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The Car:
In the beginning, stock-car racing was exactly what it sounds like. Drivers actually bought brand-new cars from dealers and went racing. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), organized in 1947, created a standardized set of rules for stock-car racing and established a system for selecting a national champion based on performance at races across the country.The original races were run on dirt tracks that got rutted and bumpy. The unmodified cars were not tough enough for this type of abuse, so NASCAR began allowing modifications to the stock cars to increase their durability. Over the years, more and more modifications were made, sometimes to increase safety (see How NASCAR Safety Works for details) and sometimes to improve competition. NASCAR strictly controls all of these modifications, which are spelled out in detail in the NASCAR rule book. Cars are checked for compliance with these rules at every race.

Today, NASCAR race cars have very little in common with street cars. Almost every detail of a NASCAR car is handmade. The bodies are built from flat sheet metal, the engines are assembled from a bare block and the frame is constructed from steel tubing.
How these race cars are made
, starting with a component that is key to the drivers’ safety and provides the foundation for everything on the car: the frame.
Short-track Cars
The goal in designing a short-track car is to create as much downforce as possible. Downforce is an aerodynamic force that tends to press the cars tightly against the ground, allowing the tires to grip the track with more force. This makes the cars go around the tighter turns as quickly as possible. Downforce comes with the penalty of increased drag, but on the short tracks, reducing drag is not so important because the engines are able to make their full power output (they are not limited by restrictor plates) and speeds are generally lower.

Extensive testing is done in a wind tunnel to optimize the body design for maximum downforce. The body is mounted as far back on the frame as possible — about 5 inches (12.7 cm) back from the body location on a super-speedway car. This helps the car create extra downforce.

The front fenders on short-track cars are much more pronounced and curved, which also helps to produce downforce.

Since the speeds are lower on the short tracks, getting an adequate volume of cooling air to the engine and brakes can be a challenge — especially since the engines and brakes generate more heat during short-track racing. The grill opening on the front of a short-track car is larger than on a super-speedway car, and extra vents duct air directly onto the brakes.

Super-speedway Cars
On the super-speedways, the track is much longer and straighter and the banking is high, allowing cars to maintain a high speed all the way around the track. The goal in building a car for super-speedway tracks is to reduce drag as much as possible. These tracks require the use of restrictor plates that reduce engine power from about 750 horsepower (hp) to 450 hp.

Since the engine is not producing its full power, it is critical to make the best use of the power available by reducing drag. The body on a super-speedway car is mounted forward on the frame to reduce drag. The sides and the fenders are less contoured, and the grill opening is carefully tested in a wind tunnel to find the smallest-sized opening that will provide the necessary cooling airflow. At the higher speeds of a super-speedway track, there is enough airflow for cooling the brakes, and a much smaller grill opening can provide adequate cooling for the engine.

The Engine:
Here are some of the main NASCAR engine characteristics that separate them from regular engines:
The displacement is large — 358 cubic inches (5.87 liters). Not many cars have engines this big, but the ones that do usually generate well over 300 horsepower.
The NASCAR engines have extremely radical cam profiles, which open the intake valves much earlier and keep them open longer than street cars. This allows more air to be packed into the cylinders, especially at high speeds (see How Camshafts Work for more details).
The intake and exhaust are tuned and tested to provide a boost at certain engine speeds. They are also designed to have very low restriction, and there are no mufflers or catalytic converters to slow the exhaust down either.
They have carburetors that can let in huge volumes of air and fuel — no fuel injectors on these engines.
They have high intensity programmable ignition systems so the spark timing can be customized to provide the most possible power.
All of the subsystems like coolant pumps, oil pumps, steering pumps and alternators are designed to run at sustained high speeds and temperatures.
When these engines are assembled, they are built to very exacting tolerances (parts are machined more accurately), so that everything fits perfectly. Cylinders are bored to more exacting tolerances than street cars. The crankshafts and other rotating parts are balanced. Making sure that the parts are as close to their exact dimensions as possible helps the engine achieve its maximum potential power and also helps reduce wear. If parts are too big or small, power can be lost due to extra friction or pressure leakage through bigger than necessary gaps.

After the engine is assembled, it runs on the dynamometer (measures engine power output) for 30 minutes to break it in. The engine is then inspected. The filters are checked for excess metal shavings to make sure no abnormal wear is taking place.

If it passes this test, then it goes on the dynamometer for another two hours. During this test, the ignition timing is dialed in to maximize power and the engine is cycled through various speed and power ranges.

The Frame
This shop buys its frames prefabricated from a frame supplier. The frame consists of a structure of round and square steel tubing of varying thickness. The bulk of the structure surrounds the driver. This part of the frame — the roll cage — is made of the thickest tubing and is designed to stay together, protecting the driver during any type of crash (see How NASCAR Safety Works for details). The front and rear sections of the frame, called the front clip and the rear clip, are built from thinner steel tubing so that they will crush when the car hits another car or a wall. In addition to being collapsible, the front clip is designed to push the engine out of the bottom of the car — rather than into the driver’s compartment — during an accident.

When the frame comes into the shop, the firewall (the metal panel separating the engine compartment from the driver’s compartment) and floor panels are welded in, along with various mounting brackets for things like the engine, suspension, seat, fuel cell and body.

The next step is building the body and installing it on the frame. This process is amazing — almost every part of the body is made by hand from flat sheet metal.

The Body
­The process of making the body for a NASCAR race car is incredibly labor-intensive. It takes the shop 10 working days to make and install the bo­dy for just one of these cars.

The shape of the car is mostly determined by NASCAR rules. These rules are encapsulated in a set of 30 templates, each shaped to fit a different contour of the car. For instance, the biggest template fits over the center of the car from front to back. When the template is laid on the car, the gap between the template and the car cannot exceed the specified tolerance. Each template is marked on its edge with a colored line. If the line is red, then the gap must be less than 0.07 inches (0.18 cm). If the line is blue, the gap must be less than 0.25 inches (0.64 cm). If the line is green, the gap must be less than 0.5 inches (1.27 cm). The templates actually allow a little leeway in the design of the car. Because 30 templates are not enough to cover every inch of the body, some areas between template locations are not strictly controlled by NASCAR.

The construction of one of these cars has nothing in common with how a street car is made. With the exception of the roof, hood and deck lid (which are supplied by the mfg.), all of the body panels are made by trimming and then hand-rolling flat sheet metal between the rollers of an English wheel, which slowly bends and curves the metal until the contour matches the templates and fits on the car.
After the car body is installed and ground smooth, the car is primed and painted. All of the decals are installed, including headlight decals (NASCAR cars don’t have headlights), which helps make the race car look more like a street car.

*Not all of the cars are built to the same specifications. Some cars are dedicated short-track cars, and others are dedicated super-speedway cars. There are some major differences between the two types.