"THE ( TEXAS DRIFT ) SERIES" Round one.

[aaronlosey]

http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/ggp-3-6-2011-front.jpg

I proudly present to you ROUND ONE of the 2011 Lone Star Drift Series which is being held in conjunction with the Non Stop Tuning Anniversary car show. *2010 was good, but in 2011 we are turning the volume knob to 11! *Bigger prize money, new cars, big finale prizes, awesome tandem, a few surprises, and fun. *So come be a part of the action, bring a helmet and ride along in the drift cars and cheer for your favorite drivers. *Home town heros will compete at this event for over $2000 dollars of prize money and bragging rights. *

Gates open at 8 am for drivers, and spectators should arrive around 10 am, with the competition starting at 2:30 pm.

Spectator fee is $10, to drift is $75. *For more information go to fabricatedmotorsports.com. *All drifters must preregister by sending payment of $75 by paypal to [email protected]. *Include the 3% or press the personal transaction button. *Also include your name, contact and car info in the transaction info.

For more info or to register for the car show go to nonstoptuning.com.

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1. *First of all, I'm not quite done with the flyer, or all the info yet. *However, we are a go. *A bunch of extra announcements will be made after the first week or two of January, about things such as a racer tire program with cheap good tires, racer clutch program, and other racer parts programs. *Many thousands will be printed and handed out, but I wanted to get something up before I leave town AGAIN for another week. *I haven't been in town much lately.

2. *Cages will be required for tandem at this event. *Door bars and front down bars are required, so don't show up with a roll bar and claim it is a cage please. *Full six point cages with harness bars and door bars.

3. *Payout will go all the way to 8th place, and everyone in payout will get at least $75 payout out of the purse which is over $2k at the moment. *Obviously the higher places will get MUCH more than that. *I am working on getting more prize money, most of it is out of my pocket at this time, but as I find more, the payout will go up.

4. *This is a POINTS SERIES, so everyone gains points event by event. *At the end of the series there will be a prize of at least $1k for the points champion, along with yet to be announced prizes going all the way to 3rd place. *These prizes have to wait a few weeks to be announced. *They will be coveted items, more so than $1k.

5. *There will be 4-5 events in the points series, and if you want to win the series, you need to collect them all.

6. *This event will be held in the front lot of GGP, so it will be a bit different than your average GGP event.

7. *Drivers who want to just come out and practice are welcome as well, you do not have to compete. *Open practice will be from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm, and then again after the competition for as long as we have safe lighting.



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Here is the home thread for this info.

"THE SERIES" Round one. (http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=2280.0)

[aaronlosey]

Russell’s STI debut... kinda....

http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2010/12/28_Russells_STI_debut..._kinda.....html

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http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2010/12/28_Russells_STI_debut..._kinda...._files/_DSC5532.jpg

Ok STI time! I think a lot of people have been excited waiting for this car to get finished, if only because it isn’t another 240SX. It has been about a year in the making, but it is turning out really nicely. The car was basically done in this test, but it wasn’t running. Everything was there except fluids. So we won’t have a dyno sheet for this, but everything else was done. First of all there was a lot of attention to detail that went into this car, and a ton of work from numerous people. Russell obviously did a mountain of work on this thing, but it is a show case of awesome fab work from people like Derrick Rogers with the awesome cage, and Collin from Toxic Fab with the sweet catch cans and stuff. I even heard Collin might build a titanium turbo manifold for it!

So what actually makes this car what it is, and why is it going to drift? Well first it uses a 2.5 liter STI motor mated to an STI 6 speed tranny. That moves back through a driveshaft where it meets a new face, an R200. The R180s in these cars are way too weak for anything close to RWD clutch kicking, so it was tossed and an R200 went on in. The motor, while stock internals, was treated to a GT35R sized turbo, all the trimmings, and a really sweet catch can setup. The suspension has a some sweet remote reservoir Stance coilovers, the wheels are his old Advans, the paint is pretty, and the cage is all rally car looking. Oh, and he put front wheel tubs in it to confuse the drag racers. The one concern with the drivetrain is his crazy gearing with the stock 6 speed and 4.3 rear end gear. This thing is going to be like Kumakubo without a sequential tranny!

So what did it dyno? It didn’t. It wasn’t running yet. Russell is planning to run just over 400 whp I believe since the motor is stock at this point.

The STI weighed much less than I thought it would, at 2597 lbs, but that was dry. Add about 100 lbs for fluids bringing it in at right about 2700 even, or about Texas LS1 S13 weight. Should be aweome to drive on good rubber! Front weight distribution was the most front heavy out of all the cars there, at 59 % front. Adding weight for fuel I figure the car will come down to right in the 57 point something range, probably still leaving it just barely in the lead.

Steering angle? 43.7 degrees, tying it for the least amount of angle. The knuckles are cut and shortened, but this started out as a AWD car and had front axle shafts, so they aren’t designed for big steering angle stock. 43.7 by the way is stock S chassis steering angle. Russell says he is going to go get more aggressive with this after seeing the numbers, so it will be interesting to see how much he gains.

All in all I’m excited to see the car run. Russell was getting really good at the end of last season, and very aggressive in his S13. Will he retain that aggression with a fancy new car? I hope so! He has the help of some sweet companies like Stance USA, Falken, and Boost Logic so hopefully he feels pressure to drive like a madman to keep them happy! It will also be interesting to see how well Subaru suspensions create grip and accelerate this around.

[aaronlosey]

Here is a primer for our Texas series to get everyone ready. We are doing posts on most of the cars running the series to get people excited!

Original post link:
http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2010/12/28_Brads_AE86.html


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http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2010/12/28_Brads_AE86_files/shapeimage_1.png

We finally did something I have been meaning to do for quite some time over at Fabricated Motorsports. I have been saying we should get as many Texas drift cars together and get real data together on them, and that others like Formula D should as well. It would be interesting to see how much all these drift cars really put down to the ground, how much they weigh, and how much steering angle they have. I’m curious about their overall build types too, and the differences between them, but lets start with the easy to measure stuff! Lately we have had an explosion of V8 cars, even AE86s aren’t immune. So what is the difference between a 4AG AE86 and a 1UZ AE86? We found out!

I am going to release this data in a few posts to make things a bit more digestible. I also in no way want to make people think one type of car is obviously better than the others. There are things we didn’t test for which are so important, such as the beautiful 1JZ sound, actual acceleration numbers, etc. I plan to get some of these in the future, but this was a simple test to get things started. Also, remember drifting is all about fun, and you don’t need the latest and greatest car to go have fun, and in fact, often that is a large hinderance to performance. Having a car you can wreck into walls and destroy is often a more competitive car than the one that is too special to hurt, even at half the hp.

So, on to Brads little Rolla. I remember when this car used to belong to Bill way back in the day. It was a super nice and capable car back then, and it has only gotten better with time. Brad took the NA 4AG pretty far, and was making good power and making crazy noise, but I think he caught the V8 bug just like the rest of us. First of all, it should be said the V8 bug isn’t always about having lots of power, it is all about not having to work on a fussy 4 banger anymore! I don’t think everyone always understands this, when you get a V8 right, you never open the hood, you just drive! Anyways, that V8 gives him the ability to have usable torque anywhere from just after idle, all the way up to 7K rpm. A typical 4AG makes no real tq, but has to stay about 5K to stay in drift. That is the same with a turbo, big cams, whatever. This little monster is completely different. After the V8 swap the car weighs 2337 lbs, which appears to have added around 300 lbs to the car over the equivalent stock motor car. We are arriving at these numbers by looking at the other AE86s we weighed in the same day, on the same scales, with similar levels of stripped interior, cage, etc. One conclusion we can draw from this is the V8 AE86 weighs about 100 lbs less than a stripped out S13 with an SR20 in race shape. Kinda interesting. It was also interesting that this car was the almost the most nose heavy car of all our group, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but an interesting thing. It had a front weight distribution of 57%. However under further inspection of the other AE86s, this is only 1% more front heavy than a 4AG car, so although it is fairly front heavy, it isn’t really more so than it started off, so you can’t blame this on the V8 swap. The lowest front weight % of any of our cars was 53.8, and the highest was 59. All the cars fit nicely in a 6 % spread, which was smaller than I thought it would be.

On to the angle. The car has 48 degrees of steering angle. Pretty simple statistic there, and that puts it mid pack. The more angle the steering of the car has, theoretically the more angle it can hold in drift, and as a plus, the less you spin out LOL. Steering angle is rad, and once you have big steering angle, you don’t want to go back! Big steering angle in this test was 55 degrees or more.

So in conclusion this little V8 car has power on demand anywhere in its power band, runs super smooth and like stock all the time, looks great, and drifts well. I would love to hear it with some sweet headers, and not really anything else needs to be added. Anything else might detract from the car as it sits now. While 227 whp might not seem like a lot of power for a V8, this is a lot of usable power for an AE86, and if he ever gets the itch a set of cams and headers with a tune would make even more usable power! AWESOME CAR BRAD!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/Dyno%20sheets%20from%2012:2010/Brad_Burnett_V8_Corolla.pdf

[aaronlosey]

Here is the home post, with more pics and stuff: http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2011/1/4_Will_Parsons_green_machine.html

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http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2011/1/4_Will_Parsons_green_machine_files/shapeimage_1.png

http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2011/1/4_Will_Parsons_green_machine_files/_DSC5454.jpg

First of all, thanks again to Power Fab Automotive for letting us use their facilities for this test! They are a full service shop in the Houston, TX area that does fab, tuning, and pretty much everything. They work on imports and domestics.

Ok, now that I have written several of these posts about our Texas cars, I can’t help but start to compare them and draw conclusions. We have 3 AE86 cars in this comparo, and they are all very different. Below is a copy of all three AE86 dyno sheets, give them a look, and notice how different the power delivery of each car is.
Will’s dyno sheet *http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/Dyno%20sheets%20from%2012:2010/Will_Parsons_4AGE-T_Corolla.pdf
Brad’s dyno sheet *http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/Dyno%20sheets%20from%2012:2010/Brad_Burnett_V8_Corolla.pdf
Robert’s dyno sheet *http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/Dyno%20sheets%20from%2012:2010/Robert_Lee_4AGE_Corolla.pdf



Interestingly the turbo 4AG makes a good 70 peak whp more than the V8 car, and even after it drops off drastically on the top end, the turbo car is still making more hp and tq from 5200 rpm till after 7000 rpm. The turbo 4 banger wasn’t running very well, and was cutting out badly on the dyno during its runs. I think will said his car ran out of gas or something on the dyno, but regardless, it has an effective power band of 5200 rpm till about redline, or about 2000 rpm total. The V8 car, while making less hp, has a power band of about 5000 + rpm. It should also be noted the turbo car runs on race gas. To create a larger power band on the 4 banger one could use a slightly smaller turbo, or increase the redline of the motor. It looks like the hp isn’t choked out by cam or turbo sizing at redline ( it is dying off for some other reason it looks like, not a limitation of the cam or turbo ), so without any other changes but raising the redline you would increase the power band a bit, maybe to 8000 rpm. I personally always took my stock motor, stock head SR20DET motors to 8000 rpm as soon as I put a Power FC on them, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work here. They held together great by the way. That would get the turbo motor up to a 2800 rpm power band, increasing the power band by a whopping 40%! One thing that can be extrapolated from looking at Will’s dyno sheet is his car must be very hard to maintain a controlled/desired amount of wheel speed. A linear power band allows the driver to drive the car with an intentional amount of wheel speed vs ground speed. This car doesn’t have a linear power band. What that means is a driver should be able to drift with 10% greater wheel speed vs ground speed if he wants, or 20%, or any other percentage. By modulating this, greater forward momentum can be coaxed out of the tires, more precise placement of the car can be had, and the overall control of the car can be greater. Less shifting can be performed when it is detrimental to the run, so YOU can choose when you use your shifts, not the power band of the car. Will’s power band demands that you drive on the engines schedule, which comes with both good and bad points. It can make the driving more exciting by making it a bit more frantic, but it can also create more opportunities for mistakes to happen, and it can increase the amount of runs to nail a track and time shifts, gearing, throttle, clutch kicks, etc. I personally think there is merit in both types of setups, and certain types of cars and drivers look better in one setup than the other. Ryan Tureck looked awesome in the turbo Solstice, and I will miss watching that setup a lot. Sam’s super charged viper on the other hand was pretty darn boring to watch because the excess of tq made his car boring to watch. Drivers like JR do a fantastic job of driving for the crowd with his V8, and is very exciting to watch. I also thought Dai in the GTO at Red Bull Long Beach was amazing.

Anyways, back to the little green machine. It weighed in at 2032 lbs, with a front weight distribution of 56.1% to the front, which would probably come down about a point with gas in the tank, and bring the weight up closer to just below 2100 lbs. Pretty darn light! There isn’t a lot of weight you could easily take out of this car at this point, so it probably isn’t going to get a lot lighter than this. It already has plastic side and rear windows, and is very stripped out. Interestingly enough, this car was only one point off of Brad’s distribution when we measured it, although Will didn’t fill his tank like he was told to. There might be up to 2% difference between them overall, and between 230-300 pounds total. 300 whp in a 20XX pound car has to pretty fun!

The car has 53.6 degrees of steering angle, which actually makes it the second biggest angle car in the group, which is pretty impressive. This is very nice to have when you have such a small wheel base and peaky motor setup. It helps keep the car manageable.

I have been driving with Will for some time now, and the car works very well at times, and other times it is a bit of a liability to the driver, much like my own S13. Will is a good driver, but the car is often the limiting factor. The small power band leaves little room for competitively driving the car if everything isn’t perfect in the engine bay, while the simplicity and redundancy of Brad’s eight cylinders can run with one or more plug not firing. In a time when most AE86 drivers in D1 and FD have gone to SR20s and S2000 motors, it is interesting to see someone keep playing with the 4AG still. I have always been amazed at how tiny they are, and how much they have been raced in the past. Will has a very neat car, and one that epitomizes the “tuner” idea of carefully tweaking the engine in the car until you get what you want. Most of Texas is the opposite nowadays, dropping in overkill V8s simply so they don’t have to worry about how well the motor runs. 7 out of 8 is good enough for us, but 3 out of 4 isn’t, so we end up with big honking motors and 2700 lb S13s.

To add my own two cents to this chapter, if I were to build an AE86, which I am not, I would like to see someone around here do a Beams motor or an S2000 motor. I heard a rumor that a certain Houston shop was going to help Will put an S2000 heart in his car. The linear power band, higher rpm, blah blah blah seems like it would be a beautiful fit to this car, and help balance out the overall chassis while bumping up the displacement a bit and adding some reliability. The 4AG, while a really neat motor, just doesn’t have a lot of displacement, and I think one of these motors would be a smooth and positive progression of Will’s car into something even better than it is now. I love the fact that he has taken his car so far, and kept it so long. The car gets better every season, as does the driver!

[aaronlosey]

Original post.

http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2011/1/4_Dominic_Favaloras_98_KA_240sx.htm

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http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2011/1/4_Dominic_Favaloras_98_KA_240sx_files/shapeimage_1.png


First of all, thanks again to Power Fab Automotive for letting us use their facilities for this test! They are a full service shop in the Houston, TX area that does fab, tuning, and pretty much everything. They work on imports and domestics.

Ok, now for the KA 240sx, this car is included because it was cool looking, and provided a great baseline to see what this dyno is reading like, and a great baseline to where we all started.... in a KA car. This car has a stock air box and after market exhaust. No turbo, nothing fancy, just big cool looking wheels and a tasteful exterior. This car runs in the same vein as our own Chris R’s Zenki S14, clean and simple. It looks great and doesn’t use any fiber glass, which is the bane of my existence nowadays. God I hate fixing, buying and painting FG. It looks rad until you go off track once, then you have to look at a broken crappy looking car. Basically this car can be driven to events, hit cones, drive to Cheddar’s after the event, and drive home. More than any of my cars can do. Tires probably last a lot longer on it too!

Have a dyno sheet : )

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/Dyno%20sheets%20from%2012:2010/Dominic_Favalora_98_240sx.pdf


The dyno sheet looks about like you would expect. 145 whp and 156 wtq. Everything is fairly linear and stock looking, and the motor probably has 200K miles on it like every other 240 in the USA. But lets face it, this car isn’t about 4th gear burnouts, it is about being simple and enjoyable, while looking good. More S Chassis need to be built like this, but with a bit more power. A simple turbo thrown on here would make this car pretty much done, but then it wouldn’t be quite as simple.... a conundrum!

Weight was 2701 lbs, with a front weight distribution of 56.2 % up front, which was much higher than I expected. I’m not sure why it was so high, but the overall weight is right around the correct amount, if not a little lighter than expected.

Steering angle was 43.7 degrees, tied for the least amount of angle with a Subbie. All 240s need knuckles for 2011. I love driving knuckle cars, even KA ones. Everyone go get knuckles! God they are fun.

In conclusion, this simple car looks great, and is a nice reprieve from all the busted ass crap box 240s we see everywhere. KISS. I must also say not many people stay with simple color themes and pay attention to contrast. The body of the car is black, the wheels are white. Pretty simple. It even has stock seats and full interior. Looks very livable, and the car will probably bring far more enjoyment to the owner than a stripped out competition 240sx over the long haul.

[WishDRFTR]

I was so pumped about this when I heard about it at Mexican Standoff... Then I saw the B/S about the cages.... FML

I guess well watch the same 10 or 12 cars win over and over again this year

[aaronlosey]

I was so pumped about this when I heard about it at Mexican Standoff... Then I saw the B/S about the cages.... FML

I guess well watch the same 10 or 12 cars win over and over again this year

LOL.

The best drivers win. Besides, we have to have cages for tandem, both because of insurance and to conform with the formula drift proam rule book.

Fabricated Motorsports Tech Day 2010 and GGP fun on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/18846470)

[aaronlosey]

Awesometown photography (http://www.fabricatedmotorsports.com/Index/Entries/2011/3/11_Awesometown_photography.html)

Go look at some of the rad photos of the event that are up. Sy put up his rad directories for you to gawk at : )

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5514528896_6a291d6cb0_b.jpg

[aaronlosey]

http://vimeo.com/20865006

http://vimeo.com/21057688

http://vimeo.com/20962505