The need to make a strong and light aerodynamic structure reminded us of a youth misspent building model airplanes. We made the duct walls of 1/16-inch balsa wood. With the grain vertical, it can easily flex to follow the required curves, but has good compressive strength. Start by supporting the back of the duct floor at the required height. We used masking tape to hold it in alignment from side to side.
Since Project RSX was put together, Status has discontinued the Monte Carlo, but the same shell is available as the Ring, with slightly different detailing. Kevlar versions of all Status seats have passed FIA testing, and other models are pending approval. The standard-width versions are definitely not for bigger-boned drivers. For someone with six-foot-four proportions, lateral support is concentrated at the hips, rather than the rib cage. Status now offers the Laguna and Ring in GT versions that are a full inch wider in the bottom two-thirds of the seat and fit up to a 40-inch waist comfortably.
Installation was simple, using Wedge Engineering custom brackets. The stock seatbelts are positioned well enough with the Monte Carlos in this installation that we're comfortable using them. Other race seats we've installed required the use of racing harnesses to make us confident in their safety. Our experience with shell seats is that they are typically flexible in torsion until firmly bolted to the mounting structure. Though ultimately offering much greater tensile strength, Kevlar is inherently more flexible than carbon or GRP. It's hard to say whether the flex that remains is inherent in the seats themselves or originates with the included side brackets without replacing said brackets. Since it doesn't keep us from beating on the car, we haven't isolated the issue, and when we mentioned it to Josh Decker, Status Racing's CEO, he pointed out the successful FIA testing.
Each section of balsa is marked to follow the hood's contour, trimmed along the marked curve, and then trimmed with some excess length. It is then glued to the inside surface of the hood and the side of the duct floor with cyanoacrylate adhesive (the generic name for products like Super Glue). A medium- or thick-viscosity, gap-filling version is best, to prevent the end grain of the balsa from wicking all the glue away from the joint, as well as to fill in imperfections. The glue sets in just a few seconds, so each piece can be held in place by hand and progress is rapid.
Once the Status seats were installed, access to the back seats became difficult. Going with the flow, we removed everything in the interior from the B-pillars back, turning it into a two-seat sports car. As with the Technical Assistance Program's `convertible' option, we're sure that really increased Project RSX's sex appeal.
Modern cars are engineered to be assembled as quickly as possible, minimizing the amount of time trained monkeys spend turning screwdrivers. As a result, most interior parts that aren't seats or belts can be removed with bare hands, and quickly. That's what we did, and is about as far as we've gone.
If we were really motivated, as with a race car, we'd have done the entire interior. Strip everything, get rid of all the insulation, sound deadening, goo, schmoo, tar and useless gaskets. Remove any no-longer-used brackets, studs and other doo-dads. Strip the undercoating and repaint under the car. Remove anything that doesn't make the car fast, stiff or safe. Anything that's left should be examined for ways to make it lighter or replace it with something that is. Replace steel fasteners with aluminum or even nylon if appropriate. Strip unused wires (sound system, A/C, etc.) from the body and engine harnesses. But we already proved we aren't that committed by reinstalling the stock hatch and glass.
The walls will eventually be done, at which point the duct is basically stabilized, but not finished. Trim the bottom of the balsa wood walls flush with the fiberglass on the duct floor.
There are also middle-ground ways to make the car a sleeper. For example, you might leave the panels and carpet, but remove all the insulation, padding and sound deadening behind them. Casual onlooker sees a full interior, but the car is a lot lighter.
In a perfect world, we would be rid of the moonroof. Glass, motors and the rest of that stuff is heavy, and the roof is a bad place for weight. Thankfully, Acura asked us not to mess with that particular detail, so we didn't have to get into it with this car. In the past, SCC has replaced sunroofs and moonroofs with flush-fitting panels made from carbon fiber (good) or polycarbonate (bad, see above) and aluminum panels riveted on top of the roof (good for a race car). We've also seen steel panels welded in to replace the sunroof, or the metal sunroof itself welded shut. We've even seen the entire roof removed and a new, sunroof-free roof installed. This is radical, and best justified if it facilitates the construction of a cage. Suffice it to say, the weight removal has always been noticeable.
