Update time for the Kaihatsu Silvia
So D1S and I were invited to Monstermob raceway for the 3rd installment of the Shakedown Series and this would be the first official competition entry for me in South Africa. I spent a whole month working very hard to make sure I could afford it. All the expenses were coming out of my own pocket as I am yet to find a sponsor to assist in national travel to compete.
So to get the car ready I did a few things:
Passenger 4 point harness:
Heat Shield for the turbo and manifold:
I also did a few other items after testing the car like checking all the suspension, bolts, etc and replaced the rear lower control arm bushes with Driftworks Polyurethane items to get rid of the axle tramp. I also collected my new racing suit thanks to 1st Race for this!
Another big change was in the look of the car, I got a call from Gary at D1S and said the guys at ACOM wanted to get my car's graphics done before the Kimberley event so it went in on Thursday afternoon and came out Friday afternoon looking like this:
It will all be re-done as I have a new front bumper that has just landed in SA and the kit will get painted the same color as the rest of the car.
And organised some tyres, my first new set for drifting!
Now that the car was ready, we loaded up and headed out to Monstermob in Kimberley:
We arrived Thursday afternoon and got straight to some drifting and practising. The Monstermob raceway is something else with a pitch practice area big enough for easy second gear drifting and the track allowing so many combinations and different setups to practice all sorts of drifting techniques.
Thursday and Friday consisted of practicing and the only issues I had were the second hand tyres cutting all my sessions short due to tyre de-lamination so I moved to new tyres and it was like night and day. I need to get my hands on a good tyre sponsor. Another issue I had was when the sun went down in Kimberley, the temperature dropped drastically and my front semi's had no grip in the front what-so-ever.
Saturday came along and competition day was here. Based on my experience the night before I changed to road tyres on the front in the hope that this would help with the night time grip. We had normal practice until 1PM and then we had to get our cars ready for qualifying and attend the drivers briefing.
At 3PM we had to line up for the parade and driver introductions
After this we proceeded to do our qualifying runs. As it was during the day I had absolutely no problem with grip and ended up qualifying 14th, so I was in the top 16 which is exactly what I set out to achieve.
After that we started on our tandems and now it was dark. I was pitted up against Riaan Stokes who is a great guy and we spoke before heading out to challenge each other. There was some confusion from my part being that I though the first run was an official run but as it turned out it was actually a warm up. So during the second run I went first when I wasn't suppose to and it confused the hell out of both of us. But the judges improvised and let us run the next run with Riaan leading and counting the first run as my lead run. I failed pretty badly in the tandems as the night time lack of grip on the front came back to haunt me. I under steered heavily on almost every corner and this gave Riaan the win on both accounts by a mile.
Next time I will be putting the pressure on anyone who I go up against as I proved to myself when on the first corner during the warm up I was right on Riaan's tail before I span out.
Another huge part of the weekend was that we were honoured with the attendance of Dai Yoshihara (Who wore my lid the night before when he showed us what he had) and the President and Vice President of Formula Drift, Jim Liaw and Ryan Sage.
So from this I have decided to change my suspension setup and have ordered a set of BC coilovers so that I can setup damper, ride height and corner weighting properly. My suspension was too hard for the track and the front has minimal downward suspension movement and when hitting any bumps it would bounce causing more understeer when cold.
I learned alot from my experience and I would like to extend my thanks to Monstermob yet again for having us there, if I could afford a trip a month I would most deffinately do it. I recommend everyone to go there and experience it and chat to the people there. They all have the same idea of what they want from drifting in the country and they are willing to help anyone to learn new techniques and perfect their current skills.
Here are some more pictures from the event and the days before:
Drift Train:
And after party:
On the to do list is fit the BC coilovers and setup all of the suspension. I am also currently refurbing the rear calipers as they started leaking on the way back from collecting the car off the car transporter. Also my front bumper is in CPT now and when I get it we will be repairing the kit, painting it the same colour as the car then going back for the graphics to be done nicely.
There are a few competitions coming up over the next 3 months in Cape Town and I will be at all 3 so come by and watch us battle it out!
Thanks goes to D1S, Monstermob Raceway, the Cape Town Contingent and all my sponsors (1st Race, ACOM, Redline, Mag Addiction, Liqui Moly, Flat Four Racing, ROTA an Kaihatsu Factory) for making the weekend what it was!
