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Formula D, Houston

June 22, 2004 No comments

Man, it’s been awhile, huh? Well Houston was a fluke… the people were nice as always, and I had a great time meeting new people and getting the chance to drift in a new state. The course was in a REALLY small area, but I guess it wasn’t too bad considering the area restraints. I found it really difficult trying to find my own angle of attack for the course because it seemed like everybody either had less or more power than me (mostly more)… this meant that my strategy for the course was different than everybody else’s. I guess it’s one of my problems that I haven’t really realized until Houston… instead of listening to what people are telling me, I should go with what I feel is right, since I know my car better than anybody else.

I was doing fine during the first day of practice… I was able to go pretty fast considering that some of the people that I was doing tandem with had double my horsepower weren’t able to pull away from me or stay too close either. The second day (competition day) turned into a huge mind game for me… the course changed slightly, and I let it get to me… I spent the entire practice time trying to adjust to the new course. My 4 practice runs were up… and each time I went out, I realized a new thing that I had to adjust in order to perform the way that I wanted to. By the last run, I knew exactly what I needed to change to run the way I was the day before at practice. During my first qualifying round, I did pretty well and I was happy… I was in my zone and my confidence was high. The second round, I did something pretty stupid… my friend suggested that I should get closer to the walls if I wanted to get into the top 16. This totally messed me up, as I was confident already and now I thought everything that I was doing so far was wrong. Well I tried to get it together as well as I could, and I was determined on getting close to the wall. During my practice run, I took notice of the wall and tried to get closer, and I did. I finished my run… not pushing 100%, but then again it was just practice so that I could get closer for the next two laps (which were the judged qualifying runs). On the next run, I went in really fast and approached the wall at the top of 2nd gear while my throttle was floored, and my rpm needle was bouncing off of the rev limiter… I felt the wall getting really close, and as I looked at my clipping point, I realized that getting close to the wall changed my line, and my initiation was too early for this line… my car didn’t have enough momentum or horsepower to bring me around the clipping point… I was about 5 feet short. So realizing that I had to initiate later to clear the clipping point, I went out for my last qualified run… I initiated later… flooring the accelerator again… this time I felt like I had a lot more speed into the corner, and then I flicked the car throwing the rear end towards the wall. The tach was bouncing off the limiter again and this time when I looked at the clipping point ahead, I realized that my car had much better momentum this time and I was going too fast for the corner. I stepped on the brakes and the car immediately went to full countersteer and the steering wheel locked… but I was in good shape… I was in perfect position to approach the clipping point. My line was pretty decent and my adrenaline was high… I clipped the apex of the corner and I was doing better than I did all weekend! Then… I choked. I was having such a good time in my car that I screwed up at the easiest corner of the course! I spun at a low speed 2nd gear corner, and the competition was over for me.

What did I learn? Don’t try new things during qualifying rounds… at least not yet. I also learned that I know the limits of my car better than I thought I did. AND that playing with the walls is a great rush and it makes drifting 10 times more exciting! I love it… and I’ll be doing it a lot more often!

In other news, KAAZ USA has offered me a spot on their drift team! It’s a 2 man team, along with Barry Wong from Hawaii. I have high hopes… the car that I’m going to drive has a lot more horsepower than I have now, and now I get to start saving up some money again… paying for Formula D out of my own pocket has really put a strain on my lifestyle outside of drifting. Being a privateer is really hard work! And my car was never up to par with the other 400hp monsters drifting out there! This way, I get to live a normal life outside of drifting… Kristy, Nadine, and I all need money for our futures. Anyway, we are currently working on sponsors for Team KAAZ… I hope to bring Tanabe on as a sponsor… they have helped me so much that I want to have them with me wherever I go… as long as I’m drifting competitively. If anybody interested in sponsoring us is reading this, please e-mail me!! Well, it’s time to go to bed now… hopefully I’ll have some videos from Houston up soon! Good night!

Cars , ,

New S15 turbo – thanks Ernie!

May 28, 2004 No comments

So last week Ernie and I pulled my engine apart so that I can put in my new S15 turbo that I got from Superior Nissan… This is my first step to getting more power… I think my goal is around 320. I probably won’t get it anytime soon, because it costs so much money! Anyway, Ernie and I spent about 4 hours taking the head and turbo off the engine and went home. The next night, we spent a lot of time cleaning everything up… to make sure that the engine would run well and cool well. While the turbo was off, I took the liberty of putting on some stainless oil and water lines from Taka Motorsports… It helped a lot, because the turbo isn’t a complete bolt-on type of deal… it’s a different size than the stock T25, so not everything will fit. The things you’ll need: turbo inlet pipe going to the compressor wheel, the pipe coming off the compressor side to attach the intercooler pipe to, the oil return line from a t28 as well as the rubber hose connecting that to the block, 2 stainless water lines, and one oil line. So anyway, we finally finished everything, and it was pretty cool watching Ernie work… he just gets into this zone, and starts working like a machine. He knows the SR20DET pretty well. Anyway, we finally finished, and I started driving around. It was a strange feeling… the low range response is improved, and the power band is a lot smoother. I wouldn’t say that I gained much power though… and this is because my ECU is tuned for the T25 map, and not the T28 map… however, this turbo is allowing me to boost more, so I am gaining a LITTLE bit more power… I’m boosting .9 bar instead of the .8 that I had with my T25. Hopefully, I’ll get some injectors, cams, and tuning soon… I can’t wait to see what I can do with some more power.

