Type 32. I started at the firewall and built out and back making sure to cover the entire width of the rear tires. This resulted in a body that was a full 6 feet wide. With the help of a ring roller I built 12-15 years ago I was able to get consistent curves for the the door scallops and rear bodywork. The simple flat sides provided a fairly easy guide to line up the top and bottom edges. Once the middle and rear was complete, I started on the hood. I wanted to make sure it would latch using the original hood locations and pinned it at the front bumper structure. Adding the three dimensional curves at the nose was again made fairly easy with the ring roller. The structure is aluminum square tube. I added some plywood in areas that I knew would have significant aero load and needed to support the skin from bowing in the wrong direction.
The engine was revisited before I wrapped the car. I needed a manifold, carb , and distributor. The original distributor has no advance mechanism. Luckily there are plenty of circle track guys in the area (NASCAR land) and sourcing these parts was really pretty easy. Once installed and the fuel pump switched to a low pressure type, the car fired right up and performed as it should. A little tuning and bracket fabrication got it sorted for the Challenge. While I was at it I wired up the gauges, the dash, and a tail light (Challenge requirement). That left a headlight as the last item that needed fabrication before wrapping the body. There were two Cibie type lights that came with the car, so I used those attached to a pair of extensions off the front bumper structure and extending through the bodywork.
The wrap for this car is a heat shrink material typically used to winterize boats and wrap machinery for weather protection. When you see the boats on the highway with the plastic covering them, that's the stuff. 1000 square feet cost me $80 and I only used about 1/3rd of it. It was a benefit that it was blue, for the Bugatti theme. It only took a couple of days to get it attached to the skeleton and shrunk to make it tight.
With a wrapped and running car, I was just about out of time and packed up for the trip to Gainesville. I was honestly concerned about the wrap surviving the trip, but after a few miles on the highway, I was convinced the skin would stay attached, at least until the drag race portions of the challenge.
During the event the car did exhibit a little trouble keeping cool. This could be due to the limited radiator inlet or the not quite so clean radiator. Either way, with a little cool down time between runs, the pro driver (Danny Shields) was able to get a good time with the car. On the drag strip, there was more in the car, but the headlights decided to stop working after the second pass, so I decided not to fight with electrical issues in a dark parking lot and enjoy others making passes.
For the concourse I had a plan to dress in overalls and leather helmet to get into the spirit of the 1923 French teams efforts. A_Florida_Man and his two boys were dragged into the fun to "service" the car with vintage tools and equipment while I made the presentation to the judges. It probably helped that the judges were ready for lunch and I had tray of cheese, salami, bread and fruit waiting for them. Ultimately, the concourse judging went better than expected, getting a 20.25 score out of a possible 25. The concourse score dragged the final result from a dynamic score of 14th place to 7th overall. A real indication of how important the concourse can be. Getting the award for "Best Theme" was quite the honor, however JG made the announcement by saying it was the 2nd worst combination of materials he had seen, so there is a possible goal for future Challenges!
This trip to the Challenge was a lot of fun since I did not intend to thrash if there was an issue with the car. I was there to have fun with a goofy build and it seems to have worked out.
The car will likely be stripped back to a vette-cart sort of configuration and campaigned locally while I work toward next years build. You know actually testing and tuning the chassis and engine before the Challenge. That is the one thing the I wish I could make myself do with every car I take to the Challenge, but it seems to get lost in the build thrash, Hopefully I can change that up with this car for next year.
And since I am not great at keeping up build threads it may be a little while before the next update, but I have hijaked A_Florida_Mans build thread for the time being.
Thanks, Steve.
