Sacrilege and blasphemy and re-themeing.

Each team "owns" it and can do with it what they will, is what I always heard.

I think it looks pretty badass the way it is. But every team has been adding to it, changing it and so on.

Other people may feel differently.

Needs a rack of rockets and a pair of big external speakers in star-covered blue pods on each side. The rest is already done.

I think you need to keep the marks of all the previous owners, which may make it difficult to do a deep retheme without removing their signatures and whatnot.  Although you can follow the Zombee retheme when they covered the car in painters tape.  That way whatever you paint over will be removed when the tape is without removing the singantures and stickers of the previous owners.

Part of the original concept was that all drivers sign the hood. Personally I'd like to see my team's sticker make it to the end of the season but not as much as I'd like to see how many signatures end up on the hood. Then again, are all the drivers still signing the hood?

Before you repaint it, do a walkaround with a good camera to capture all the current detritus for posterity.

When it was in our hands Bob's suggestion, which of course we knew we were free to disregard, was to add rather than obliterate.  I personally am proud to see our team graphics as part of the livery, and would be sad to see them go... but, that said, it's yours. If you go this route it had better be pretty badass, and I heartily recommend that as much effort as possible be put into attempting to make it reliable.

This basically sums up my thoughts on the matter, and we don't have that much time.

We're not doing anything dramatic. So far, this is all we've done:
-Painted over the old numbers (after attempting unsuccessfully to strip off whatever stick-on decal from hell they were applied with)
-Stripped off a few of the window decals that were practically peeling off or illegible. I don't think any of them were team decals.
-Painted over the lawyer advertisements that were on the rear doors, and touched up the flames that they were covering up. (Bob informs me that it's actually illegal to advertise law services in the state of Texas if you're not a member of the Texas bar.)
-Removed the NSA cameras. ANY FURTHER ATTEMPTS TO SUBVERT GREAT COUNTRY OF USA WILL BE MET WITH SWIFT APPLICATION OF JUSTICE AND FREEDOM

Please add more glitter!

Does it run?

Engine and transmission are back in. Helpful associate at O'Reilly found me the right (or horribly wrong, but matching the old one) serpentine belt. Of course, the front subframe is still sitting on the floor. Hopefully we can get this thing running tomorrow.

We were having some difficulty getting spark and ended up having to make new wires for the coil circuit. Bob is now entirely justified in purchasing his very expensive short circuit detector. The engine fired. We shut it down quick because it was running on 5 cylinders; we had pulled a plug to check spark and forgotten to put it back.

Now the battery is dead, so we're waiting on it to charge; I guess the engine's easier to spin with only 83% compression. Expect triumphant footage to be posted on the FB page soon-ish. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Escape-V … 5929854089

We still need to bleed the front brakes, refill the transmission and steering rack, and put the hood back on. After we get to the track, we'll have to seal the "cold-air intake" hole in the hood and finish mounting the lights. Also grab a couple Primewells.

I can probably swing getting the car up to Jackson. We'll talk more after the race.