It’s been way to long since anything has been written here. Know that I’ve tried on numerous occasions, but with so much going on, it seems hard to order my thoughts and write something that has structure, and is even somewhat readable.
Ryan took the coupe up to the final CSCC auto-x last weekend. He placed 5th overall, and was the fastest on street tires… See here for full results… not a tonne of competition for him, but quite impressive considering a recent compression test revealed two very very weak cylinders, and running on our drift rubber (that’s 185 kumho 712’s). For me, what was most significant about this event though, was the phone call I got moments after Ryan got home that day. He had so many good things to say about the car, it’s drivability etc, and together we tried to figure out how the margin between us, and our high powered, big sticky tired competition was as small as it was. And this was is no slam on other drivers because Ryan drove many other cars in fun runs with similar results. I chalk it up to the miracle of AE86. See his comment here.
And I fall so deeply in love again.
The car now sits, in thousands of pieces in our garage. There is literally a stack of parts as big as the car sitting right beside it’s partly dismantled shell. And another large stack in front… and behind… it’s a mess really, and I’m legitimately concerned I’ll get the car back together. Now… wrenching though, has become relaxing. There are no deadlines near enough in sight to concern me. There is so much to be done that if I get frustrated doing one task, I move on to another.
Ryan and I are finally tackling the two things we have never done on an 86 before: power and chassis reinforcement. We have in our possession, a 4agze from an AE92 Levin. We still banter on with each other about what we should do with it. Swap the complete motor in? Turbo charge the block? Supercharge the early existing large port with a rebuild? Which ever we decide, it will be run by Megasquirt, and that is something I hope to begin working on this week. The final goal for the motor, is around 160 whp… I’ll talk more in the future about how we’re going to achieve that.
For chassis reinforcement, a custom 8 pt cage was the original plan, with a bit of stitch welding. The rear shock towers on this car are a problem area, and a basic bolt in cage, will not resolve this. We want to be FormulaD legal, should we ever decide to venture south to go drifting, and we want to be SCCA SM legal, because auto-x is still a large part of what we’re about, and running in DMOD, would not be so much fun. Finding a reliable, pro-active cage builder has been a bit of a task though, and with the engine swap work, and full car rebuild going on, we might just end up with some stitch welding, foam fill, and a custom rear shock tower brace that can be retrofitted into a cage at a later date.
Let’s see what happens. After yesterday, the season is officially over. I was up at SCC in Edmonton looking after the auto-x, and a drift demo (with which I was a little disappointed). Gay politics led to a couple of the better drivers doing what I would call, boycotting the event. As a result, the field of drivers was a little bit smaller and less talented than I would have liked, and I scrambled to find people last minute. Thank you to those who came. Even those of you with no experience, those who stopped in on their way home from Vancouver, and those who dropped what they were doing and came.
Now that the season is over, I look back and have many thanks for those who supported us in AngleFactory. The CSCC, and Import Concern without whom this whole season would be impossible. Many others who showed up to every event they could, drove like angels and helped maintain order. And others still, who never once turned a wheel in hard, but came out and stood with a marshals vest on. To those who were honest with us, even to those who flung shit in our faces… thank you. I hope we’ll be back next season. To those non-confrontational, weaseling bitches… I wish I didn’t have to see you ever again, but like I said, I hope we’ll be back next season.
And how about this for a finishing note to a busy and moving year… we were featured in the Calgary Herald on Friday September 16th. What a pleasant surprise, on some miserable cold day at work, to receive a flood of phone calls early afternoon from friends to say congratulations. I had no idea this was coming. Too bad about the picture.
