Daily Racer/Drifter.

That is a cool concept. The idea that you daily drive your race car or drift car. Raw, no compromising performance all day every day.

As most of you know, I drive my 240 everyday. Granted it’s not a race car or even that much of a drift car, it has coil overs, heim joint suspension arms, welded diff, six puck clutch, no a/c, no heat, partially gutted, and currently no exhaust due to a little wall cuddling. I love my car and I love driving it, it’s a blast to drive and I love the feel of it. I don’t mind the harsh ride or the stiff clutch or the skipping of the welded diff as I navigate parking lots. However… I find myself wishing I had a more subtle car at times.

Though I don’t mind those things, they do get old. When I want to go some where, because my car is loud, EVERYONE thinks I want to race. I have no heat heat so driving in the winter means numb feet and sore fingers. Hot days in summer, I can roll down the windows but sweating in the seat does get old. The welded diff takes it’s tole on my tires and the skipping and jumping when making low speed turns combined with an aggressive clutch makes turning at stop lights a pain. The stiff ride from my coil overs isn’t that bad to me unless you have to pee really bad and the over all lowness of the car leads to a lot of scraping and unhappy exhausts. Not to mention the fact that if I damage my car at an event that means I am bumming rides or borrowing cars while I fix mine.

I love driving.. it is my passion.. but I HATE driving for the mere sake of transit. Then having to drive my “race car” for it just makes it that much more tedious. Not to mention exposing my already Michigan damaged car to the snow, salt, rain, and mud makes it less encouraging.

I find myself wanting to have a stock car and I look at the classifieds and I see these cars for sale yet I guess I am picky about cars. I really should not be due to the fact I really have no money and am not able to afford a car in the first place on top of my two cars that both need a lot of work. I look for cars that are five speed because I am a “purist” of sorts, I hate automatic transmissions. I look for cars that are still fun to drive. Of course I also look for rear wheel drive cars. I guess I am stuck in my mindset of enjoying my cars. Yet at the same time I go the other way and find myself wanting a little truck. None the less the cars I look for I want to be dependable, working heat, working A/C, and comfortable. I find myself wishing I was able to afford a new car. A car I didn’t have to worry about breaking.

All this to say I love my little “race” car yet for day to day use I would prefer to have a more subtle car. Yet I think I would find myself going back to my 240 for fun drives or even out with friends.

Anyhow I hope you enjoyed this random post. It’s something I have been thinking about for a while now and figured I would share.

Until next time!

So now that school is nearing an end I am hoping to be able to update this more often. I am updating now because it is a prime opportunity to procrastinate studying for my exams!

Anyhow so a lot has happened since my last post. I fixed the trans mount issue by ordering a new Peak Performance Race Mount. I was excited for the next event in October only to be severely under powered and having to tow the car home. We accomplished this by using an 8ft tow strap between me and a huge ford diesel dually which then pulled me home with no power steering, power brakes, or head lights at 85mph… Talk about white knuckles…

The car sounded like it had bent some valves. We had checked the timing at the distributor and it was right so when I got the car to the shop I pulled off the valve cover and turned the motor over to check the cam timing… Everything was fine…

I thought to myself, well maybe a valve is still bent, if not I can use this opportunity to change my leaking valve stem seals. So I pulled the head off the motor only to find the valves were fine… At this point I was baffled…

While I waited for a valve spring compressor I could use for my head, Tasha came up and brought her little hell hound to whom I owe the discovery that my knock sensor was broken. Riley, the hell hound, thought he would help fix my car and jumped into the engine bay. Luckily I was able to remove the canine from the engine compartment via it’s handy dandy dogie handle. In doing so I notice that the knock sensor had cracked off and was just chillin there. That would explain why my car was running rich and the timing was being retarded.

I would like to thank Brad for hooking me up with another knock sensor and helping me rewire my MAF plug! I couldn’t have done it with out you man! Brad had picked me up another MAF plug and wired it in for me only for us to find out it was the wrong plug. I called him up and he came by and helped me rewire it with a plug I stole off of Ian’s 240… haha thanks Ian!

When I finally ended up buying a valve spring compressor from SEARS for $20, Carson, the cool guy in the shop across from ours, hooked me up with an adapter so I could use the compressor with my head. I got everything all changed out and installed my valve stem seals and put everything back together.