From the top, it's starting to look like something. Don't round off the edges, they need to be at right angles in order to create turbulence and pull air in.
Stock, Project RSX weighed 2840 pounds. Now, it weighs 2670 pounds. That's after adding the weight of the rear anti-roll bar to the back and turbo system to the front. Remember, though, that the turbo system eliminated the front bumper, and we chose to remove all underhood A/C components. We were surprised to find that the weight distribution with your 245-pound writer in the driver's seat changed less than half a percent on the front/rear and left/right axes. A reduction of 170 pounds is a useful improvement for all areas of performance. There's obviously more to be done if you're building a dedicated track or race car, but then you'd also be adding back the weight of safety equipment.
Status Racing's Monte Carlo seats are lighter than stock, if a little hip-scrunching in standard widths, and bolted right in with Wedge Engineering brackets. | 
The back of the duct should have a rounded entry, rather than sharp, the dimensions of which are specified in the NACA paper. You can use balsa wood, but we had some fir lying around and justified its use by greater resistance to denting. We cut it slightly longer than the width of the duct and glued cardboard profile templates to the ends. We then shaved the wood pretty close to the required shape. It's easier to take more off in the next step than to have to fill and sand again. | 
Using a flat sanding block, finish taking the duct entry down to the final contours with a smooth surface and uniform cross section. |
Sure, Project RSX may be noisy, but for going fast, it works great. From here, we will revisit the tuning and show we actually had some kind of plan when we invested in building the engine. We'll get into the pretty red brakes and test the whole thing. Then we'll declare it finished. n
When finished, cut the duct entry section from the rest of the wood. Clean up the cut surface, carefully trim it to length and fit it into the back of the duct. We used quick-cure epoxy for this, rather than the cyanoacrylate, for its greater gap-filling ability and longer working time. | 
There will be some filling required. Mask surfaces that are to remain in their original state, then mix more quick-cure epoxy and fill any gaps, such as the groove left by the thickness of the saw at the front of the duct. The edges of the duct should have a crisp corner, rather than rough or rounded. We used masking tape to build a dam even with the top of the duct walls and filled the gaps there with more epoxy, which also reinforced the glue joint. The adhesive on the tape stuck to the epoxy when it cured, which made it harder to clean and prep the surface afterward, so this may not be the best solution. But it worked. We also reinforced the lower edges of the duct under the hood, where the wood and fiberglass come together, with strips of fiberglass and epoxy. | 
With a lot of attention to detail, we cleaned up the glued edges and sanded everything to its final shape. We primed and sanded repeatedly, then painted the wood portions of the duct gloss black. We left the epoxy fill at the edges of the duct clear on the top surface, and with the duct wall completely black, it doesn't stand out from the clear coated carbon fiber. If this car was destined for Hot Import Nights, we might have done this differently, but it's good enough for us to beat on. |
There's one last step. The duct as built directed air to the firewall above the OE strut-tower brace, which would cause it to lose any momentum before reaching its desired destination, the firewall behind the turbo. So we got some help from our friend Matt Weiss, who built this totally sweet air deflector, using a sheet metal roller, shear and bending brake that he happened to have in his garage. The deflector is clamped between the strut tower brace and its mounting bracket on the firewall, and directs air from the NACA duct smoothly downward to where it is needed. | 
We made these templates for the deflector panel ahead of time, then took them over to Matt's house. One is for the shape of the sheet itself, the other indicates the required bends. They weren't perfect, but close enough to get us there, with only minor tweaks to make the deflector fit right. | 
The duct now delivers cooling air directly to the top of the turbine heat shield, which should significantly slow down the rate at which all those heat-wrapped parts still get baked anyway. |