TopDrift Round 1 Success!

What a rush! Round 1 was fantastic! There were a lot of good drivers out there with some very serious cars, so there was quite a lot of competition.

Practice on Saturday and Sunday went extremely well, I was able to pick up the new course within a few runs. After some pointers from Taka I was able to get the line down and run very consistently.

When qualifying came around I began by putting down an extremely conservative run, the second time around I pushed a little harder and was able to hit the clips (at least well enough to qualify). I managed to just get by and qualify 16th. I will say however, if I had a spotter I could have placed much higher.

I am EXTREMELY happy to have made it to the top 16. It was my first time qualifying and this was only my second competition.

My YouTube video from the event can be found at 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSY2C_N6fVM

Sitting on the grid for my qualifying runs.

Driver of the lime green S13 Nate Tuchlinski (on left) and myself Alex Grimm (on Right)

Top 16 qualifiers, I'm in the top left corner.

Top 16, Jason Kim and I were the first up. He took me out after I hit the wall on my lead run. Luckily he went on to win 1st, congratulations to Jason Kim.

On my lead run I went into the last corner too hot and my passenger side rear wheel tapped the wall. The wheel shattered but I just kept on rollin to finish the run. Nothing was damaged besides the wheel.

Huge thanks to all the media out there and especially to AMDrift.com and David Karey who always grabs some of the sickest shots! Also a big thanks to JustDrift for hosting the ProAm licensing series and all the best drift events in SoCal.

I am very happy about the results from TopDrift Round 1, my goal was to qualify and I did. I know what I need to improve on and cant wait for Round 2 at HTM where I will be aiming for 1st!

Follow me on Instagram @DriftTheZ for exclusive videos and content!

Justdrift 2016 Season Opener

Season opener was great! The car was running really well and there were some great drivers to throw down with.

The only downside to the day was the fact that I was melting spark plug wires like crazy. Every 5 runs or so I would have to bring the car in and replace the wire. The wrap on the header had worn through.

You can really pour on big angle towards the end of the course!

Huge thanks to @beamteamtyler for taking these rad shots!

Tubular Rear End and Widebody

I finally made the decision to do a completely tubular rear end. The benefits in weight savings, utility, safety, and simplicity are enormous. The rear is not going to stay like this, I am building a fiberglass rear end as well. With this I can have plenty of confidence to get close to the walls on oval tracks.

The fiberglass widebody is coming along nicely. The plugs for the molds are complete and I am building the molds for the front fenders right now.

Each fender was built using 24 individual pieces of sheet metal and smoothed using filler.

Once the metal "plug" is completed, I lay the gel-coat, fiberglass and resin.

The front fender mold (on top) and final product (on bottom).

The rear end molds were built right off of my spare S30 chassis. These are stock over-fenders.

Over-fenders fit up on the car using Riv-Nut inserts.

65° of Steering Angle Achieved

Its been quite a lot of work achieving 65° of steering angle, there was quite a bit of fabrication involved. The way my front suspension and steering is set up has no interference, rubbing, or clearance issues.

Achieving huge angle is all about creating clearance for the wheel and the suspension components associated with the hub and steering knuckles. Creating this clearance is all about designing a good lower control arm and moving the wheel away from the frame. This means you must create a much longer LCA and move the shock mount point farther from the center-line of the car. Moving the shock mounting point for this kind of clearance means cutting out a portion of your frame. You also need longer outer tie rods.
 

The knuckles were shortened to the extreme, basically as much as they could be. I also reinstalled the rack spacers, however I shaved each of them down to .080" thick, from their original .145" to create the perfect stopping point.

I took the car out for testing shortly after, everything worked great!

 

All Star Bash 2015

All Star Bash was a ton of fun! I was driving really well both days. In the morning on both days I was battling fuel delivery problems, the foam in my fuel cell was breaking apart and clogging my pre-filter so i was constantly unclogging it. Other than that the car was working very well.

Thanks to everyone doing media that day getting some great shots!

Street Driven Tour! Also, I crash at Irwindale

Street Driven Tour Vegas

Street Driven Tour was awesome! Car ran great. I didn't get too many tandems, it took a while for all the drivers to get comfortable driving with each other. I lead many tandem runs, that's just the way it worked out in the que.

I really didn't have any problems with the car until late in the day, my handbrake locked up on me. I decided to pack up at that point and fix the problem at home, which was an easy fix.

 Got some fantastic photos thanks to amdrift.com  and http://www.ulfelderphoto.com!
Photos on the bottom are from Street Driven Tour, entire album can be found at Street Driven Tour's Album
Videos can be found on my Instagram @DriftTheZ

Irwindale Crash

Well, I managed to mangle my car pretty badly. I made a mistake coming into the second bank at Irwindale Speedway. The car is functionally fine, however the aesthetics are less appealing currently. The rear end has been smashed and needs to be chopped and replaced, the plan is to build a wide-body out of fiberglass for the entire car. Which, in the event of an accident can be taken off and replaced at the track.