Club Loose Advanced Day on the Road Course - July 12, 2008
This was my second group A/B only event with Club Loose. I made several changes to the car since the last event two weeks ago, so there was a lot to get used to.
The first change was the engine. The original KA in the car developed a rod knock in the last event, so I swapped in an identical (but lower mileage) KA in the car. I also switched to using synthetic motor oil. In addition, I installed a Kaaz 2-way LSD, so this event was my first time drifting with anything but an open diff. The last major change was the tires. I got a set of Falken Ziex ZE-512 brand new tires. Up to this point, I had never drifted on a new set of tires.
This was the first official Club Loose event on the road course at Englishtown. The course layout was interesting with a mix of both easy and challenging corners as well as low and high speed corners. The course also had a lot of elevation changes. A sketch of the course map is shown to the left.
The car performed very well at the event. I had no problems with the engine at all. The LSD and new tires gave me a lot more grip than what I was used to, and I really felt the lack of power of the stock engine for the first time. With the open diff, the car feels like it has plenty of power because you're putting most of that power only through one wheel. However, with both wheels locked together and using decent tires, it becomes a lot harder to break the rear tires loose. Still, I was able to drift with the new setup and could easily floor the gas through most of the course without having to worry about hitting the rev limiter.
The tires had very even wear across the entire tread surface (see picture). This is probably mostly due to the smooth surface of the racetrack so I can't really compare them to other tires until I test out a set on the parking lot where Club Loose usually holds their events. The tires had a surprisingly large amount of grip for the first 10-15 runs, but the grip would suddenly drop to nothing after about 15 runs when most of the tread was gone. At that point, it was very easy to spin the tires, and I had to be very careful not to go off course since the car lost so much side grip. Nonetheless, even in that state, the tires would still last for about another 10 runs. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with their performance and will likely buy the same tires or the upgraded Falken ZE-912s for the next event.
The only problem I had with the car all day was that the power steering started leaking where the high-pressure hose connects to the pump. It was also making a strange noise (hard to describe) when I had the wheel turned to the right, but that went away.
I got a lot of runs throughout the day since the event started at 10am and ended at 8pm. I lost count after a while, but I would estimate that I did about 50 runs. It was a great learning experience and an opportunity to drift on an actual racetrack. Since I got so many runs, I was able to learn from my early mistakes and keep improving throughout the day. By the end, I was drifting relatively consistently with virtually no spinouts or off-course excursions.
There were a lot of pictures taken of the event. I picked out some of the nicer pictures of my car drifting, but the entire album can be found on Loosemoves.com.
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