I swapped Ian’s distributor cap, rotor button, wires, coil, maf, and maf plug to my car to eliminate the ignition issues and maf issues.

Then I tried to start it up and the battery was dead! Great! a $150 Optima Battery dead… We try to charge it, only to find one of the terminals decided to bounce. I am, at this point, and currently for that matter, broke… So I steal Ian’s battery and make a trip up to a certain auto parts store…

I walk in and set it up on the counter and said, “Know, I don’t know if you guys can help me or not” As I pick up the broken terminal, “I bought this battery about five years ago, in Michigan, about three cell phones ago…”

They said, “Did you buy it from a certain auto parts store?”

I said, “… Yeah O_O”

“Good enough for me!”

He walks back and grabs a brand new Optima Yellow Top and hands it to me with a life time warranty and says, “Have a nice day!”

Luckily, Josh was there and on his way back to the shop because I realized about half way to a certain parts store, I had forgotten to put my license plate back on my car. So he followed me back to the shop.

I had gotten my car running and headed down to Manchester because I was going to Tasha’s bosses husbands birthday party… say that five times fast… The car was still running weird at or above 3,000 rpms. So the next day I stole the fuel rail, fpr, and injectors off of Tasha’s car, thank you Tasha!, and went and bought a new fuel filter and O2 sensor. Once everything was put back on the car ran great!

Having had no power at the October event and not being able to drive at the November event, my car is finally back together and ready to go for the December event this weekend! Knock on wood… Anyone not doing anything on Saturday should come out the the Nashville Fairgrounds and check out the event!

Also I am now partially sponsored by AMSOIL! I just got my sponsorship package the other day and can’t wait to get some money together to order my epic oil change!

Anyhow that is the update on my car, I should be back to posting random things here in the next few days.

Here are some pics of how the car sits now, dirty and all… Although I did paint the back bumper!

Until next time!

-Yoshi

Well it’s been a while so I figured I would go ahead and make a new blog since I kinda sorta totally dropped the ball on the whole IA coverage deal… my bad…

Anyhow I figured I would give you an update on what I have been doing. For those of you who don’t know… even though if you are reading this you are probably a close friend or acquaintance that already knows what I have been doing…

Our little Nissan-Nation crew has secured ourselves a nice little bit of shop space recently and have been crazy busy at using it to our fullest capabilities. I have moved my Cressida over there, Josh has his Z32, Turner has his Z31 all with the engine and trans out.

As of last night my 240 was added to the ranks. I was casually driving to my parents house and as I went to shift gears there was a loud pop and my clutch went to go chill on the floor. I rolled off to a side road and looked at my pedal linkage thinking something broke up there… Nothing… So I checked my master cylinder and followed it down to the slave where I saw the push rod had been shot out of the slave cylinder. I was like oh well that’s cool, it’s under warranty. Just to be sure I wiggled my clutch fork only to find that is all wiggly and stuff. This meant one of two things… the fork either simply popped off the pivot and was chilling, or worse, the pivot snapped… Both of which require pulling the trans to fix.

A guy driving by in a dodge dually offered to tow me to the shop. When I got there I jacked the car up and put it on some spare wheels because my jack stands are being occupied by the Cressida. I pulled off the old slave cylinder to go get a new one. When I pulled it off I checked to see what exactly happened and sure enough, I snapped the pivot.

So I went and picked up the new slave cylinder and when I got back I went to work pulling the trans. A few tricky bolts and an almost lost hand later, the trans was out and I pulled out the broken pivot.

Instead of ordering an oem pivot I wanted to get a hardened one to hold up to copious amounts of clutch kits with a Stage 4 pressure plate. Nismo makes one and Enjuku Racing happens to sell them. So I shot Ken an email about what happened and he offered me an awesome price on it but it was on back order. For those of you who don’t know my 240 is my daily and back order means too much down time. So I checked SPLParts.com and they make a forged chromoly pivot for $25. So I ordered that and a speed bleeder for my slave cylinder and got 2 day shipping, so they should be here by Friday!

Until next time!

Well, I was about to go make my car shiny for Import Alliance tomorrow and as I get ready to head out, the skies open and next thing I know my road turns into a small river. So instead I am going to write something.

