So I have been MIA for a while

I had to sell my 1998 kouki s14 because of school.  I finished my summer program at archaeology field school and I picked up a 1995 240sx froma fellow enthusiast.  I’ve already done a lot of work to the car and currently revamping the whole car once again.  Things in store for the next to be finished by formula D irwindale on Oct 11th.

Add widebody and new aero.  Paint the car, add toe rods, and fix my exhaust leak.  I decided after having two different forced induction setups to keep the motor a stock KA24DE for the time being.

I didn’t get a chance to finish the car before, but I currently picked up a sponsorship after doing the Hot Import Nights: Night Shift demo.  Put the car into a K-rail but was still driveable so i ziptied the bumper back on and kept right at it.

Pics:

Another cool thing that happened was an interview for speed channel.  I’m not sure when or if i’m gonna be aired with the episode, but they interviewed me for a good 10minutes.  It was pretty rad.

Getting some new rollers and tires for this new car as soon as it’s out of paint, I throw on my toe rods and gt it aligned.  I’m still looking for a reasonably price SA approved helmet that I can paint.

Some youtube videos i found:

Motoring J style Drift Competition

Motoring J’s cool event.
0:47 sec. woot.

There was an intermittent rain conditions and the front tires would not grip for anything (direzza z1′s). I had to drop the PSI down to 20psi to get any traction. Federals in the rear did their job amazingly. I had a few issues with the car (ebrake wouldn’t warm up so it wouldn’t lock) . On my qualifying runs my clutch pedal got stuck and wouldn’t re engage.

Thanks to RPS to sending out a clutch, VEX motorsports for spending countless hours after closing helping me setup the car’s clutch and alignment. Boris for running around mounting tires and running up w/me.

More pics as I upload them.

New updates

Will be found regarding the car here:

http://www.ziptied.com/forums/index.php?topic=18603.0

As to what i’ve been doing, is focusing on school, and working on the car when I have time. Lots of things are being prepped on the car.
I will be in Hawaii (Big Island) most of summer for an archeology field school. So please bear with me as All the events I had lined up for the summer will be without my attendance.

Check out http://www.norcaldrift.org for norcal events and a pic of my car on the banner (as a work in progress), thanks Victor, I feel famous now.

Car is under construction

Getting ready for ASB4 June 28-29. Stay tuned.

Perhaps a private event in July at BW. If not….

Thunderhill FULL TRACK DRIFT at the end of August (http://www.thunder-drift.com)

Thunder Drift Competition Pics!

Thanks to kyle (in sac) and whoever else snagged these snazzy photos of me.

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Thunder Drift Competition (Dec 2007)

Dec 22, 2007.
The first Norcal amateur drift competition held at Thunderhill raceway.

For this event I decided to get some Dunlop Direzza z1 sports tires.


Mostly to go along with my new front shoes. 17×9.0 +0 Volk te37′s in bronze.




Concave = SEXY

I got my car aligned during the week, and crashed while testing my alignment settings.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. Bent LCA, busted fender and bumper and headlight and corner lamp

Thanks to Herb for hooking it up with an alignment on Friday before the comp. Lucky for me I had some extra parts.
My buddy Gian had an extra LCA, so i purchased a new ball joint and threw it in. Replaced the fender and bumper.
I also installed the Msports headlight vent, VS driver fender and JDM urethane front bumper.

Now with my car looking kind of sexier it was ready-ish for the competition.
This was my first competition, more pics to be posted later.




A lot of the people in the comp had friday to practice on the full track. I got about 10-15 practice runs before the comp.
So I spent a lot of time getting adjusted to the new alignment settings and new tires.

So the track layout was awesome. I was having a great time just driving. The actual comp. was kind of biased, based on the fact that one of the judges was cheering for the guy who won first place (although his lines were spot on… this is where i mention he’s a professional driving instructor).

It went from 30drivers down to top 8 (they didnt’ do it d1 style w/ top 16). Apparently they were doing cumulative scores too because they totaled them at the end.

