Monday, December 12, 2011

Lead Up To Queensland Raceways Drift Matsuri - PT 2

Ok well its been a little while... and i did not end up doing this right after the first >.<

Between now and the last post its been difficult to find the time... or the motivation to actually post up so I apologize that I haven't so where to start...

well the Grey 180 of Nathans became a Sil80 and we finally go around to putting the engine in gearbox into it.. the Green car has been slated for change with a NA setup using Tomei quads and Reytec ECU but more on the green car as we start pulling the turbo motor out and start to put the NA setup in to it.

The other weekend I blew the Diff up in the Silvia, and it really pissed me off because like most the times something drastic goes wrong with these cars its when your not thrashing the absolute crap out of them. I was actually on my home from work driving sedately when the pinion gear in the diff decided it wanted to shear majority of the teeth off of it.. I tell you.. jack hammer noise much!!

So last weekend we spent pulling the diff out and putting in another on the road out side of my house.. which was interesting considering the fact that my street is more of a one lane road on a side of a hill.
Most drifters will know all about the ins and outs of dropping an R200 out of a S13 so that was the easy part and we thought we were home free.. but my original diff used 6 bolt spines and the replacement diff had 5 bolt splines.. no worries nock the splines out of the old diff and put them in the new diff right? well I brought the original R200 off a mate over 4 years ok for $50 back when i had next to no knowledge of diffs and the differences so i was under the impression that it was just a stock VLSD. Well i was wrong when we knocked the splines out they were the same length which only meant one thing and that was the diff was actually a mechanical!

The Diff had never really acted like a mechanical at all the entire time that i had it in the car it was quite loose so there were never any give away signs that it was, so off came the hat and sure enough the cartridge was a 2way either a Nismo or a Cusco we arnt entirely sure as at that point in time it was more important to get the car driving again.

we didn't have any 6 bolt splines to go into the new diff, so we ended up swapping the axles for 5 bolt axles which are thicker anyway, dropped the car back on the ground and away the car went.. what a head ache.

As for the future of the 2 way well once we get some time to actually figure out what it is we are going to order a rebuild kit and put it into the good diff

Part of the pinion gear
 Metal filings left on the magnetic bung

Ok well Enough of whats new and been going on lately.. its time to do the last part of Matsuri preparation!

Ok well we left of the last part with the S13 party, The 180 was home, it was turbo less and we still had a bit of work left to do on it!!

Nathan called up one of his contacts to come out and remove the broken manifold stud in the side of the head as well as the broken screw that secures no. 4 coil pack, with all that done everything went back in and the car was running again! How ever unable to arrange a time to have the car tuned with the power FC and the big top feed injectors out they came and in went the standard computer, injectors and AFM along with Nathans Nissan Console to keep an eye on all the vitals! (similar to a PFC hand controller)

the next on the list was to install the passenger seat and to... straighten both driver and passenger seats.

In and straight 

now what is a track car without a rollcage? well a mate of mine Scott (I have mentioned him before) was stripping his old Sil to make way for his new one and he had his halfcage up for sale so i snapped that up quick!
Leaning on the storage locker

Now plans are for a full rollcage down the road for the 180 which at that point ill put the halfcage in Silvie
Cage Installed

After re-installing all the front interior well... the center console we moved onto evening up the ride height and rolling the front and rear guards (with the jackhandle) and im quite happy with the result

Before
 After


In amongst it all we took the car down for a wheel allignment
 
Nathan doing his thing!!
 
This must be me just getting old because i can not remember when exactly we did this but in the middle of finishing off the 180 we also did some work on the green car, rolling guards and fitting the rear bar that we painted and had to cut so the exhaust fitted properly.
Night works (guard pulling)
 
At that point in time the Work Meisters had a pair of Federal RSR's on them put due to the offset of the wheel and not being able to pull the guard out as far as it needed to it just wasnt going to work. so off game the RSR's and on went some REO6 Adrenalins 

In the previous post I said we had 17 pairs of wheels including the ones on the back of the cars well that was just some of the gear we were taking, we loaded up two tool boxes with tools from Nathans big roll cab, we took 4 jerry cans of fuel, Nathans snap-on air compressor, a bar fridge and countless other things.. have a look!!

Nothing but JDM!!

 90 leters of BP Ultimate into 4 20L Jerry Cans
 Airlines, Air compressor, jerry cans and a fuel jiggler
Toolboxes, Trolly jack, CRC, Oil, Brake fluid, coolent, eskies!! we almost took the kitchen sink

We even had team shirts!!! (made by my sister - Just made that way)

 Now I have always had a thing for stickers and i got excited when I found a huge sticker sheet set on eBay that I just had to have.. some of them made their way onto Silvie.. well most of the rest found my helmet!


with one more last minute trip to japan autos to get an exhaust for the 180 we also ended up getting some mint silk road coilovers and a pair of river sides.

