Hey ya'll, Double-B here with another one of our often-ignored, non-award-winning blogs for your listening and dancing pleasure.
It's a beautiful Tuesday afternoon here in Charlotte and as I sit here in my home office typing this I realize that we're exactly one month away from our return to racing at the Carolinas Nationals at the beautiful zMax Dragway. There's a lot of stuff we need to get done to prepare for the race but I'm very happy to announce that we're way ahead of schedule.
One of our major concerns was getting the necessary safety upgrades installed on the car and Kevin and Nick have been working on getting them done, the only thing they couldn't do is make a poured seat insert that's required this year.
Lucky for us, one of our buddies, Brian Butler, of Butler Built Seats, who is a SEMA approved builder of seats for all forms of racing, has his shop just up the road from us and today was the day that his seat expert, Scott Zurawski came down to Blacksburg to pour a custom seat for the 'GilbyMonster."
Pretty interesting deal how they're made, I'll try to describe the process as best I can. Basically it's a bean bag chair that molds to your body. Only in this case the beans are really high-tech and a super catalyst is used to harden them into shape. Scott filled up a custom-made plastic bag with these beans, mixed together a two-part epoxy, dumped it into the bag, mixed it up and put the whole deal in the cockpit of the car. Gilby put on his firesuit and safety equipment, hopped in the car and the chemical reaction, with the help of a vacuum pump,molded Gilby and the car into one. Scott had about an hour wiggle room to make the final adjustments and Gilby hopped in and out of the car a few times before everyone was satisfied. Gilby then had to stay in the car for about another 20 minutes with the vacuum pump on high to let the seat set up. The hardest part was keeping Gilby still for 20 minutes, I've never seen that before...LOL
In other news the race car body left today for the graphics shop where it will get wrapped in Rinnai colors later this week and we hope to be able to pick it up on Friday. To have the body done this much in advance takes a lot of pressure off of the guys and allows us to take photos for the handouts. I'll post photos of the finished product soon.
One last thing. As we did last year we've hooked up with a local hotel for the Carolinas Nationals. It's the Hampton Inn Charlotte - University and we've put together a really good deal for you fans who are attending. Bottom line is $89 a night. That's not bad for a Hampton Inn huh? Only six miles from the track and it's in the center of the University Entertainment District with hundreds of bars and restaurants in walking distance. Plus the hotel is hosting a "Nitro Blast Off Party" on Thursday evening, Sept 17 from 7 to 9 p.m .for guests and fans, free for everyone. We're going to drag the race car down there, Gilby will be signing autographs and we'll be giving away a bunch of prizes including a pair of 4-day tickets for the race. For more information, or to book a room give them a call at: (704) 548-0905 and mention the special "Gilby" rate package.
That's it for now; type at you soon.