I’m standing by to hear from Geoff (t-drift organizer) about the final score standings.
Hopefully I learn from this comp and do well at the next one.

Thanks to:
Vex Motorsports – sponsoring the event, and letting me use the shop
Gian – if you didn’t have the LCA i’d of been screwed
Jay Pizo – Hooking me up some sweet as wheels as usual
Herb – Does my tires AND alignments
Whoever took the pics, cuz they came out awesome and whoever else i’m forgetting.

RESULTS ARE UP!!
Qualifying — For TOP 8
() – Car, [] Best qualifying score

1.Darius(s14) – 275 [95]

2.Connor(s13) – 260 [88]

3.Drew (s13) – 254 [90]

4.Thomas (ae86) – 248 [88]

5.Matt (s13) – 241 [85]

6.Joseph (s13) – 240 [95]

7.Jared (ap2) – 238 [80]

8.Xander (s13) – 237 [89]

9.Mando (ae86) – 228 [80]

10.Tommy (s13) – 221 [80]

11.Calvin (s13) – 203 [78]

12.Andrew (ae86) – 194 [70]

13.Serei (s14) – 190 [80]

14.David (ae86) – 185 [70]

15.Yee (s13) – 165 [65]

16.Andrew (s13) – 150 [70]

17.Kevin (ae86) – 125 [65]

18.Luis (s13) – 105 [45]

19.Brandee (s13) – 85 [35]

20.John (s13) – 78 [28]

21.Marc (s13) – 45 [15]

22.Jay Jay (s13) – 20 [18]

23.Arthur (ae86) – 5 [5]

24.Jeff W. (s13) – 0 [0]

25.Jay (s14) – 0 [0]

TOP 8

1. Jared (ap2) – 248
2. Thomas (ae86) – 237
3. Joseph (s13) – 230
4. Darius (s14) – 219
5. Xander (s13) – 205
6. Connor (s13) – 163
7. Matt (s13) – 20
8. Drew (s13) – 0

TOP 3

1.Jared (ap2) -271
2.Thomas (ae86) – 252
3.Joseph (s13) – 213

Based on top score during qualifying I should have been 11th. If only there had been a top 16. Congrats to everyone.

Thunder Drift (Nov 2007)

This was a pretty fun skid pad event. Mostly because it was 1/2 dry and 1/2 wet. Too bad I killed a pair of tires before noon. Luckily I had another pair of direzza’s for when it was raining.
There’s also a vid from this event.





There was also one run where my tires were smoking for about 5min after I got off the track That was pretty cool

Ziptied Allstar Bash2 (Oct 2007)

This event was awesome, it was def worth the drive (to Horse Thief Mile @ Willow Springs Intl’ raceway) that I’m still feeling the effects of it.

Started off Friday night when I got off work. I headed home and got ready for a party at Aaron, Myles, and Xander’s apartment. Turns out that I drank wayyy too much this evening and left them a surprise to be found on Monday morning (sorry guys). So I in turn have a Massive hangover on Saturday morning and just sleep for most of the day and lounge until evening. I waited for Jeff while peeling the vinyl off of his car until 11:30PM (Boris and I were ready to leave at 6PM). I still had a massive hang over but it was time to go and head down to socal for the most epic event I’ve ever been too.

I was pretty irritated for having to wait and work while being hung over, so I decided to jam. Got to the track at 4AM, slept in the back of my car using my helmet as a pillow for 2hours until WSIR opened up it’s gates. We pull up to HTM and find a bunch of tents and the reek of alcohol (well not really). Thankfully my car is super loud without a silencer so everyone started to wake up upon our arrival.

Got tech’d, had the drivers meeting, and my group ( A) was up and ready to roll. The only guy who had a massive incident at this event flipped his car. Didn’t listen to well at the drivers meeting about where not to slide.

I was pretty nervous at first. If you’ve seen any of the videos of HTM on youtube.com you’ll see how bad ass the drivers are to run this course. After I got comfortable I was able to connect the last 1/2 of the track after the first Left hand sweeper in 2nd gear. I think that I could have put out a ton more smoke in 3rd gear, but lets not push my luck, I mean it was only my 3rd track event with the car.