Last minute parts!

That sums up everything that we accomplished leading up to Matsuri... over a few days!! but one of the biggest tasks was still ahead of us and that was taking out three un-registered cars to QR with one car trailer. Luckily enough we received permission from Keith to take the cars out on the friday which ended up taking all day!!! put with good company and the time spent loading and unloading the cars for their wheel alignments we had it in the bag.



With the 180, wheels and some other bits and pieces delivered safely to our home away from home for the weekend it was back to the house for the next load.
Green car loaded
Campaign car loaded
All day we had these imports tailgating us!

 QR on dusk

 The cars all tucked away in the shed for the night!

What a massive effort!! but ohhhh so very very worth it!! well after moving all our cars and equipment out to QR which took all day it wasnt over for me. As I mentioned before my sister made us all team shirts and they were not all quite finished, so headed out to her place at Alex hills to help her out I was absolutely wrecked at that point but no rest for the wicked right? hahaha I ended up getting home about 11:30pm and went to bed which turned out to be a waste of time as I maybe got an hours sleep before being up at 4am to head to Nathans for the trip out to QR for a weekend full of drifting!!!

Well I hope you all enjoyed the final part of our Matsuri preparation I will hopefully have the full Matsuri weekend post up in the next couple of days!!

As always stay safe my friends

Bev

Wet Work - Onevia Reincarnate

Greatings,

well once again it has been awhile since i added a new post, I know I said that I would have Part two of the matsuri posts up but I have been lacking motivation for a lot of different things lately. Rest assured though I am in the process of doing it! It is saved as a draft!

You may also notice the different look to the blog! with a new background and a new banner at the top!

this weekend decided weather would prevent something that i had been looking forward to the past month and that was another breakfast out at Lakeside Raceway in Brisbane's north... Saturday it rained from 1-2 AM  for the majority of the day and with it promising the same for Sunday I had to unfortunately post pone the Breakfast for a few weeks out of safety concerns.

I know what your thinking.. that i still ran the last Queensland Raceway in the wet.. well it was very wet actually.. but the whole thing behind not allowing lakeside to go ahead is the fact it is a very unforgiving circuit even at low speeds, all it would take would be someone to lock up slightly and cause the person behind them or themself to go into a wall.

So Sunday Rolled around and Blue skies, I was not the most happy person in the world upon waking up to find the sky to be clear. But with reports of mud being on the circuit I am still glad how ever that I had postponed the event! Later in the day the skies did actually open up with a down pour of rain.

 Out in the rain

Well I guess I better move onto what happened over the wet weekend.

Saturday saw the Grey 180sx going off to its new home, Sold off as a rolling shell we removed the motor, gearbox, tailshaft and put the 180sx front end back on it and its now gone! so one less car to move around.. for now

Grey car... You wont be missed!!

Sunday since we postponed the Lakeside Breakfast was slated to changing the exhaust on the Silvia as I was recently defected by the boy's in blue for the Kakimoto racing exhaust for sitting to low and some more work to be done to the green car.

Well Silvie being... well Silvie is not ever happy with only one thing being done.. typically. On the way over to Nathans for Breakfast I stopped off at the servo to buy us all some drinks only to come back out and find a small puddle under the back of the car... my first thought was its just some water from the rain dripping off the back of the car... well on closer inspection it turned out to be fuel!

Sighing I made my way over to NKDriftworx HQ timid foot like, last thing I would need is Silvies random flame popping to end her life!! Well removing the Fuel pump inspection plate screamed all the answers the rubber fuel line that connects the fuel pump to the hard lines that run under the car had blew out in quite a big way!

With the Fuel line replaced it was time to move onto swapping the exhausts, I originally had the Jasma exhaust on the car but after copping a big whack while driving along Coronation drive it cracked quite badly so we had taken it off it get fixed.. when the urging mood struck us.. well with a Prod and a $100 ticket from the police for being "to low" Nathan got his farther to take it into his work and weld it up... Col being well... Col it came back all welded up with additional bracing for strength... think normally... the multiply that by about a thousand and you will get the end result! I am now actually kicking myself for not taking a photo. its simply awesome!

Silvie also has always had... well since going back to silvia front end a faded passenger side corner light and it looked off thanks be to Nathan she now has two extremely orange corner lights

 Nice and Orange!
No more hideous cannon!!

