I know its been a while since my last blog post. There is so much that has happened since then. For my first year of ever any competitive driving I had an awesome time and met loads of people and made so many new friends.

I did go through plenty of issues with car behavior and having to drive around certain issues. The biggest thing I learned this past season was to not put so much pressure on myself and just drive! Many of my mistakes were self imposed from over thinking the situation or not knowing what to do at the correct moment and causing me to over-correct.

Overall it was quite an experience. Finishing 8th in Top Drift and 9th in Vegas Pro-Am. I’d like to thank all my friends and family who came out to support me, Vildini Motorsport, Driftspeed, Dynamic Autosports, JDM Threads, JustDrift and Vegas Drift.

I look forward to the 2012 season and the debut of the new car! Stay tuned for more…

The first half of today was quite productive for both me and my dad. After we had lunch and finished up some oil changes he decided to continue on the S15 SR20de 240z project for a customer and had me washing all the cars since it rained yesterday.

Man, my hands are all dry and worn out. Total of 5 cars including our big a** Suburban towing truck. Being that we painted the truck satin black now, I had to rush and get it dried up right away so that there were no water stains!

Dad got quite a bit of progress done on the customer’s 240z today thankfully. Alternator is all wired up, fan and thermostat switch is wired and set to go, head lights and front turn signals done as well!

Pics and video of the finished 240z coming soon.

Instead of selling off the Suburban and getting a different towing vehicle for this year we decided to fix her up a little to make her more presentable. We call her “Daisy.” Figured it would be best to save the money and be able to buy new sets of tires rather than spending the funds on another truck.

We repainted the entire truck and also installed new front lower ball joints and front shocks!

Here are the pics from prep to final result:

We decided to get ahead on shop work so that we could go this past Thursday to Adams Motorsports Park. We have to close up shop at 3:30pm just to make it on time for the first session at 6pm. I knew Alex Pfeiffer was going to be there in his Lexy but definitely did not picture myself going tandem on such a tight course.

Thankfully he put plenty of pressure on my while following. His car has so much speed and was on my a** the entire time that I could not even see his headlights! While following it was hard to keep up with his 500+hp and 285 wide Nitto NT05 but I managed to close in on the apex.

A new media section will be added to the blog shortly so I can update with any videos or photos from the events and drift clinics we attend. Keep an eye out!

With the new year coming around we put ourselves to work and get the shop all cleaned up and organize our parts storage room. Been luckily swamped with work and trying to make every drift event possible this year starting off with XDC Round 1 and following shortly after TopDrift Round 1.

The 240sx missile car has become quite a beast with the motor/drivetrain from our old 240z. It is a blast to drive and has amazing grip for me using such a narrow 235 or 245 tire in the back. Mind you the car is making around 400whp on e85 and only 13psi

Well I know it has been a while since the last update when we bought the missile car. We have been extremely busy since I got back from Argentina. TopDrift Round 4 went well and I got plenty of seat time and the ability to learn some more car control while still being on stock boost. Here is my favorite picture from that event back in September:

After Argentina, we got back to work and trying to find more wheels/tires for the upcoming event which was October 30 and 31 for Halloween Bash. This was another awesome event and we ran Balcony V3 and then Horsethief Mile the following day. Quite a few incidents over the weekend with Mike Essa smashing the front end of his missile FC and another driver flipping his FC at Horsethief Mile. Here are some pictures from that event:

After all this we decided to start making some changes to the car before the next event that is November 27/28 for JustDrift ToyDrift. Some weight savings have begun to take place, new motor and turbo setup, new transmission setup, roll cage, some different body work and hopefully we end up having enough time for paint. We have been working every night on the car since the last event. We stay after hours and try and get as much done as possible. Here is where we are at as of today:

First of all I just want to give you guys a heads up that I spend all my money earned on the cars Dad and I build for us to have fun with. All my income goes directly into the cars!

This car I just recently bought from Jerrod at Driftspeed and it is a 1990 Nissan 240sx. It has your typical modifications to make this car ready drift/track and be reliable. I am just super stoked that I got a car to practice in now in the meantime while we take our time on finishing up the 350z. This way I can focus on driving skill and set-up once i step into the Z33 chassis. I will be at Top Drift Round 4 on September 25th and 26th for the practice and competition day as well. My good friend Larry Chen said I should just give it a go in the competition to see how I qualify. I’ve got the car aligned and almost all ready to go for the weekend. Going to go through all the fluids, install the boost controller, and install an oil pressure gauge as well.

Here are just a couple snaps of the 240sx that Jerrod took when he put the car up for sale:

I think with the title of this post you should be able to tell this is about the exhaust fabrication now. Last night we finished the y-pipe and the rest of the exhaust. On Wednesday my dad had fabricated the initial y-pipe and we just had to finish off the rest of the exhaust with the muffler and our turn-down tip.

The long tube headers are 3″ at the collector so we did a dual 3″ y-pipe to a single 3.5″ single outlet exhaust setup. All stainless steel (minus the headers) so compared to a usual mild steel exhaust is quite a bit lighter.

Another couple days gone by and more progress to the LS1. Now we were working on getting the fuel system all mounted and plumbed but we found out we were missing some AN braided line. For the most part the fuel system is ready minus the lines. You can see the fuel rails, injectors, swirl pot (surge tank) on the left corner by the battery, and also the fuel pressure regulator. You can see our Aeromotive A1000 fuel pump mounted under the swirl pot in that corner as well.

While dad was mounting up the fuel system I was installing our new Hotchkis Suspension front and rear adjustable sway bars. These hollow bars are surprisingly lightweight and now we have a range of four adjustments on the front and three on the rear bar.

We managed to go to the junkyard on Sunday morning before the Gymkhana Grid event and grabbed a Taurus electric fan/shroud and also a 300zx throttle cable which has already been installed on the car. Up next is to finish the fuel lines and then once the radiator comes in to mount that up with the new fan and plumb the cooling system.

Here is a picture of where we are at as of yesterday:

Its been quite some time since my last blog post. I appologize to those of you who have been following my build to just be cut short. We ended up having to focus most of our time on the customer projects and put ours aside so we can pay the bills. Now that we are caught up with work we figure we can start working on our projects again after hours.

Since the last time we settled on going LS1 turbo. For the sake of lacking funds we are going to hold off on the turbo version for now and focus on getting the car up and running. Once we are done with the tuning of the motor we will begin to focus on dialing in the suspension. We will have plenty of power and torque as we sit currently since the car will be fairly lighter than stock weight.

At this point we have the LS1 with its bits and pieces including the ACT Twin Plate clutch and the T56 transmission installed permanently into the car! We also managed to install our suspension parts on the rear subframe and got some more goodies going on there to be explained in a future post.

Here is some eye candy for you guys in the meantime: