Last weekend the Traction Optional/SLAM crew went to Nashville to help out at the Southeast Drift “We Ain’t Finished” event. It was a fun day for all. Ranzo’s car finally ran right, Jerry got to test out his new modified knuckles, and Trevor got his first taste of Tandem drift. I’m still carless so I had a good time doing a bit of instructing and driving other peoples cars lol. The highlight of my day was running tandem with Sammy Tiger. He’s always fun to drive with and so aggressive. If he is following you better have some speed because he doesn’t let up. Here’s a few pics I found of the day.
Haven’t updated this thing in a while because I really haven’t been doing much driving lately. After alot of thought I decided to get rid of the LS1 S13 and picked up a new ride.
I had been thinking about getting one of these for a while and I just couldn’t pass up the deal I got on this car. The body is pretty straight, but the interior needs a bit of cleaning. The main problem with this thing is the fact that it had a blown engine though.
I was planning to do a 2jzgte swap later if I had bought one that ran anyway so this was a good excuse to go ahead and do that. Chuck from Adrenaline Motorsports brought me in a nice clean aristo swap.
Ofcourse I can’t just leave it stock though. I’m gathering parts at the moment for a single turbo upgrade and a manual conversion.
I can’t wait to get this thing done. This is the most excited I have been about one of my own cars in a long time. Finally I will have a nice street car that has some decent power. My dd s13 just isn’t cutting it with its stock ka24de. I’m aiming for 450-500whp on this car. I think that will be fun for atleast a little while. Oh and ofcourse I plan to slide this car a bit as well, but not for competition or anything. I’m just planning to take my time and do it right. This project is all about building a car for my own personal enjoyment. Taking it back to the reason I got into this stuff to begin with. FOR FUN!
This weekend we went down to Atlanta once again for a Southeast Drift event. My car is still down so I just went to keep Trevor company and chill with the Atlanta peeps. Well once I got there Trevor convinced me to go ahead and sign up and borrow his car for the day. I just couldn’t resist driving. Thanks Trevor. The car ran great and I think we finally got the last of the bugs worked out of it. At the beginning of the day there was a problem with the main relay, but after that we were both running the course pretty well. Marcos and I finally got to run some tandem runs also, but unfortunately he ran out of tires after only a couple runs. Ofcourse with Trevor’s car there just can’t ever be a day that goes completely perfect either. I finally was going to get to do some runs with Sammy (Tiger Racing) and the stupid powersteering started acting. It turns out that we had a fitting fail and it pretty much happened instantly. It really sucked because I had wanted to run tandem with Sammy for a while. Oh well maybe next time. It started pouring down rain right after that anyway. It was overall a fun day even with the small problems. I really needed to do some driving. Now its time to concentrate on getting my s13 back on the road. I need a new t56 trans, front bumper, fenders, and a little paint. Only 4 weeks to do it so I guess I need to hurry up.
I have got to start keeping this thing up to date. After the Gateway event my next stop was DG’s event in Nashville at Nashville Superspeedway. This was the first time for us to run on that road course. I was a bit skeptical going into it but once we got there we knew we were going to have an awesome time. That course was so much fun. I had to use almost every drifting technique I have learned just to link the whole thing. Unfortunately about halfway through the day my transmission decided to act up. It started with some 3rd pop outs on the straight away before the first turn. Then it ended up just losing 3rd gear all together. I thought T56’s were supposed to be unbreakable? I was not about to let my day end only halfway through. So I started using 4th gear and the real fun began. Great event DG! I had a blast and there was more than enough track time. After the day was all over I had a broken trans, killled off 4 tires, and a big smile on my face.
Me and the rest of the SLAM crew went to St.Louis over the weekend for the Nopi Drift licensing day on Friday 4/18 and we stuck around to watch the Nopi Drift practice on Saturday. We got into town on thursday night and hung out with Chuck at his shop Adrenaline Motorsports. His new car is beautiful. So many nice things about it. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so you will just have to take my word for it. After he finished tuning and we ate White Castle at 2am (YACK! what was I thinking) we headed to our hotel to get a couple hours of sleep. We wake up bright and early and it looks like the rain just might hold up. I think we got about 5 or 6 runs on the track before the rain finally came pouring down. This track is definitely awesome though. I had trouble with it pretty much all day. I absolutely hate rain and I really don’t get much practice in it. I was so pissed with my driving that I almost didn’t even drive in the qualifier. I was getting the course in sections but having trouble putting it all together. My friends luckily convinced me to go ahead and do it. I only got one run before they decided to call off the whole thing because it started to rain really hard. Somehow everything just clicked together and I layed down a decent run linking the whole course. I think I was just really relaxed, I was actually falling asleep when I was waiting in line to run haha. When I came back to the pits everybody was telling me how good it was. I guess it was good enough because I was granted a NOPI license!!! I got the only one of the day. Now its time to get to work on the car because it needs ALOT to be able to pass tech. I really want to try to make it to Englishtown,NJ but I think I am going to aim to be ready for Cincinnati.
