First round of Eurodrift 2007 I scored a 6th place in Am class. Woohoo! Total fluke though.
The rest of the season I was, of course, totally rubbish. The MX5 has a shorter wheelbase than an AE86, and is a touch heavier, with less power. Coupled with my total lack of skill this meant piling in to corners as fast as I dared and 1 time in 3 either spinning or going so hugely off-line I may as well not bother looking where I'm going. I also had to furiously abuse my clutch continuously to keep the car sideways, even with the magic low grip perished tyres. 3000 miles per clutch!
By the end of the season I was 12th in class, please don’t ask how few people competed.
Obviously more driver training was required, but like everyone else I think I’m a driving god so I just added power instead.
I'm violently anti-turbo due to bad Nissan based experiences (I mean, like, Nissan is half French) but because of the corners I've found myself competing on (looooooong 2nd gear stuff with short run up) I needed more power as I was already on the lower limit of grip and the upper limit of bravery (mine obviously - all the people telling me to go in faster were clearly dead brave)
Anyway, my budget was cock all, but I found a 2nd hand Greddy kit for 500 quid. The oil feed adapter had stripped threads, someone had gone mad with cutting the exhaust manifold/head flange (max of 3 cuts needed, there were loads on mine) but hadn't slotted the bolt holes so it didn't fit, the downpipe fouled on the coolant pipe to the heater, there was no air filter and the turbo had been clocked for a custom intercooler pipe routing. No surprises really, exactly what I was expecting. I got a new adapter, slotted the manifold bolt holes to stop the manifold cracking and so it would fit, made a new heater hose, threw together a washer bottle heatshield, re-routed the front left brake pipe to clear the down pipe, cobbled together a FMIC out of a Ford diesel intercooler and some Saab pipes (lots of cutting and bits of silicon hose), fitted a cone filter (needed a bit of crushing to fit, but that was done in transit by the lovely delivery driver, fat handed twat) then slapped in "turbo" spark plugs from MX5parts. Fuelling is taken care of by a very shiny blue AFPR (plug and play
), timing was retarded to whatever it said in the Greddy manual. Before I ran it I used a bike pump, boost gauge and some pipe to set the waste gate to 6psi (no need to adjust red hot bits of turbo after installation
).
With no real control over spark it doesn’t run perfectly, but I don't care if it works at all below 3k rpm as I have a gearbox and know how to use it.
If the Greddy power claims are to be believed the car should be making a throbbing 155BHP in this spec. Certainly it will nearly keep up with an automatic 173bhp 1200kg Celica. Maybe 150000km of abuse have hurt the poor little Mazda engine a little.
First time out with the turbo and I lobbed it sideways in to a tyre wall at Barkston Heath while totally off my face on joy – It was finally making tyre smoke and previously undriftable corners were now easy.
After cable-tying up my ripped carbon wing I decided to leave fitting the new door until after my last drift day of 2007 at Norfolk Arena, just in case bad luck/incompetence struck again. First session out on the wet and muddy track and I started having gear selection trouble, caused by what I later discovered to be a collapsed clutch release bearing (from all that pre-turbo clutch kicking). Fearing my clutch problems were going to leave me stranded I restricted my track outings to a few passenger rides. My first session on a dry track included my first ever completely sideways lap, followed by a series of perfect laps with the car constantly sideways at a big angle with just a throttle lift and a flick of the wheel to change direction – I finally had the perfect combination of power, grip and skill. With no more damage I crawled back home for the winter rebuild which included: new driver’s door, new clutch release bearing, 1.8 flywheel with the larger diameter 1.8 clutch, new rear crank seal, new clutch slave cylinder, rear brake rebuild, new exhaust system (the centre exit one I bought for 30 quid finally rusted to bits), aftermarket front bumper (the old one was broken, this one has extra cooling vents and it was only 30 quid – can you tell I’m embarrassed about fitting any kind of kit to a car?) and a few other tweaks for the 2008 British Drift Championship rules.
Naturally the big, but second-hand, clutch slipped like a bastard, so the car had to come to pieces again for yet another new bit and all of my pre-season testing budget has gone on parts instead. Pictures of turbo installation to follow when I can recover the files…