Saturday was a pretty crazy day, 12 hours of drifting and tonnes of wrecked tyres. For a lot of people, sunday was sort of the ‘go out and smash everything’ day. I was more into making the car last as long as possible and getting rid of all my tyres so I didn’t have to carry them home.

First few sessions were awesome, still trying to get the hang of my new steering setup I wasn’t driving the best and had a few close calls with ripple strips. Those things are like mountains.

One thing I have been meaning to mention is my new roll cage setup. Since last matsuri, to make the car a little more rigid (and eligible to drive) I put in a new half cage and also some new coilovers. Coilovers being 12/10kg instead of 8/6kg I had last matsuri and my cage is a 6 point half with double crossbar and harness bar. Suprisingly it feels much more stiff than my old full cage. Admittedly it has more bars in a smaller space, but is only in the rear half of the car instead of the previous one being a full cage. It’s definitely more of a raw drift car now being a lot more rough with the new bits.

I think the next few things I need to work on are some brakes, because stock 180sx brakes just suck. Had to come in and let my fluid cool down a little bit, then went straight back out to get a few more runs in, still had no brakes!

Some pretty epic shots from the whole weekend, these two are some of my favourites.

If you missed it in my previous post, on saturday I went over a ripple strip which ripped off my lip and in turn made me run over it. I managed to throw it back on the car but it only lasted a few sessions before coming off somewhere. Still had the best time though!

So after the lip coming off, I thought everything would be all sweet for the rest of the day and I would take it easy. Even taking it easy, Mr Gearbox had a different idea and decided he would break. Halfway through my last session for the day, going through the sweeper, little CA box decided to explode. Ever since building the car I knew this would happen, this is the second one it’s destroyed (first one was on the dyno) and after this it’s time to look into new options. CA boxes were never really capable of holding anything over about 250kw.
I’ve been researching it quite a bit the past few weeks and have come up with a few options, hopefully I can have something sorted soon, really want to get back out and driving again.

So jumped behind the tow truck, pulled the car into the garage and sat down for a bit.

So

Damn

Tired.

Loaded up all my tools, spare set of wheels, the 180sx and headed back to the motel ready for the drive back the next day. Going from a stiff as hell drift car with solid bucket seats and rock hard suspension, to a comfy, quiet and aircon fitted car is the best feeling after a long weekend.

A long ass drive back home and I was ready to hit the bed again. Even fell asleep at work the next day which was a bit of a fail.
Anyway, that’s my summer matsuri recap! Just as good as last time and awesome organisation from the VicDrift dudes. The next matsuri is at the end of the year in november and I’m planning to be back there with a new box setup, some new brakes including a hydro setup and maybe the final bit to my aero puzzle.

I’m still working away on my video recap so keep an eye on my Vimeo page and it should be up real soon.

I’ll leave this here, SO MUCH CAMBER!

At some point everyone who has a drift car wants to have more lock so they can go for bigger entries and more speed, or just to show off how much lock they have in pictures. Either way both look good, using it to it’s full potential is the most fun part of it though.

I previously ran S13 Hey Man knuckles with stock tie rods and S15 LCA. They had a bit of extra lock, but wasn’t really what I was after.

So the months of research on ackerman issues, over-centering issues and binding problems, I finally decided on what I thought might be the best option for what I wanted. Something not super whippy and nothing super short. I wanted good response without having the lock limited to a certain point. Another big thing I wanted was to eliminate the drag factor on the trailing wheel.

To go with the new knuckles I wanted a new LCA setup so I could increase my track a bit further. I spoke to Joel at C’s Garage after seeing some of his work and decided I’d send mine over. My S15 LCA were extended 25mm, gusseted and had the lock stop removed. They came back looking amazing! Definitely going to use Joel for any other LCA work I want done.

My tie rods also needed an upgrade, seeing how everything I had was now running everything to S15 specifications. Spoke to the best guy in Japan, Jesse Streeter, organised some Ikeya Formula tie rods and had them sent over. I also ordered a pair of OEM tie rod ends from Pete at JDM Obsession, I didn’t want to run aftermarket tie rod ends, I don’t see much of a difference in them.

In my list I had 5 different knuckle designs, from privateer cut and shut to the top manufacturer’s in Japan. I was highly considering Driftworks but didn’t want to drop nearly $1500 on a set of knuckles. I had 3UP, GP SPorts and Dmax as well, but a few bits ruled them out. The GP Sports hyper knuckles aren’t made anymore, I’d also read in a few places that people had issues with them cracking. 3UP I couldn’t find much info on, being a smaller company it was a bit of a dead end looking for them. Dmax was my #2 choice, I had no issues with them, they looked perfect, would suit what I was after and weren’t over the top expensive.

The knuckles I decided to go with are Riverside, same knuckles that Atsushi Kuroi used in his D1GP car. This guy is my all time favourite driver, for everything he could do with that car. I looked into them but similar to the GP SPorts knuckles, they weren’t made anymore. I spoke to Jesse again and asked what he knew about them and if there was any chance of getting a pair. Lucky for me he knew someone in Japan who had a jig to make the knuckles, so that was all I needed to know. A couple weeks went by and I had my new knuckles in my hands!

I haven’t had a chance to test the knuckles yet due to not being able to fit them in time before heading to Winton for matsuri. I have tested the car with the new LCA and tie rods though, it is amazing to drive. Once the knuckles go in, I hope I can get a bit more lock and stability in the front end. These knuckles aren’t super short so won’t be very hard to drive with I imagine, but I wont know until I try them.

For now this is how my lock sits, only with the LCA and tie rods, can’t wait to get the knuckles in and get that little bit more lock!

If I can drive anything like Kuroi, I’ll be happy.

The last time i was at Winton was their last matsuri in November 2012 so hadn’t driven in quite a while. The car had changed a huge amount in the 3 months. New aero, new cage, new coilovers and a new steering setup as well, which i’ll cover in my next post.

Thursday I spent most of the day loading everything up. Car, tyres, tools and my suitcase for the weekend. I had spent most of the week going over the car and making sure everything was good to go. A couple weeks earlier my power steering pump seized so had to get onto that and have it fixed as soon as possible.

Thursday night I was set to go, having finished my new steering setup that morning, I didn’t know wether or not I would make it. Luckily I figured out a way to get it to work and had the car on the ground and steering properly.

Friday morning, time for the drive down. I met up with a few other guys and convoyed down. Stopped halfway for some lunch, hijacked some free wifi and set off again.

The drive down was pretty exhausting, having to stop once for a trailer tyre exploding on one of the convoy cars. Then about 5 times for petrol, food a few times and again to go to the bathroom. Not the best trip, but there’s some good sights along the way. By sights I mean grass, lots and lots of grass.

Friday afternoon ended up with everyone at Winton, unloaded and good to go for the next day.
Headed back to the motel for some dinner and the thing I’d been waiting for all day, sleep.

Saturday started out same as every other drift day, sign in, driver’s briefing and spending the morning half asleep. I had everything unloaded and the car setup, I was a little worried as to how my new steering setup would go, drove it around the pits for a bit with the tyres scrubbing on the guard quite a bit but went out for the first session anyway.

First few sessions were awesome, bumpy as hell, but awesome! The steering was really whippy and I spun a few times trying to get the hang of it, but after a few laps I had it going pretty well. It has a bit more lock than before and also a heap more camber which makes for a better contact patch, feels like a totally different car.

Just like last time I was going through tyres pretty quick, had to change a pair after every 2nd session, didn’t have any issues over the day though, really happy with how the car performed.

Towards the end of the day, I was trying to get bigger entries with more angle and speed, which I was a little cautious about considering the size of Winton’s ripple strips, they are like mountains.

Down the main straight and into the 3rd turn I had an awesome run and a decent entry but didn’t quite make it all the way to the apex, so this happened..

Grinded over the ripple strip! If you look closely, my lip isn’t attached on one side, that’s because when I went over the strip it broke off on one side then once I came back onto the track, it caught under the tyre and I ran over it.. At the time I was worried I had wrecked an LCA or broken something REALLY important because of how loud the scrubbing was.

Had to pull up and see what I broke, the lip was under the gearbox and twisted in half!

Not the best way to do a big entry, I pulled it off though so wasn’t all bad! The lip got smashed pretty heavy, ended up throwing it back on and keeping it on for the rest of the day. Only just enough of it together for it to look ok.

I didn’t get any pics from the night session which was a shame, I had my strobes on and also some super bright LED’s on my wheels which would have looked awesome on camera.

I got a couple tandem runs in, but not too many, the mate I wanted to tandem with had some car issues so didn’t come out for many runs.

About 10pm we headed back to the motel, grabbed some pizza, watched Bad Boys 2 and checked out what I had on my GoPro. Epic runs from the first day and really happy with how everything went. Sunday up next, started off sick, didn’t end too great.

Keep an eye out for part 2 next week!