Man… I’ve been doing SO MANY events lately… in the past 2 weeks, I’ve went drifting 6 times. And I’m going again next Wednesday to a practice for Formula D. I hope my car can hold up to all the abuse… recently I’ve had a weird problem with my transmission… It’s hard to shift and sometimes it doesn’t come out of gear. Hopefully it will hold up long enough for me to compete… sigh… I have a long ways to go from getting my car to where I want it. I guess it’ll just require patience and continuously practicing with what I currently have.

Cars ,

Formula D, Atlanta Round 1

May 13, 2004 No comments

Sorry I haven’t been updating my journal lately. I’ve been SUPER busy getting my car ready for Atlanta Georgia. Anyways, to get you up to speed, I wasn’t planning on going to Atlanta… then all of the sudden, Hot Import Nights and Hot Wheels decided that they wanted to sponsor me for transportation! I couldn’t pass this up, of course and I started getting my car into good running shape for the event.

So the first thing I needed to do was get a cage. And my favorite friend in the entire world, Richard (JDM Rice) was such a sweety (:-*) and let me take out his and put it in my car. That wasn’t very fun, especially since all but 2 of the 20 bolts on the car were STRIPPED. And when I say stripped, I don’t mean you take em off and you say… great – they’re stripped. Because these didn’t even come off. The nuts would just spin in place. Good thing Marc was there the whole afternoon to help me take them off… We resorted to using brute force and we took hammers and broke the bolts off at the nut. Which made us bloody, sweaty, and tired. A couple days later we spend an entire night taking out all my old interior and putting in the new cage, then putting in my new seat.

Other than that, I changed my oil, my LSD oil, looked for leaks… replaced a power steering line, flushed my coolant, and then and made sure all my fluids were topped off. My intercooler has a big a** crack in it from the accident… but, since I didn’t have the time or money (doesn’t get any better than that), I couldn’t replace it… I just planned on competing with the huge boost leak. To make my car look a little better, Jerry from Pacific Rim and Clay from Autolink helped me make some bling stickers for the car… And PJ Bonafacio painted my aero bumper that I’ve had sitting in my garage for the last year or so (I’m lazy).

So anyway, we get to Atlanta to visit Nadine’s grandma… she was sooo nice, and she took us sight-seeing to all of her favorite places. It was awesome, and I wasn’t missing ghetto LA for a minute. At first, I thought that I was gonna get lynched or tar and feathered, but I realized that we were safe when I found out there were 2 asian restaurants in town (imagine that!).

The next day started, and I wasn’t driving very well. In fact, I went way too hot into my first lap and I went straight into the rocks just outside of turn 1. The car was okay, but my wheels got all scratched up from the rocks (I like to refer to it as custom sand-blasting). My lip spoiler flew off and it’s funny, because the crowd loved seeing body parts fly off. They thought it was awesome when I was heading back towards the pit area, and I stopped in front of them to pick it up off the ground. No! You can’t have my lip spoiler!!! Anyway, my problem was I knew everything that I should have been doing… but it seemed like I wasn’t listening to myself. I was taking horrible line into turn 1 over and over and over again… at least I was consistent! Haha! Qualifying round came around and my line was a little better but not much… and still almost mirror image of what I was doing the entire time during practice. I qualified as one of the top 16 drivers, so I went on to the next round. Again, I did the same thing as I was doing all weekend, and it really messed me up while I was doing tandem with Hiroo… my entry style into turn 1 was horrible, and it made me fall way behind… I need a lot of practice when it comes to tandem… you’d think that you just go, but when youre drifting tandem, you’re in a whole other world of drifting. There’s a lot of strategy involved, a lot of adjustments, and change of attack that you just don’t get when you’re drifting alone. Hopefully I will get to have some more practice at it in the near future.

Needless to say, my driving wasn’t very good, but I had a GREAT time fooling around with the other drivers in the pit area. We’re all great buddies and I’m happy that our drifting culture is so good that we can totally have fun and goof around when we are all there to compete with each other. Thank you Nadine, Alex, and Marc for going with me… you guys helped out SO MUCH and there’s no way I would have had a good time or even felt right competing without you guys there with me. I’d have it no other way… thanks for all the support! And THANK YOU to Hot Wheels and Hot Import Nights for sponsoring me transportation, because without your help I’d never be able to even fathom going across the country and drift on the other side of the country! Thanks to all the GREAT people in Georgia who came out to watch us all drift! You were all so nice and great people… thanks for coming up to say hi to me and making me feel important! Team Hevnz, thank you so much for cheering me on and taking the time out to make a sign for me even though I sucked hardcore!

Here’s a link to the gallery from the trip… as you can tell, there aren’t a whole lot of driving pictures… I wonder why?
http://www.sileightymania.com/photosvideo/formulad_round1/

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