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Well, last weekend was a freakin BLAST. Nadine and I got our cars together for the Land-Ho & Just Drift! event. I haven’t been out to a Just Drift! event in a while now, and it’s mostly because I’ve been so busy competing or just because of time conflicts with other stuff.

It was good to go back out there and have care free fun. Nadine and I did tandem for the first time. She was really nervous when she was leading and would drift into a pretty bad understeer… so I started to lead and she didn’t have any problems at all. I was flooring it all the way into the corner and in 3rd gear on entry, and she was able to keep up just fine! JT told me that I would initiate really early and Nadine would wait a little… then initiate and catch up with me. Pretty cool! It was so much fun to be able to do that… drifting is just completely different when you are drifting along side your friends… it becomes more of a social thing than just a personal hobby.

My car was holding up fine… but it was a bit weird considering that I’m used to driving much faster cars. Driving my sileighty felt really really slow. My toe was also off since I didn’t get another alignment after Gushi san fixed my front end… so the car was understeering a lot. The remedy: kick the clutch right before I thought the car would understeer. It works! Haha!

I started to take the stickers off of the sileighty. It feels really good to be able to do that. Some of the stickers are FROM HELL and will not come off… I guess I’m just going to have to leave those alone. But I’m going to start making the car streetable again… I can’t believe I’m going to put my interior BACK IN!

Anyway, this summer will be cool. I can’t wait!

So Gushi san not only changed my throw out bearing and pilot bearings, he also re-welded the front end of my car for me!! I’ve needed this so badly for at least a year now, but I was always too lazy to take it to somebody so that it can be done. Woo-hoo! The car feels MUCH more solid now… the steering, braking, cornering… and it feels stable driving at high speeds. I’m so glad!

While the car was on the lift, the Phase 2 rear subframe spacers went in also… nice… It feels good to make u-turns and starting from a stop without having the whole rear end hop and knock the crap out of the chassis. It makes a nice popping noise instead now.

So what’s next? Well, my tranny is going out… it’s been whining A LOT lately, and Gushi san thinks it will last at the max 2 more events. I dunno… it’s been whining for a while… hopefully it will last for the Just Drift event next weekend! If not, I’ll just keep breaking those gears until all I have is 1st and 5th! Hahaha!

Happy Friday!

So, my car has pretty much been sitting at home for a while doing nothing. The last time I drove it was to GT Live for the XDL demo. I took it out for the practice session and realized that the car wasn’t drifting right. It wasn’t staying sideways… the front end felt really loose, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. So I ended up driving the Yellow Thing instead. While driving it home, it felt like the sway bar was disconnected, my steering rack bushings were dead (even though I changed them recently), and possibly my whole front crossmember was loose. On top of that, my throwout bearing has been whining for a long time, and Nadine has my battery in her car… so yeah… it was sitting at home as a big crunched up dirty piece of art.

Well, Charlie’s Just Drift event at the balcony is coming up, and I finally decided to try and get the car back together so I can have some tandem fun! I stopped by Phase 2 Motortrend and they gave me a great price on a new throwout bearing, pilot bearing, Nismo steering rack bushings, and Phase 2 Motortrend aluminum rear subframe spacers (since Nadine has my Tanabe ones!). Whew, this is becoming quite a load on my bank account! I’m also going to take the car to