The diary of a dumbass drifter

jdm<3

Member
So after many years of owning rwd cars and never having the balls to actually go drifting i finally bought an old s13 and decided to man up and give it a go....

So in this thread im going to keep a sort of running diary of my progress from going from complete "no clue beginner" to .......well where ever i end up!


This be the car of choice
10502149_10204736784434681_3688102207205490508_n.jpg


quick spec was ;
stage 2 chip
alloy rad
saab interfooler
apex shocks and springs
and other wee tarty pieces

I said i wasnt going to buy anything for it untill i had it on the track so i could tell what it "needs" other than just what i wanted to buy for it.

So weeks went by and it was finally the 21st and ready to go to driftland!


DAY-1
Turned up at driftland not having a clue what to expect but more excited than jesus!.

After getting the car off the trailer (during which one of the ramps slipped and ended up ripping a fuel tank strap off...tidy!!) ... i signed in and sat through the briefing and was ready to rock and roll!!

As i previously asked on here about needing a hydraulic handbrake and was told i wouldnt need one i was feeling good and if i managed to finish the day with a car in once piece i would of felt like id done well.

So i lined up and waited for my turn to get on the track.

My first lap i just pretty much drove around looking at the track trying to figure out where the entry points would be and how far up the banking or grass i would end up.

After a few more laps and quite a few spins i was slowly learning how to controll the car and stop it just snapping back everytime i wanted to change direction or off the power.

Luckily it had been raining for most of the night so the track was pretty wet so there wasnt really any difficulty in getting the car to step out.

As for the tighter part we ended up bodging a "fly off" hand brake by jamming a screw in the hand brake button so that i could just give it a short pull to break traction.....worked brilliantly!!

By the end of the day i was managing to link up 3 corners and not spin out.....i wasnt expecting to come away as a drift god on my first attempt so this really pleased me.

So 3 hours went by and it finally happened...After quite a large spin the engine stalled and struggled to start again.

As soon as i got it going i knew something wasnt right and sure enough when it got over 2k it was knocking like a bag of spanners.........bottom end joy.

So that was the end of my first day with a car quickly put back onto the trailer while it would still move.

But for a ca18det with standard internals on 149k i think it did well to put up with me for 3 hours , so its currently getting stripped and forged so i can get back out asap!!

Unfortunatly my camera man needs shot as we only managed to get one pic from the whole day

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Common Sbody experience then really.. 3 hours of abuse and it dies. Why do people keep buying these again???

Good effort on getting on out there tho man, keep it up !

The pics dont work though :(
 
they die because people buy a really old car with no service history and batter it off the limiter.

with decent oil and decent cooling it may have lasted longer.

your beginner car looks good and your idea to only buy stuff 'as and when needed' is a sound one. have a good journey with it.
 
Cheers guys !
Yeah it was an old engine that I had no history of but with a good forged rebuild I'll have a good benchmark.
Yeah I really want it built for purpose (not that i wont throw on the odd pair of shiny wheels for the hell of it)
 
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