All around this was a great weekend. It was good to see some people I hadn’t seen in a while. Congrats to Aaron Losey for taking home first also. The dude was on all weekend.
I named this post southern hospitality because in the past month I have been down to Cordele,GA another two times and each time my friends from ATL have been so helpful. We went down to Southeast Drift’s “All you can drift buffet” event at the Watermelon Speedway first. After a long night and morning fixing Trevor’s car we arrived late to the night event that we had been looking forward to. I wasn’t able to get my own car ready so I was borrowing Trevor’s for the weekend. After we quickly unloaded the car Trevor went out on track and somehow the ring gear broke. 9hr drive down to Cordele and only one run. That would have made for a really crappy day. Luckily Marcos came through and let me borrow a spare VLSD that he had. Ofcourse we weren’t expecting to do this type of work so we weren’t exactly equipped. Well thats when Matt Foerst comes in. So now we had tools and a part so we were in business. After it was all said and done we each got about 10 runs in.
Oh but it gets better. On the following Tuesday I get a call from Marcos and he tells me they are renting out the track that weekend. I almost didn’t go, but I’m so glad I did. We had an awesome time out there. There were about 10-15 of us out there and everybody was driving pretty well. I was really glad to get some more time in my car. I think I’m finally getting used to this thing. It was just a fun trip all together. Oh and thanks to Marcos for giving me a place to stay while I was in town.
Well it has been a long week indeed. Between school and work I haven’t even had a moment to breathe this past week. I’m off to a much needed weekend trip to go drift in Cordele,GA. There is absolutely no better stress relief than just going out there and doing what I love with the car. Loading up the hooptie here in a lil bit and by this time tomorrow I will be burning tires. Hopefully there is no rain b/c my wipers decided to say “peace out” and quit working. I’ll be sure to get some pics up of the trip when I get back. My friend Donny is going to try to get some vids from the day also.
I’ve gotta start writing more on this thing. Lots of cool stuff coming up and no car problems. After going back and forth on whether I was going to keep my car the same or not I decided I would be an idiot to change it now. The car is running awesome and the LS1 power is really growing on me. 2008 objective is to drive. No more building. Just maintain the car, buy tires, and hit as many events and different tracks as I can. With that said the car is looking rough right now. Hail damage, cracked skirts, no front bumper. Its actually kind of embarassing to take it any place. It will have to do though until the new chassis is done.
Schedule so far:
Feb 16th Southeast Drift event @ Cordele,GA (Watermelon Speedway)
Mar 23rd Aaron Losey’s event @ Mineral Wells,TX (Mineral Wells Airport)
Apr 18th Nopi Qualifier @ St. Louis,MO (Gateway International Speedway)
So I missed alot of 2007 season, but it looks like I’m going to be able to cram in a few more events in the next couple months. DriftSTL is having their first track day at Gateway in St.Louis on 10/20. These guys have been supporting our Traction Optional events since the beginning so I definitely have to attend their first event. Also there is an event in Nashville on 11/24. Nashville events are parking lot, but its still a fun time. Easy on the tires and its a really short trip for me too. I was going to try to make it down to Texas for Aaron Losey’s crazy tandem event, but its not looking like I will be making that one. Its alot further away than the others. Can’t wait to drift my car again though. I have a feeling I’ll be learning something new everytime I drive it. One thing I have learned is that this v8 devours tires. I have to bring one more set of rears than usual. Tire sponsors are welcome. lol
Well yesterday was an awesome day. After a year of my car being down and many dissappointments through out the build up, everything finally came together. Eariler in the week I finally started driving the car to get everything broken in so that I could drift it on Saturday. Yesterday was the absolute most fun I’ve had drifting my car in a while. The LS1 is simply unbelievable. I wouldn’t say that I like this setup any better or worse than my old SR setup, but its just different. Its so torquey. I can hit it at any rpm and the power is there. The car is very different now and it has actually forced me to learn a few new techniques. I can go so much faster on entries and the power thats there after transition is great too. Can’t wait to hit some more events up. There is still a little bit of the drift season left and I’m going to try to make the most of it. This car should be very reliable and hopefully I can get it dialed in to a point where it will be nice and competitive for 2008 season.