Well enough of Silvie, Out in the shed we have a bit of a new idea forming for the Green car that saw Matsuri action looking like so


This car has seen its fair share of drifting originally being owned by Ben Anderson who competed in the old Toyo Drift National series then owned by his partner Lauren. The car was then brought by Nathan when it was still running a CA18DET. This car has seen its fair share of motors! from the CA to the SR20DE that came out of Silvie to a SR20DET Blacktop that was in the White 180 and it now has resting between its strut towers another SR20DE but with a twist.. more on that later on!

The Car was also originally a Onevia looking like so


A week or so after that photo was taken it had an unfortunate altercation with an MX-5 (thankfully the Carbon fiber Seibon bonnet was not on it) It was then rebuilt as a Silvia (see photo above)

well now its going back to being a Onevia and with a new colour!

 Onevia Reincarnate

 Now I mentioned that it now has another SR20DE N/a under the bonnet but with a twist.. well have a look for yourself


Yes those are Tomei Quads and Cusco 4-1 ball racing extractors!! Run off a Tomei Reytec ECU, Waiting to go into the motor is a pair of Tomei 270 Degree Pro-cams and thats just for the moment the plans for that motor are purely insane!!

I will be doing a full write up on it once its nearing or complete so stay tuned!!

But for now I will leave you with this video of how it sounds... with no exhaust beyond the extractors



Take care my friends

Bev!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Lead Up To Queensland Raceways Drift Matsuri - PT 1

Wow what an intense few weeks its been since my last update... Getting ready for Maturi really wasnt an easy task and the weekends leading up to it since my last post have been massive to say the least from cars to wheels and tyres to T-shirts we all were pretty exhausted and that was even before the event.. and now thats its done and gone and we have finally had a chance to sit for at least two hours and tried to reflect on the past weeks its just astonishing.

I mean where to start? one of the Saturdays we spent taking cars down to the wheel aligners? Bringing the 180 home from the warehouse? making our team shirts? I guess all i can do is go through my photos and tell the story from looking at them.. providing my memory wants to work properly.

Its just been a massive task to be honest but when its all said and done... it really was worth it we all had such a good time (even though we were all bloody exhausted) and so here is the lead up to a massive weekend of drifting!!.

Well to drift.. you really need to have an abundance of tyres and wheels... well wheels we had.. tyres.. not so much but with the help of certain people that changed over a period of about two weeks.

So we had Seventeen pairs of wheels.

well thats five pairs wtih tyres.

Now they are all 17" wheels from 8" to 9" and tyres from 215 to 235's can they all fit in the back of a falcon?
Of course they do!!!

 At the fitters.

 The Whole Collection (not including the ones on the cars)

The Guys that we got to fit them were absolute champs!!! they were a big part of getting us out to matsuri.

Next on the list was bringing the 180 home so we could finish of the few little bits and pieces and to get it wheel aligned, so one friday afternoon of to the warehouse we went to collect it.

Pulling the front bar off so we can load it
 Loaded onto the trailer for the first time in ages.

Well the car loaded onto the trailer and the tail lights removed because.. well they wernt bolted in and we didnt really want some unsuspected motorist wearing 180sx tail lights... well to be honest it wasnt worth the loss!!!
But Alas!! back in they went so we could give it a quick wash before leaving the warehouse.



Clean!!!! ish....

 First taste of sunlight in ages!!
  They see me rollin'

Home

Now the next day we had the three track cars booked in for a wheel alignment but the 180 had other plans, we knew it had an exhaust leak so we had acquired a multi-layed metal exhaust gasket and other gaskets to replace the old decrepit ones.. only to find with the manifold off it had a stud snapped in the side of the head.

Poooooo

 S15 T28BB

Bella Agrees!!

Type X Taillights installed.

 Well next was the mission of getting three un-registered cars down to them so they would actually steer the way we wanted them to.. and what a mission that is.. some of you can understand loading a car onto a trailer and then unloading it.... well the Saturday we had it done we did it four times for each car.. well only two that particular weekend because the 180 wasnt drivable.. 

 The Green Machine at the aligners 
The Monster loaded and ready to go
 Getting Aligned 
 
 Since the 180 couldnt make it that weekend we put the Sil up.

That afternoon was spent doing more work on the cars.. and we somehow found ourselfs having an S13 party!!

Well its sorta started out like this.


Which then became!


Well thats it for Part 1, Stay tuned for the next part.. which ill try and do tomorrow.

I hope you liked the... well the photo bomb!!

As always stay safe my friends.

Bev