Parts

Yesterday I got a message from my friend Matt saying that the rest of my parts had arrived including the Sparco suit.  Good new for me, and on top of that he still had his gold 17x9 XXR 962 which he has been trying to sell for several months now.  I met up with him to pick up all my parts I had ordered and buy the wheels of him, unfortunately he wasn't able to get the tires dismounted from them on such short notice so for now I paid him for the wheels.

I really like ordering parts through Matt, he gets great prices on everything, I can trust him, and he keeps you informed on everything.  Perfect example is this last order I placed through him.  Right away after making the order he found out the Sparco Suit I asked for was out of stock and they weren't able to get one, after telling him there wasn't a different suit that I had much interest in he was able to sweet talk them into somehow getting their hands on a suit within a weeks time to ship out.  This was the reason why it took an extra week to get my parts.  When the first bunch of parts started to arrive he let me know they had made it, then the second the suit arrived he informed me right away and set everything up to get the parts to me.  When I met up with him he had everything in 2 boxes and went through every part with me to ensure they were all there, that's when we found out the spark plug well gaskets were missing along with the kill switch, however the lever key for the kill switch was there.  No big deal tho, he got right on the problem and is going to be making sure I get the 2 missing parts.

It was late last night when I got everything home and I didn't have time to open them all up to check everything out and take pictures of each part.  So for now I've got a shot of everything in their boxes.

There is one thing that I felt a need to check out, and that was the Sparco Suit.  The blue bag had me a little concerned because I had ordered a black suit.  So of course I opened that to make sure it all checked out.  Black Jade suit that was a large, exactly what I ordered.  Then I figured while I had it out, might as well try it on to make sure it fits right.  I thought it would be a little bit more baggy on me, but actually I found out it fits damn near perfect!  Has a little more of a constrained feeling then I had expected tho, which I only felt when I lifted my hands above my head while sitting, also it wasn't nearly as hot as I thought it would be.  That or my room is colder then I think it is.

Now I just need to get some driving gloves for when I have the suit on, I'm really tempted to get some sparco shoes, and lastly I think a reflective face shield is a must.  That clear shield doesn't look right on there.

Difficult Decisions For This Years Schedule

As spring starts to quickly approach drift schedules are being released left and right. Quickly I began to realize there is no way I'll be able to afford making it to every single one, which leaves me to make some difficult decisions on which ones I'm going to be making it to.  Here's what's currently out there that I'm aware of and am currently considering going to.  There are also some out in South Dakota that I'm not going to list mainly because I'm not sure if I'm wanting to travel out that way for an event.

First up lets get the events I am for sure planning on going to this year.

Proving Grounds 1 - June 21st through the 23rd
Proving Grounds 2 - Sept 6th through the 8th

 http://pg.maperformance.com/

 Also Drift Iowa is another for sure event for me, still working on a date and details for it so not sure where or when it's going to be yet.

Now lets move on to what I'm mostly interested in.  Midwest Drift Unions schedule.

 http://mdudrift.com/

Next we have the line up from Club FR
ClubFR Drift Day Events
Sunday, April 28, 2013 - Drift Day - USA International Raceway
Sunday, May 26, 2013 - Drift Day – USA International Raceway
Saturday, July 13, 2013 - Drift101 – USA International Raceway
Sat & Sun, Aug 31 & Sept 1, 2013 - ClubFR Jam! – USA International Raceway
Sunday, October 20, 2013 – Drift Day - USA International Raceway
More Dates Coming Soon…

Auto Mass
Dates Coming Soon…

Midwest Bash/No Star Bash
April 6 & 7 – Gateway MotorsportsPark
 http://clubfr.net/2013-schedule/

Lastly we finish it up with Drift Saint Luis

http://driftstl.blogspot.com/

Now I'm sure there's a lot more events out there that I haven't listed, but like I said these are the ones that I am mostly interested in going to, and just these alone are already too many for me to be able to make it out to.  I would really like to hit up every single one of Midwest Drift Unions events as they are part of the Formula D Pro/Am and it's the local gateway into going pro in the sport, however with limited budget and being outmatched by other cars I may not make it out to all of those, if they were closer then Indy I would definitely make it out to all of them no questions asked.

