March 86C Discussion

[pje]

As I’m sure with a lot of us, Michael has got me very excited again for a March 86C project or two. I’ve always been interested in basically three cars. Rick Mears’ 1986 pole winner, Bobby Rahal’s 1986 race winner and Rick Mears’ 1987 Chevy powered car.
It seems to me that they biggest differences externally between the three cars are the engine covers and rear wings. Kit wise, the engine cover for the 1987 winner is correct for the 1986 Mears car, correct?
Jim had some excellent history of chassis 22 in this thread:
mb2501.proboards.com/thread/3442/penske-march-86c-chassis-22

This thread answers a lot of my questions, but not the one I’m really wondering about. Did the Chevy engined car have a lower profiled engine cover? It looks like that to me, but maybe the few photos I seen have different angles and that’s messing with my perspective.
Does anyone have dimensions for the rear wing side plates of the three cars that I’m interested in? Maybe outlines of them?
Just thought that a discussion like this might interest a few of you and that I might not be the only one scratching my head over this. Feel free to expand the discussion in any way about the March 86C

Paul Erlendson

[indy]

The angles between these years are comparable, not perfect but really close.



Based on how much more RR tire and endplate you can see in 1987, there shows a big difference in engine cover profiles.

Jordan

[Calvin]

There is NO DOUBT about it the engine cover is different.

[clm1545]

Very interesting that, although I would think that the cars were painted the same color, they sure look different in the photos. Kinda makes some of our "color debates" look silly.

[Calvin]

Oh no!

Different lighting, different film, different cameras.....blaw blaw blaw

[indycals]

Yep. The 1986 photo is slightly overexposed making the yellow appear lighter than it is. The 86 photo also has a slightly more blue-ish cast to it.

The only time you can truly compare colors in photos is when both subjects are in the same photo.... and that will only determine what - if any - difference there is, it still won't give you a true measure of the actual color.

[indycals]

Another thing to consider - these images are at LEAST third generation: 1st Gen - negative, 2nd gen, color photo from neg, 3rd gen scan from color photo. Now if these were scanned from printed (i.e., printed in a book or magazine), then they are at least fourth generation.

At least with today's digital cameras you can get first generation directly to web, but that is still dependent on how the camera handles the image as to how accurate they are. And if the photographer shoots in RAW, that requires processing before uploading so it is dependent on the processing person as to it's accuracy.

And finally there's the matter of monitors. I'm sure most of you don't hardware calibrate your monitor, and if not, you are probably not seeing accurate color. I do hardware calibrate, but it's pretty much a necessity for my line of work.

[Calvin]

I dont know if I have that adjustment on my computer?

[indycals]

Looks good to me

[clm1545]

My point exactly, we look at old photos taken with different cameras, films, exposures, processing, and storage conditions, thru different monitors, with different eyes, and think we can tell exactly what color a car is. It just won't work.
That's quite a computer, Calvin, to think that you made fun of my record player.