Well there’s not much point in dwelling on the obvious, Covid put a “pause” to a lot of projects, including Andrew & Mandy’s Bonneville trip. Unfortunately the Charger was locked away in the paint shop over the whole lock-down period so Sonic ground to a halt with nothing to do but throw a turbo on my son Ryan’s Commodore.
Back to the Charger, after 2 different dyno sessions & a test day at Tokoroa, which all went well (other than a broken quick-change rear end shaft), we were set to strip the car for final panel & paint.
When we spec’d the rear end to Winters a few years back, they felt what they supplied (their Extremeliner) would be adequate, we were using a slick tyre with 200 mph gearing for our NZ testing and the shaft sheared in 2nd gear after a few runs. This never would have happened on the Salt as we have no initial traction with our skinny Salt tyres, but where it MAY have happened is at 200mph+ speeds, this is where we start to see loads on the drive train increase sharply due to aero & mechanical loading. If the shaft had sheared on the Salt, things would have been a lot worse, they have since made a stronger shaft which is now in the car.

There were a few little panel items that needed to be addressed, ENTER COVID !, car locked away for weeks !.
Then - into the paint shop to be blocked down/gapped as a complete car, then stripped, put on the rotisserie & final paint inside & out. After paint it was rust proofed & further seam-sealed to try & reduce the amount of salt getting into nooks & crannies.

Now (beginning of June) back on its wheels & back to Sonic. As at the end of June, the car is 90 % complete, once the car is complete we will test at a longer NZ venue to try & get some decent mph. We then convert the car back to the Salt set-up with wheels/tyres, diff ratio & few other little changes & get ready to head to Lake Gairdner , about 200ks north of Adelaide. Logistically this is a much harder event to run at, (even though its closer to us than Bonneville ) due to its isolation but the Sinclairs are up for the challenge, or adventure as they prefer to call it.
I’ll be back with testing news & pics pre Aussie in the next few months, stay safe, cheers, Mike (Bic)