BensonHsu.com

It’s two weeks past the speedtrial event, and I still think about it about once every two hours everyday. What’s gotten into me? I think I need to buy that expensive mansion on the hill with my own “private road” so that I don’t have these urges of buying a house on the race track. Anyway, I was having problems with my car last week – the idle was horrible and the car barely boosting. I routed my blowoff valve back into the intake and solved the idle problem… the boost problem was so dumb! There’s a c-clip that holds the actuator onto the wastegate arm… well in the past, that c-clip has fallen off and viola – no more c-clip. I had a spare and I put that one on… guess what happened? Yeah it fell off too. So Kyle and I rigged up a super SPL clip out of paper clip wire. It worked great and hasn’t given me problems for like a year probably. Anyway, it got a little tight and stopped the wastegate from opening up all the way. I repositioned it and it works fine now. So, car drama aside… everybody come to drift day on March 16… Irwindale Speedway from 8am-3pm!!

What the hell is with the date today? Anyway, Buttonwillow Raceway this weekend!! It’s a drift event… and Hiroshi Takahashi will be there from Running Free Japan. So here’s the to-do list that I always show you guys everytime there is an event coming up… Tires: I’m waiting on my W-10’s from Tirerack.com to come in tomorrow afternoon… I just picked out some used Michelin drifting tires at this cool little tire shop next to my house – the guy that works there is way cool. I also need to change my LSD oil, fuel filter, and belts… Other than that, everything seems okay. I’m surprised, because there’s not much to do this time… It’s comforting when your car runs great before an event. Oh yeah… I got a job! It’s a crappy one… but hey, it’s money. It will hold me down until things get better. Anyway, hope to see some of you at the event!

Did some more driving last weekend… the car is holding up great! The only problem is that one of the brackets from my downpipe broke… and now the two pieces that used to be joined are now rattling and it sounds like my car is falling apart. I wish I knew how to weld. Also last night my car got a flat… for some reason all the air leaked out of my MK-III and I couldn’t fill the tire back up since all the air was leaking out of the bead… so I had to take it to a tire place that would take the valve stem piece out and fill it up with their compressor. Everything seems to be fine… strange huh? There’s a 240sx meet this weekend at Shine Street (Click for more info). That means I’ll have to risk my fingers falling off from the cold so that I can wash my car… anyway hope to see you all there!

So I did a little driving… around 7 minutes constantly at redline… and the dump pipe from my turbo to the downpipe decided to come loose. Haha! Then the head from one of the bolts decided to break off so I had to sit there and get that little nub off of the turbo for an hour. Once I got that off, I cleaned out the threads with a tap, put some lock washers on, and loctite’d my new bolts on (I love Ace Hardware). Then I changed my wheels because the tires that I had on my gold mesh were starting to scare me… Now I have the MK-III on with some nice and semi-meaty Michelin Pilots. While the wheels were off I took the liberty to try and level out my car (if you own an s13 you might know about that nasty lean the car has towards the driver’s side). I did an alright job with that… and I dialed the dampers 10 settings stiffer in the rear and the front. Nadine and I went to do some more driving… the turbo parts stayed on (yay) and the suspension felt pretty damn good. The dampers were stiff and there was very little travel in them… surprisingly, there are 20 more levels stiffer to go! Today I stopped by to visit my friends at Car Tune and Jspec.com… picked up some fun little things. I think my bank account hates me.