Sunday 04/27/2014, I went out for the VegasDrift 032 Practice along side with Vegas Pro-Am Round 3.
I woke up around 6am, kinda weird if you tell me because the last week I have been struggling on waking up before 10am since my trip to the hospital with a random pancreatic attack. I showed up around 7:15am I setup camp and waited for others to show up, I passed tech around 8am where I got my new sticker to add to my collection on the windsheild. I had my gopro hero3 ready and I joined the parade lap before jumping out to the practice course.
From all the videos, the 55 psi tires I was struggling with the grip in the rear. So I went to the tire shop “LLANTERA” and got my tires up to 80 psi, from there I felt a huge difference but I am still holding a struggle as the car would still wants to grip in the rear. Only 2 possible solutions on this is when I drop below 4500rpms it would loose its momentum quickly and grip restores or my front sway bar is still being a very effective and when I drop below 4500 rpm my front and rear sway bars are working together to restore balance in the car. When I loose momentum a clutch kick does not fully restore it in fact it drops speed drastically might as well hit my brakes and start over. When I executed the drift at around 40 to 45 in 2nd gear with a faint drift when it is going it is staying around 30 to 35 around the corner till the grip picks up that is when It drops to around 25 to 20 mph. After the first turns there is a long straightaway that puts me at top of 3rd gear at 65 – 67 mph. From here I just tap the brake and I am drifting around the corner with no issues except for the grip in the rear I can feel. There is a few times I jumped off track for playing around if my technique and learning the limits.
I stopped a bit after my camera died to help out Waylon Deno as he hit the top 16 on the Pro-Am part of this event. It was awesome to see it, from all the years at this events I never seen him hit top 16 yet and the times he did I was in Oregon learning this sport at Hoodoo on Mount Washington area.
When it was over and he ran out of tires as he lost but it was a great show, epic runs even with the dirt drops. ( a great write up you can find here by Justin Banner ). I went back to run a few more times till I ran out of gas, at this time I was at 4pm already anyways and it is over at 5pm. We made it down to the local iHop and grubbed up some with Waylon, Noah, and Jeremy before hitting it the end of the day.
At this point my main priority is to go carb setup as I have the intake ready, looking for a 350CFM carb to start and other misc stuff to do the conversion. Reason of going carb is for the faster rev, faster acceleration and removing my faulty fuel injection. In theory this will eliminate my 4500 rpm drop and loss of massive power and should pick back up and eliminate the hard grip in the rear and finish my s13/s14 front swap with s14 tension rod brackets and adjustable tension rods and removing the front sway bar. I think I am hitting the limit with the bad injectors and my hack job to get it to run hard as it is but that is what you get when an ex grey hat hacker that hits motor sports and auto mechanics.
Overall I had one hell of a fun day too bad I can’t share that with anyone else, and I have tires for IFO next week so that will be more coming soon hopefully my last time running on fuel injection.
Parade Lap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ou3gFTC8keE
First set at 55psi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3NJMTHJAT6g
Second set at 80psi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=x7Bt5XNRujc
Last fun run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9jM5DJp04Zk
Photogallery:
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