Project Ugly Duckling. SR86. 'Haters gunna hate, Tyres gunna bake'

[Anthony86]

Epic! So clean and tidy,spewing you moved, good luck with the up coming events


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ae8zn6]

So... Big update time!

Over the last few months this car has gotten some serious attention!

Killing the RB20 box kinda prompted these changes, but I also wanted to go back and correct a bunch of temporary fixes I had made over the last couple of years.

First up was the RB25 gearbox conversion. With the old RB20 box, any gearbox/clutch problems were an engine out job because the clearances in the tunnel were so tight. That was annoying, so I decided I would go the whole hog and get the tunnel boxed. While that was happening I also decided to get a full cage done (with dual side intrusion) as that seems to be the new standard that a lot of tracks require now for passenger runs/battles. Finally, it wasn't much more to get a tube front done at the same time. So... that kinda happened too (my poor wallet!)






In the downtime between getting the box and sending the car off for fab work I decided to pull out the body loom and make up a custom harness. There had been the odd electrical gremlin in the past and this seemed to be the best way to exterminate them. That siad, for the time being I made the harness too long so that the fabricator could move them out of the way whilst he was working. The good thing about that idea is that now I have a bit of flexibility as to where I can put my fuse panels. The bad part is that a lot of the loom is too long and I will need to shorten and re-terminate a good number of the wires.

And then (if that wasn't enough), I figured that, given the car will be doing more grip events than before, it was time to sort brakes able to deal with high speed and brake heavy circuits on the East coast like Phillip Island and Mallala. I opted for the 'Big Daddy' kit from T3 with the upgraded Polymatrix A pads. There is still some fine tuning to get this setup to play nice with the other brake mods, but its showing a lot of promise.




Then, it was out to give the car a shakedown. It's first event back was a Supersprint a couple hours East of Melbourne. It was great to be back out in the track in it and I pretty much needed to re-learn how to drive it. A lot more potential to be tapped over the next few events.

Despite how long it took, it would have easily taken three times as long without the HAPP car hoist! I already can't even imagine life without a car lift!

[ae8zn6]

So, a bit of time has passed since the last update (what me, leave massive gaps between posts!)

Anyway, I entered the car in another sprint a couple months after the last one. I had massive front brake bias issues in the first one and was hoping to sort these out before the next event. I changed to a BM44 master cylinder between the two events and realised (the day before) that a large part of it was probably that my rear brake pads were absolutely cooked. Braking was a (tiny) bit better in that second sprint, but the other thing that was picked up was that I was blowing a fair amount of smoke out the exhaust. Anyway, I still improved my previous lap times by being very careful with the brake pedal and hit my goal street tyre time of 1:00 flat. I had told myself that after I hit that time I would invest in a set of wheels and R compound tyres, but that idea was blown out of the water when I signed up for VicDrift's Summer Matsuri at Winton

I have wanted to drive Winton for a long time, and I hadn't drifted since Japan in August 2016!!!

So, instead of putting that money to good, sticky, rubber, I spent it all on cheap China junk and towed the car (5 hours ) to Winton. So it turns out that Murphy is an asshole and of course within the first few laps my BOV failed and started leaking boost everywhere. It took me quite a while to even locate the source of the leak, but once I did I wasn't much better off. I found the problem at about 5:30 on the Saturday arvo, all auto shops were closed. I walked around the pits and asked if anyone had the obscure parts I needed to do a temporary fix but no luck. First thing in the morning I turned up at Benalla Auto one... no performance section at all :/ so went to mitre 10 and got some bath plugs and tried plugging up the gap to at least confirm I had the source of the problem right. Sure enough, car was much happier, but the longest any of my dodgy plug solutions lasted was about 5 laps. So, I bit the bullet and drove to Wangaratta SCA... tiny performance section and didn't have anything of use. In the end I found a rad hose that was the same diameter as the BOV mount, stuck that on, folded it on itself three times, clamped the shit out of the kink and stuck a screwdriver in the end to be sure. It still leaked, but it made the car drivable.

My super rad fix:



So at like 2:30 PM on the second day of a two day event I finally had the car sort of going. It was worth battling though and getting the car usable though, the track is pretty cool, although slow compared to Barbs and Collie. On top of that I found a Ceffy and a 200b that had been driving well with each other all day and just jumped into the mix. They seemed super happy to have such a different chassis join in and were super good guys. So yeah, had two good sessions at the end of the weekend that more or less saved the event for me.