I killed a set(pair) of Dunlop Direzza’s (super consistent, not patching until the very end),

set of Pirelli p7000′s (super easy to get sideways and very predictable, I shredded them way to fast : 3laps or so),

and a set of Federal SS595′s (Air pressure was key, 35psi I had trouble with consistency, @ 39psi it super predictable but I got some massive patching).

At the end of the day I’d met a whole bunch of cool people and my car decided to spring a leak from the fuel filter to the fuel rail. RTV’d and drove the 6hours back home behind some trailers. FUN event.

More pics!

Thanks to: Jeff for hauling my stuff down there, Boris for not passing out on the ride down (but passing out while drifting on the track WTH?), Vex motorsports for hooking me up for tires (if they hadn’t I wouldn’t have gone), and the powered by max guys for taking awesome photos!

Thunder Drift (Oct 2007)

So after a few touge runs (new clutch and misc mods here and there) I guess it was time to get back out onto the track.

Geoff (organizer of Thunder drift) was hosting an event at Thunderhill raceway.

After work i scooped up Darius and Jeff and loaded my car with a pair of 18′s, borrowed Darius’s passenger seat and awayyyy we went. We ended up watching d1 videos and knocked up on the way there (3hour drive IN THE RAIN!!).

Got to motel $64.59 later Aaron and Myles crashed in the room as well. Thanks to the turbo drifter snoring AGAIN everyone had a restless night (from now on he’s going to sleep in the car.)

Day started at 7AM got tech’d started driving around 9AM. The skidpad is a funny place to drift, because you want to slide and get sideways, yet it’s so slippery that maintaining it for sometime isn’t that easy. Another thing is that since its just one big open pad with cones, so the scenery gets old fast.

I did alright, testing out and breaking in the newer clutch (RPS street puck! I love it!) and the 17front/18rear wheel stagger set up. Worked out awesome. I wasn’t doing too hot since it was kind of hard to focus but i had some alright runs.

I took my bumper off about an hour or so into my run (well a cone did). Had a weird issue with clutch not grabbing early on in the event. But it situated itself later on.

Pics (please excuse the huge penis on the side of my car):

Drift Day (West Coast Pro-Am)

This event happened in late September (22nd) 2007.This was my first event since I purchased the car in April of 2007, it was a special kind of event where you didn’t have to compete to make it the formula D national competition in Laughlin NV. I do not have any pictures from this event, but it was a super fun and educating experience.

We drove down from Norcal (San Jose) and ended up in Westminster where my friend was gracious enough to let myself, Jeff, Darius, and Drew crash there for the night.
I tend not to sleep to well before events just from the anxiety, but the fellas were about to murder Darius the turbo BOV sleep drifter because of his snoring.

Anyways, our day started at 6am to head to El Toro airfield, It had rained pretty heinously the night before and we had some adventures on our dinner trip.

I was barely able to pass tech because my battery tie down was pretty janky. 20 zip ties later I pass tech and get on my merry way to changing tires for the event. So after the drivers meeting the weather was crazy. it would rain, then be super hot, then rain again and be super hot. Not the best conditions to maintaining a consistent run but still a good reality check on how to adjust appropriately to different conditions on the fly.

The practice course was super fun. 3rd to 2nd gear course. the real Pro-Am scared the living crap out of me. It was a 4th gear course and it was part wet/dry AND there was a paint strip where ur tires would just slip. To top it off I had a slipping clutch (i’ll never use a spec clutch again) which consequently was obliterated by 12.30 in the afternoon. Needless to say I didn’t get to drive at the qualifying (plus it was my first track day after building the car up) and wasn’t too comfortable with a 4th gear course.

All in all I ended up pushing my car onto a trailer and driving my friends track car 10hours back up north. That was the most fun ride in a car that I never want to do again.

Congrats: Jeff and Darius for qualifying for Formula D nationals! You guys are rocking it!