Jeff and I started with getting the two car trailer home. We purchased it late last year and have only used it one time to go to No Coast Drift Party. At that time the trailer brakes didn’t work and made the drive absolutely miserable. So first thing we wanted to do was inspect the brakes and figure out what was exactly wrong with them. We previously did some troubleshooting and found everything to be good expect for something in the drum itself. We gave power to the magnets manually and they still didn’t work. We suspected bad trailer magnets. A set of magnets was around $100 online, but when I talked to Joe about it, he recommended a shop where you could get loaded backing plates for just $33 each. We opted for the loaded backing plates for the $132 since the trailer had sat for around five years before we purchased it. Sure enough we found all four magnets to have failed, the wiring had fallen out of the magnets and they had a fair amount of rubbing on the drums. We took this opportunity to repack our bearings, inspect our seals, and give everything a good once over.
Next up was finishing prepping the car. I dropped it off with Pat so he could align the car. It was the first time being aligned since all of the upgrades for the front and rear. When I reassembled the car, I got everything as close as I could to try and help make it easier, but he still had to end up adjusting everything. He dialed in ride height, preload, toe, and whatever else he does during the alignment. I don’t know the exact specifications he set it to, but just on the drive home I knew the car felt much better.
I was lucky enough to find some used skirts locally a couple days before the event. They weren’t in bad shape, but they were purple. I picked out my closest aerosol can and got them red enough. The fit isn’t the best, but they look much better than my old skirts. I got the car all washed up Thursday night so we could load up first thing Friday morning.
The first thing Saturday was to go out with Jeff and do some datalogging. It was his first time on track with the Sportcross and with the new 1.5JZ. He had done a couple hours of remote tuning with Panic and then several hours of street tuning, but we wanted to make sure everything looked good on track in Tucson. I got to be in charge of the laptop, which is really weird to hold while drifting.
With a lot of the car being it’s first time on track, it took some time Saturday morning to get everything dialed in. I started off with adjusting tire pressures several times to get the grip where I wanted it. After that I started having a really bad misfire. I had forgot to fill up with ethanol, luckily I brought ten gallons since it was a two day event. I put the whole ten gallons in and it still wasn’t full, but it got me back to driving. Guess what, I still had a misfire issue. That was when I realized my boost gauge wasn’t reading any vacuum. I inspected the bottom of the intake manifold and found a vacuum line that had fallen off and was split. I trimmed the line and got it reinstalled and we were finally ready to start driving!
I ended up not driving as much as I had hoped. I worked on the car a fair bit to dial in all of the new parts, but I had also dislocated my shoulder a couple weeks before the event in a dirtbiking crash. My shoulder had limited movement, was extremely sore, and I shouldn’t have been using it per the doctors orders. When has that ever stopped any of us before? ha.
It makes me happy that the changes were able to keep me driving all weekend.
The ZF transmission feels great! Close ratio shifting, clutch is smooth, shifter is smooth. The only odd part so far has been getting used to the shifter height. The TF Works shifter is rather tall and I haven’t decided if I want to shorten it or not yet. I’ll probably drive a couple more events to truly get a feel for it.
I’m also loving the 8.8 rear end. the 4.56 keeps me in third gear for the entire course. This is the first event where I haven’t had to get underneath the car to inspect, or fix the rear end. I did notice I have a bit of oil coming from the differential breather, but I knew there wasn’t much I could do about that at the track.
One thing that I haven’t been able to get to work is the handbrake. I’ve adjusted every adjustment, I replaced the rotors with new, and I bought the Project Mu pads. I’ve drove for a long time in the AE86 without a handbrake, so I know how to drive around it, but I really want to get the handbrake working in this car. I’ll finish the install of the dual caliper if it means I can get the rear wheels to lock up.
I ended driving a couple hours early due to my shoulder, it was causing quite a bit of pain and it didn’t want to overdue it more that I already had. Plus, my friends had finished driving, I only had one pair of tires left, and I was beginning to get low on fuel again. It was an opportune time to call it the end.
Overall it was a really fun event and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was nice to get back out on track, test out all of the new changes on the car, see all of my friends, and spend the weekend away from the typical grind called life. Until next year Showdown.
Team Impulse 