Me and my friend decided some time February to go racing at Tierp Arena. Neither of us had access to car we were allowed to race with, so we bought a used 2004 Volvo s60. Now, the car was so gravely unmaintained that rust made us unable to get the summer tires off to change to the winter tires we had received with the car. We quickly realized why we had gotten away with paying as little as we did.

The week before and the week after it would have been illegal to drive with summer tires because of snow and ice, but luckily for us, it had melted from the roads for only that weekend and we could safely drive the car home. We later solved the tire problem with a strong breaker bar.

We wanted to get it ready for racing and did our best with our limited experience with car maintenance. We then bled the brakes, replaced some braking fluid, changed the oil to racing oil, removed most the interior and the back seats.

But a race car is not just about function, it needs to look good as well. I created a simple livery design in krita. We weren't able to put the entire design on the car, but we painted our door molding green and painted the mascot on the sides of the car.

We also made a spoiler from sheet metal. Making the spoiler was definitely the most fun part of the project. We first designed prototype parts in cardboard, cut the parts out of the metal with metal shears. My friend had a inverter welder, but none of us knew how to weld, so it was a lot of trial and error until we managed to put the spoiler together. It was also painted green to go along with the theme and then riveted to the trunk.

Check out our racing montage here: