When you're driving a car that doesn't work, Horse Thief Mile is a really frustrating place to be. On the other hand, when the car is working it's one of the most rewarding tracks to drive. Luckily, this weekend fell mostly in the later category.

Since our last time at horse thief, the car has received more steering angle with our new alignment settings and a stiffer chassis thanks to newly installed sub-frame connectors. Usually, I expect the changes we make to be minor and/or incremental. But this time out, the car was a whole new beast. The added responsiveness and predictability of these mods made the car so much more enjoyable and more importantly, added 100% confidence when throwing the 18 year old chassis.

Within one or two laps I felt good about throwing the car at the sweet hairpins and by the end of the first sessions I was linking the top (judged) section without an e-brake. In my corolla, that was really knife edge stuff and it was hard in the mustang but definitely repeatable. So everything was going well until we lost a big chunk of our left rear tire. Since we are saving what little tires we have for all star bash next month we didn't bring enough to continue for the competition. Even if we could have mustered something up for competition time [thanks for offering Mickey] I think it was best that we didn't compete. Mainly because of our lack of an e-brake. At the oval the car would have benefited from having an e-brake but at HTM, not being able to slow down becomes a matter of safety. Rather than competing half-assed, we can focus on making the car better next time.

Overall there are very few things left to complain about on the Mustang but a few things that came up at HTM: there is a bit of a hitch in the steering at high angle, the gas pedal also has a weird bump and the timing was a little off making the car run a little rough. Once we take care of those little issues, we're only 100hp and an e-brake shy of a very competitive car. :)

We spent some time this weekend reviving my 86 corolla. When I was preparing this car with track use in mind I discarded so many parts that weren't important to performance. Now that we're putting the car back together with street use in mind the car is missing so many comforts that seem rather basic.

After a few hours we had removed the "roll cage", seats and readjusted the height of the suspension. We also pulled out a little gift for the mustang.

I got to attend my first Ziptied All-star Bash this weekend and the event made one thing abundantly clear; working long hours takes too much time from the pursuit of driving fun times. That said, I'm really glad we made it out there. It was one of the most rewarding events we've been to --and not because of the trophy (but I think that was a valid milestone for this project).

Now that I'm actually thinking about it, I didn't do much driving at the event (maybe 15 laps) but, I did get to enjoy drifting the way it is meant to be enjoyed. To boil it down; drifting is about having fun with your friends. This weekend I got drift with friends, cook with friends and even sip spicy imbibes while running my mouth. All in all, a perfect way to spend the weekend.

Enough of my philosophical ramblings.. onto the boring car stuff! Like any event, we're expected to repeat the laundry list of things the car has going against it; stock power, no ebrake, no rear-brakes. And just like any the recent events we've made it to the car didn't look like it was suffering out on the track. This is partly because I've learned how to drive around some of the "missing features" of the car but also because the car simply works.

What evidence do we have to back up this claim?
1) We've got the impressions of two other drivers; Steve and Jonny. Steve got his Formula D license the same year as I and Jonny is a long time friend of the show and has been drifting since I was in diapers (or something, I forget how the story goes). Anyway, they both drove it and found it easy to get in and just drive.

There were quite a few up's and down's at this event that Geoff already talked about so I won't go on about that. What I will go on about is how amazingly fun this car is to drive. It's been about six months since we started this project and I'm a convert evangelist.

This event we learned just how much the lack of a working differential was holding us back. With the air locker working during the morning hours, the car was a joy to drive. With both tires locking the increase in traction was huge. The car accelerated out of drift so well and transitioning the car was much more consistent. I did manage to run out of steering angle a few times and would've been able to save them if it weren't for our pesky corolla e-brake (read: total lack of an e-brake). Now the changes I'm most looking forward to are a seat, some further tuning of spring rates/dampening and POWER. Somehow it just doesn't seem like a mustang if the car isn't at least slightly unwieldy. That and it would make the videos a lot more interesting if we had great plumes of smoke coming off the rear tires.

Lastly, there are still some people sipping juice-box haterade out there (I'd expect this from the Mustang camp, but what gives drifting folks?) but what they're missing is how great it feels to make this 20 year old car move the way that it does out on the track. In our estimation the car is no more than 80% 'complete' and it's just going to get more and more awesome.

Thanks for checking in.

Taking Angeles Crest Hwy to Willow Springs

Uh oh.. what's that fluid?

Geoff pretends to work

A little in-car on-track modeling

Geoff asks me to do something while I'm taking a break

Heading home from the track!