326 rocking 180sx <3

Out of all the times I’ve come to Japan, very rarely does it ever snow.  I think, of the 6 years I’ve been traveling here, I’ve only encountered snow once or twice, and it’s never in the city.  That’s not to say it doesn’t snow here…I just have good luck maybe.  I took this shot of a neighborhood 180 this evening on the way to picking up my friends son from pre-school.

Overlooking the neighborhood outside of Yokohama-shi.  There are a couple fields that, by the end of the day, were blanketed with snow.  Needless to say it was cold!  Maybe good street drifting weather? ^^

I think last time I wrote anything my car was 3 different shades of red, well I drove back to California over my Christmas break and got that taken care of.

These two pictures are my kit before and after clearcoat. After it was painted I stuck the panels on my car and drove around for (and I kid you not) three days before I put it’s first major crack back into it.. o well I guess it was to be expected. Here’s a pic of it on the car the last day before the crack:

Sorry for the crappy quality, and idk what happened between then and now because my front bumper fits no where near that well anymore. After I cracked it, I decided it was time to colorsand and buff the kit before it got any worse, so the next day that’s exactly what I did:

I can’t believe how smooth the paint came out, its kinda funny how the paint on my kit looks better than the paint on my car. I think I spent 6 hours that day with sandpaper getting all the orange peel out. After that I did some street drifting…

Then since I killed those tires that day I stepped up from 225/45 to 235/40 in the rear (keep in mind this is a stock ka that’s spinning these), lowered my car and added camber to fit the tires. It ended up like this:

I’m pretty happy with the overall look now. Shortly after I took the car to actually be aligned, after driving the car off the rack the alignment guy decided to drive my bumper into the curb which cracked it even more. Come to think of it that’s probably what made it fit like crap..

I complained to the manager and ended up getting three years of free alignments out of the incident, I guess I’ll be pulling my bumper off from now on when I go there though. The day before I left I was determined to make my front end look somewhat decent, so after smashing my mangled fender back into place I came up with this brilliant idea:

That ziptie idea actually works REALLY well, it just takes forever to get them cinched down. The next day I headed back to Texas, the trip was relatively uneventful aside from the occasional bump

Good thing I threw a gallon of antifreeze in it. Since I’ve been back in Texas it’s been more life as usual, some photoshoots and drift events in between.

You can see the crack pretty well in the second to last picture. Oh, and some drifting:

The hatch and mustang are owned by PandaPirates Brian and Justin, both great drivers and really cool guys

Aside from that I’ve managed to put one more big crack in my bumper

I changed my oil last week and my friend took some cell phone rolling shots, but other than that not much has happened.

The relationship I have with this car is pretty funny, when I look at it by itself, all I see are it’s flaws; but the reactions it gets, the attention it demands and the personality of the car in general compared against EVERY other s-chassis I know of always keep me attached to it.

Also, here’s some video of the event if anyone wants to see me drift:

I apologize for the lack of updates recently, but I’ve been a bit busy the past week or so.  Today I attended the last Battle Evome of 2013 with a friend at Tsukuba Circuit – look for special coverage on that in the near future.  For now I thought I would post this picture up of the Nismo RPS13 on it’s way back home from Tsukuba.  I know this isn’t the greatest quality, but the shot was a bit rushed!  It’s hard to remember that many of the entrants are street cars.  We were lucky enough to take the same way home as Koji-san and his insane 180SX so I was able to snap a few shots of it on the street.

Stay tuned for full event coverage, as well as a close-up of each of the cars.

It was the same layout and setup as the last one run by Driving Sports. I organised to head out with Maverick and Nathan again for some more tandems, Brad couldn’t make it this time so it was only a three man group.

The only change I made to the car was a new half cage and an Optima dry cell battery. Everything else was still the same and going strong.

There were a few mishaps throughout the day, Nathan’s exhaust fell off in the morning, Maverick ended up plowing through a few cones with his front bar and I took some paint off my rear bar from the billboard, other than that everything was awesome.

One thing I noticed is that Nathan’s lock is ridiculous and he is on stock knuckles! From what I remember, he has longer tie rods and that’s it.

I’ve been ordering bits for my steering setup over the past few weeks so I should have some extra lock soon. Winton is only a week away now, really hope I have everything before I head out, it will make driving so much more fun.

Here’s a few more tandem pics.

The next day we do will most likely be on main track in the dry, I need to do a few major things before I head out, new handbrake because any day now my stock one is going to fail completely. Also need to get my steering setup in, a new exhaust because mine has a hole in it from when the tyre exploded at Wakefield. I think that should be about it.

I made a video recap of the day and put it up during the week. Click the pic below to check it out..

Can’t wait for the next day, I think one day we will all end up crashing into each other.

Enjoy the vid!