Forgetful Me Part 3

I'm thinking this might be the rest of everything I forgot to post on here.  Pretty much a couple random things.  Lets start with Christmas time.  Around December time after watching some killer videos with Becca both of us came up with the idea that we wanted to start doing video.  We had been thinking about actually spending the time to get good at taking photos but there are just way too many people who buy a DSLR and suddenly claim they are photographers, which by the way to clear things up, neither one of us think we are photographers, the water marks in some photos were simply put on there for when they were shared on forums/facebook.  We figured if someone comes across one they really like we would like them to know who took the pic.  Enough of me rambling on and on, lets get to the point shall we.  Christmas time came and I surprised Becca with a Cannon T3i and one of the most bad ass 64GB cards I have ever had the privilege to hold.  With this we have decided to make plans on documenting my 2013 season with video and of course some pictures on the side.  We've still got a lot of gear to buy but at least we have the camera portion out of the way.

Then to top off Christmas I went and bought myself a used Sparco seat for the simulator.  My cat Tigger absolutely loves it.

Shortly after my B-Day I stumbled across a 300zx for sale, and for one hell of a killer deal at that!  I showed it to Becca since she's been looking at getting herself a drift car and she was hooked.  Initially we had plans to do some work on my 280z but after getting it back from an old friend I quickly realized it wasn't going to be an option with all the abuse and damage that had been done to it.  So I put her up for sale and got it sold.  This is the main reason why I had been browsing through cars online.  I called the guy up and made arrangements to go pick it up that weekend.  It was now time to put the Toyota to the test and see how well she tows!  Rented a trailer from UHaul then set sail for Milwakee Wisconsin!

We arrived around 7pm or so, checked the car over to make sure everything was good, then loaded her up on the trailer to set sail for home.

Come out next time to get fuel the weather had decided to take a turn on us spitting out freezing rain mixed with snow. (this truck gets horrible gas mileage, without the trailer I'm lucky to get 280 miles on a full tank.  As you can imagine towing a car doesn't help any.)

Eventually we made it home, which wasn't until 4am or so thanks to the weather.  Tired of the long trip consisting of well over 12 hours we went straight to sleep.  The next morning we unloaded the car took it to the car wash introduced it to Igna.

From there we took it home to Beccas.

For those of you wondering about the car, it's a non-turbo 5 speed.  Yes, that's some bitchin red interior, it also has some black corbeau seats in it which was a plus!  Lastly the car is a 91 and it has a low mileage motor from a 93 in it. I'm sure a lot of you are thinking "why would you get the non-turbo" well there are a couple reasons why.  First one being the price was impossible to beat, the money spent on gas and renting a trailer almost cost as much as the car.  Next neither one of us are big fans of the v6 motor, not saying that they are bad or anything, just don't really care for them, plus for anyone who has worked on the turbo engine I'm sure you know just how much it sucks to work on with such little amounts of room to do anything.  The plans for the car consist of throwing in a lightweight flywheel/6 puck clutch, beating the living shit out of it this summer, then come winter time swapping in a JZ motor and doing a really basic single turbo setup.  Of course throughout the summer I'm sure we will get some other parts here and there such as wheels and suspension components.

I hope this wraps up everything I forgot, see you next post!

Forgetful Me Part 2 (Drift Iowa)

October 20th.  What a date for a drift event, going out on a limb with something so close to winter, I remember times as a kid where it was snowing on Halloween so for those of you who don't live far enough north this should give you a good idea about how cold it can be.  Luckly the weather was looking good for the day, the morning however was still rather chilly, especially with the sun not being out yet.  I left late like always but thanks to a little bit of some disobeying of the speed limit I made it there on time, actually, I was early!

The event turned out to be a great success!  It was primarily full of local guys, one out of state from IL.  I was really happy seeing this pull through and work out so well.  This showed just how much the drift scene had grown over the year.  In January if someone had asked me about doing a drift event here I would have laughed and highly doubted it be possible to get enough people.  Somehow we did it, and hopefully this will be an annual event that continues to grow in size.

