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!

• Geoff and I have been actively updating several threads on the mustang forums to great response. I think people are glad to see something different being done with these cars.
• I just posted a summary of how drifting is judged on our forum: www.drift50.com/forums/tech/how-drifting-judged
• We're anxiously awaiting the prototype control arms that we're having made. I think they are going to really unlock the car's potential as a drift machine.
• Eibach's been helping us sort out our spring rate and we're probably going to try their swaybars to get the car to level the car a bit faster.
• We need some power. I'm tired of seeing videos without tire smoke!
• At our last event I was concerned that the car was a bit slow on track but, Geoff showed me a video comparing our car to some of the others that were out that day and the car was on par ..on some pretty cheap tires.
• We've got our new Dunlops mounted and we're just waiting for the next track event.