Tomorrow is the first of two days for Import Alliance. For those who don’t know Import Alliance is one of the, if not THE, largest car meet in the south east area. It takes place at Nashville Super Speedway and is host to the Redline Time Attack.

Import Alliance, or IA for short, is a meet run by car guys for car guys, of course gear towards imports. Started in ‘06, it had an estimated 700 cars and 1500 people. Last year, they estimated 1900 cars and 4000 people and about 30 states represented! And this year should be even bigger.

With the Redline Time Attack going on at the same time, there is always something cool to see. With people competing in anything from a stock Altima to fully prepped time attack cars, you see the full spectrum of cars on the track. On top of that, when the time attack cars a on break, they allow event attendees to drive the track behind one of the top cars in a lead follow session. That is a lot of fun and the closest thing you can get to driving on a real track with out having to dish out loads of money.

There are many different venders at the show handing out free schwag and last year they had a dyno open to the public for relatively cheap. There are a lot of great cars and tons of things to do and see. If you have a chance, I know it’s kinda last minute, you should head out to NSS and check it out. It’s $7 each day or $10 for both. Redline Time Attack is $150 for Saturday to compete, $175 for Sunday, or $300 for both days, if you register online. If you pay at the track it is $175, $200, $350 respectively.

It was my goal this year to drive in at least one day, how ever, the funds weren’t there. I was close though. I had forgotten about the whole time attack part and went ahead and ordered other things for my car. I have entry fee, but I would need tires and brakes and they wouldn’t have been here on time by the time I realized. Oh well, next year my car will be completely different and I will hopefully be in a better financial position to go get my ass kicked haha.

Keep an eye out on our main page for Nissan-Nation.com’s coverage of Import Alliance!

Until next time, here is a pic of me lookin goofy as always in my car at last years IA!

At least that is how I felt trying to get my clutch installed…

I bought a Competition Clutch Sprung 6 puck and aluminum flywheel. I had some free time so I decided to go ahead and put it in.

Now I have done a lot of work on cars. I have done engine swaps/partial rebuilds, suspension, differentials, trans swaps, and other clutch swaps before… This was probably the worst experience I have ever had working on a car.

I got up and started going around 8 or so. I did some things I needed to do, like getting fluid and parts needed for the swap. I get to my buddies house around 1:30/2:00. Within an hour, the drive shaft, trans, clutch and flywheel were out of the car. Everything was going smooth… except I did spill trans fluid everywhere so I had to put some kitty litter down to absorb it.

Then retardism kicked in.

On the fly wheel, it comes with 3 guide pins that you need to press into 3 of 6 holes. They have two different sets for 2 different clutch sizes. Wouldn’t you know I pressed one of them into the wrong one. So after hours of fighting with vice grips and making no progress, I finally wound up having to drill a small hole in the back of the flywheel so I could push it out. This killed me. They are balanced before they leave the factory. Luckily I didn’t take much metal out and the holes are evenly spaced and I was able to drill the same hole in each spot. Then someone lit my flywheel on fire…

I finally get the flywheel all taken care of and I bolt it up and the new clutch. YAY! Time for the trans. For the life of my I couldn’t get it to clear my trans tunnel. I fought with it for ever. Finally it pops on. YAY!… nope the trans wouldn’t mate to the block. I even had a bolt in on one side but couldn’t get one on the other.

After a while a friend of mine, Billy, came by and he fought with it for a while. We finally decided to take out and try to re-mount it.

Again, trans tunnel issues.

But w/ some tricky jack work by Kyle, we got it to a point it went on. Then with some wiggling we got it close to the engine. Here we fought some more trying to get it close to no avail. When we did get it close enough, we used a C-clamp to get squeeze the bell housing towards the block. Once close enough a got a bolt in and we got it mounted to the engine.

We slide the drive shaft in and are getting ready to bolt up the cross member only to find the stress drifting puts on a cars frame. None of the bolt holes for the mount wanted to line up. With much prying and exasperated sighs, we got that on. I bolted the carrier bearing for the drive shaft up and bolted the drive shaft to the diff.

Finally we added fluid and I put my shifter back in. I start it up on the stands and let the wheels spin in each gear to be sure everything is okay… Only to find I put the shifter in backwards.