We slide like a group of crazies all morning, and throughout the morning a crowd began to show up and watch the event.  Way more people came out than any of us had expected to see!  We took a break for lunch then came back to a new layout.  Decided to switch things up for all the drivers to make the event that much more fun.  On top of that to make sure not only the drivers were having fun we had it open so anyone that wanted could hop in anyone's car for a ride along, well as long as the driver was okay with it which we all were.  I can't count the number of people that went for a ride with me, every pass another person was jumping in for a ride and for the few that I had a bad run I made sure they stayed in the car for a proper pass.

In the end it all went great with very few people having a break down which happened at the end of the day so they didn't miss out on any of the action.  I think this event really put a surprise on peoples faces.  I know it sure did leave all the red necks confused!

Forgetful Me Part 1

Last night I was looking over everything feeling rather proud of my blog and all the info I've covered about the car in it.  Reading through it I found more spelling mistakes then I had expected, that and I noticed I forgot a few things...So here is for those things I forgot.

Lets go back to just after Automass.  The local guys put their heads together and setup a plan for our very own drift event here in Iowa.  Our state isn't exactly well known for its import scene, and drifting is something that has only recently started to take over Des Moines.  Iowa Speedway was chosen and a date was set, along with gaining approval from the SCCA guys to insure the event.

With everything good to go it was time to plan, get the word out, and pray enough people signed up to go so the insurance cost would be covered.  Well either none of us were told we needed to have payments submitted 2 weeks in advance or someone had been told and didn't tell everyone else. Payments weren't in by then and the SCCA guys cancelled the event on use do to insurance issues.  Thankfully Brett stepped in fronting the entirety of the money needed so the event was back on!

2 weeks go to and that's when I discovered I had a major problem.  Back at Automass when we left I noticed a small spot of oil where I had been parking my car in the pits, when I got home I noticed the same size spot in my driveway, at this point I realized this was my car doing this.  I looked under her to find my half shaft slipped party out of the diff.  This isn't the first time I've had this happened to me.  This was the third time, I decided it was time I took care of fixing this, the reason for it popping out could only be one thing, the lock ring or whatever it's called is worn out and not holding the half shaft properly so I ordered a new one.

The new ring showed up a few days before the event, dealing with taking care of other things I didn't have time to replace it until the night before.  Thinking this would be an easy pull the half shaft out put the new ring on and put it back in I didn't get to work on it till around 6pm.  Boy was I mistaken about this being easy.  The ring sits inside the diff and doesn't pop out with the halfshaft, getting that out proved to be the biggest pain in the ass ever.  How as I going to somehow grip it and pull it out?  Just look at this picture, you can barely even see the damn thing!

I tried screw drivers, allen wrenches, needle nose pliars, needle nose with those angled tips, nothing could get a hold of this thing!  That's when I thought maybe something with a point on it could get in between the teeth and manage to slip under/behind the ring pulling it out enough to get some pliars on it.  Only issue is I had nothing like that, but thanks to my weird crazy ideas I always come up with I realized I could simply grind down a screw driver to a point.  That would require a grinder tho, which was at the storage garage, and the 240 being the only vehicle I have currently not able to be driven.  So I hopped on my skateboard went to the top of the hill on my street and road down it while dragging the screw driver on the cement.  I don't care how ghetto or ridiculous this sounds, it worked absolutely amazing.  I then finalized the point with some sharpening stones I have.

Prison shank tools rock!

Finally got that bastard out of there!  Then thinking I would have issues with the new one going in, I prepared for the worse.  It was getting close to 9pm!  Which meant I wasn't going to be able to take the lady love out for our usually Friday night sushi date, so I had her place an order to go and had her bring the food over to my house...yup, this whole time time I went through figuring out how to grind down a screw driver could have been easily avoided by just having her grab the grinder...  Anyway, the amazing Becca went and got sushi for us and didn't complain at all about me causing us to miss out on our normal date night.

After a nice meal I got back to work, just had to throw the half shaft back in, bolt the axle back up, and take her for a spin around the block to make sure everything is solid.  Luckly that was a quick process.  Afterwards worked on loading up the car with our stuff needed for the event, took a shower, and hit the sack.