I was also trialling a new 360 camera that I bought out of China and I have to say, pretty cool idea. Perfect for drift because you can really swing the view from side to side as you transition. Here is a video I made from Winton that (in part) uses the new camera:



So where to from here?

There is another Sprint on this weekend, and I might just use that to confirm that my legit BOV fix (a new vee port pro) has permanently fixed the problem. But I won't stay for the whole event, because I have signed up for:



So that is the following weekend. I figured that I didn't burn all my tyres in Winton (cause the car was being a PITA) so I might as well. I don't think I'll do all that well, having not drifted Calder before at all and my car not being as crazy as some of the builds I have heard of from Vic, but it's not like I have ever been the kind of person who's ego gets busted up because they didn't win at everything. I have also entered the practice day on the Sunday, which is the run the wall layout, should be a bunch of fun.

So if you are from Vic and will be there, drop in and say G'day. I am still yet to meet most of the Vic crowd.

[d1staz]

Was good to meet you at matsuri mate and thanks for the loan of the lca’s. I’ll have them back to you soon. My car won’t be fixed in time for round 1 but I’ll be driving at the 86 Fest in April. Will you be there?

[ae8zn6]

Yeah mate, I'll be there. We might get a chance to drive together as well!

[ae8zn6]

So I entered Round 1 of the 2018 VicDrift Championship weekend before last. This was my first ever drift event at Calder, so a bit ballsy turning straight up to a comp perhaps, but it was the first event the car was ready for.

There were over 50 entrants for a top 32 competition, so a lot of unhappy faces after qualifying results were announced. It was a difficult layout that they hadn't actually run before, so all the drivers needed the warm up practice. This was a bit of an issue because the first corner was after a blind crest, and because no one knew the line in advance, there were a lot of spins, reducing the effective practice time available for everyone. When that was combined with the large number of drivers, it only added to the challenge. The 86 didn't seem well suited to the course, there was a large bump at the crest point, on the judges' line, and this really upset the car as I hit it. Half the time it would throw the car straight again, but with all the weight on the front now, this was hard to fight as both handbrake and clutch kicks were useless. You also needed a lot of pace to initiate and run the Judges' line over the hill, but then needed some brakes before the apex to stay on line. So yeah, quite challenging and I would be lying if I said I had mastered it even by the end of the day. I'm not sure if it was a shortcoming on my part, or the short wheelbase or the live axle, but I found the car really unpredictable (as I said before, about half the time it would just straighten itself :/)

Anyway, that all said, I did manage to qualify for the competition, which (with the previously mentioned lack of Calder experience) I think was a good result in and of itself. However, my irradiate driving in the morning (and probably the front lock up issues I have had with the transition to the new front brakes) took their toll and by the battles my front tyres were done. On one tyre I had like 7 separate flat spots, two of which were down to the belt. I didn't pick this up until I went out for my top 32 battle and I was understeering all over the place. If I am fair, the bloke I was against was a top notch driver and only bowed out in the Top 8 due to a steering arm failure that he was unable to fix in time to line up, so I most likely would have lost in any case.


Then I hung around for the 'Run the Wall' practice day on the Sunday. This was much more up my (and the car's) alley. The SR and gearing seemed to really suit the radius of the corners on the Calder national circuit. I found the layout quite simple to drive so I just had a laid back day and took several different people out for passenger runs. The only problem with the car being so on song is I was KILLING tyres... They were only lasting like 4 or 5 laps Whilst that made for great photos, I need to stop that from happening if I want to attend many events this year. I am currently looking into sourcing Kendas over here because the tyres I ran in Perth just seemed to last a lot better than the Jinyus and Triangles I had that weekend.

Anyway, you lot only really read this for pictures and videos (I'm on to you ) So here they are:

First up, here is the mash up of videos I took from the on board cameras:



Here are a few of my picks of the photos I have seen so far (with thanks to Tarmac Assasin, S8ten Photography, Brock Menere Photography and Racecar co)















My next outing will be to the 86 Festival happening at Winton on the 15th of April. It is shaping up to be a pretty cool event. There are currently like 18 AE86s entered to drift alone, I am pretty excited to be out on the track and part of that!

Hoping I'll see some of you out there!

[sleeper_13]

I spot the 86 supreme's sticker through the wind shield. I'm hoping to take my 86 out to that 86 festival (only found out about it 2 days ago). Shaping up to be a cool event!