No big deal… I take out three of the four allen head bolts and by the time I get to the fourth one, it strips out. Luckily we got it and got everything back together. We take the car off the jacks and billy heads home and I clean up.

I drive home and am grateful everything works and is finished. It’s not too bad to drive even. I get home and I look at the time and it’s 6:30 in the morning…

On top of that I had to work the next day.

It was a crazy/horrible/awesome experience. I want to thank all my friends that came to help/hangout/encourage me. Opie aka Flaming Pants Spaghetti Taco, Nate, Brad, Turner, Sarah, Billy aka The Man, Kyle aka the Jack Master, Masa and his girl friend. You are all awesome and made a horrible day not as bad as it could have been.

Sorry I don’t have pictures, I wasn’t really in the photo mood.

Now time for the break in!

When it comes to building cars, the part that gets me most excited is suspension. That’s right, I’m a suspension freak. Reason being, you can change the whole dynamics of a car to improve the responsiveness and driveability of the car. Fine tuning roll centers, matching caster to camber at the right steering angle for optimum contact patch, tuning out bump steer. I find it amazing. I am always learning more about suspension setups. Of course I love your all out high hp super set up race car, but what I get a kick from is the race prepped cars with low horse power yet super responsive n/a engines, a fine tuned and well damped suspension set-up.

You may say, driving is 80% driver 20% car. I agree 100%… BUT if you can optimize that 20% it will make the drivers movements more efficient.

Blah blah blah I’m a nerd, but it’s cool. I love it.

Check out the videos in this link: http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/12/amazing-1-500-fps-video-from-german-gp/

They have slow motion video of the stress on an F1’s chassis and suspension as it rounds a corner. It’s amazing to see everything work despite the immense forces acting on it.

The second video is a ghost over of two cars going through an S turn. It shows how proper technique, though it seems slower, is faster.

So that’s two posts in a day but oh well, is my blarg. OFF IT!

Until next time!

Yoshi.

I am a huge fan of pretty much every motor sport. From Air Races to F1, I find all very enjoyable. One form at the top of my list, however, is Rally. Rally cars are amazing machines and rally drivers are some of the most ballzy.

Since I was young I can remember watching the WRC on Speed Vision, back when it was called that, and watching in amazement how the drivers seemed to have no fear of the sheer ice covered drop offs and tree lines.

I also love rally cars because they are true raw driving machines. No silly computer controlled aids, super responsive in every aspect, and built to withstand amazing forces. Especially the old group B rally cars. Close ratio sequential transmissions, anti-lag turbos, suspension to handle what ever is thrown at it, either RWD or AWD monsters. These cars are meant to be driven and driven hard.

This video gives you a taste of the awesomeness that is rally:

Until next time!

Yoshi.

My fellow pumas, welcome to my blarg. This post isn’t really car related, but it is about something I found very interesting. I recently saw a documentary made by one of Top Gears host, James May, on the moon landing. Being from a younger generation, I never really understood everything about the whole deal. Yeah I knew it was, “a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind” and all that but it was never really in perspective.

The main goal of the documentary is to cover May’s training that leads up to him being able to fly at the edge of space in a U-2 Jet. In between each training exercise he interviews people that had actually been to the moon. By now of course these guys are all older, but to hear their take on everything that happened is truly amazing.

They talk about all the training the astronauts had to go through and how/why they were chosen. From doing training in the “vomit comet” to high G training on the centrifuge.  All of which led up to the final flight.

If you haven’t seen it I suggest you look it up. It’s called James May on the Moon.  It really puts everything in perspective. The best part, in my opinion, is at the end they are interviewing one of the astronauts and he says, ” I like to go out with my wife and watch the moon, and I can’t help but think to myself….. I’ve been there.” I mean how awesome would that be to walk outside and see the moon and know that you have been there.

Anyhow, there is my space camp nerd post of the month. Hope you enjoyed it!

Yoshi.

Hullo everyone! Here is my blog deal. Here I will talk about random things that interest me. However this first one is quite short due to the fact kittens don’t agree with me. I love kittens but my body hates them… Then hates me for playing with them. Now my eyes are all itchy and my nose is all stopped up. On top of that, the kitty ate my french fries. So as soon as I can focus I will make a real post.

So until next time… Damn your cute fluffyness you feline fur ball!