dougie350

So good to see someone actually putting a bit of time into a 350Z as a driftcar, toplad on making it look nice as well - too many E36 rustboxes about these days for my liking.

No, its not a "missile", its a shitter.

 

Watched your vid and youve definitely got the skills, only thing Id say would be push for a little more speed and a bit more aggression - try a bigger flick before entry, from watching your front wheels youve got more angle in the bank most of the time, try and use more of the track as well.

 

Im guessing youre running a welder rather than a 2 way and I think its holding you back, at 0:31 and 0:43 with a 2 way you would have been hard on the throttle to get more angle, with a 3 way it looks like youre almost having to feather throttle to keep balance. I know its a lot of money but a Nismo GT Pro would give you sooooo much more control its unreal, you probably wouldnt have lost the manji either so would have saved on a paintjob

 

Keep up the good work and keep posting vids man

Thanks mate, yeh it was really annoying at matsuri cus I had loads of camber and really struggled to put any power down to get some decent forwards momentum, once I have full tyre contact I'll be a lot more aggressive with entries etc ( hopefully) I set myself a challenge at matsuri and that was just too link the track, which I did most times but at fairly weak angle, by the time if got more comfortable with the track the day was over unfortunately, there's always next time, and I'll be full attack mode then

Haha yeh I've been looking at diffs and do agree that a decent diff would help a lot, but at this moment in time the funds are not there for a diff, maybe in time! Haha yeh saving the paint would have been nice.

What are you driving now out of interest mate, as I know you sold your z?

cheers man

Great start man, the driftworks hadling pack is a must!! just make sure driftworks have given you the updated rose joints for the front camber arms..... if they havent then they will send you the replacements for free if you send the old ones back!

oh awesome man! i take it drift cup at rockingham? ive got a ticket to do the matsuri part! have a look on my build thread dude, its all on there

whoops, try now mate

christ! that guy in the z is going for it!

short run of me at drift matsuri, have a read of my build thread if you like what you see

here is a short video of one of my runs at drift matsuri back in october. let me know what you think (advice welcome)

thanks guys! means allot. as everyone knows allot of effort goes into our cars and its nice to have kind words about it!

bit of an update..... went to fit my new y pipe tonight, the bolts were so rusty where the cat joins i had to just cut them off, i tried everything, power, a nut splitting device to no avail, i had the plan to drill the old studs out on the cats and just use normal bolts. the metal is so hard though, i used a 3mm drill bit to put a pilot hole in an then tried to use a 10mm bit to get the actual hole, but i need to work my way up to the 10mm as it wasnt biting the metal, so il sort that out tommorow.

also will be welding a silencer back into my exhaust as the novelty has definitly worn off haha.

im also booked in with martin richards to fit all my arms and lock kit on wednesday so ill update again after that is fitted.

im just uploading a video from drift matsuri to youtube so ill post that when its done.

hi all,

can any of the traders on here get hold of the version select body kit, or any one else know anywhere in uk that distributes them

many thanks.Doug

right then, time for an update!

first of all i hope you all had a great christmas and new year!

before christmas i ordered a set of toe arms so i could finally adjust my camber enough to get me nearer 0 degrees, i went for some voodoo adjustable arms from torqen, i went for these arms as they were one of the cheapest haha, and chris forsburg runs this brand on his comp cars so can't be too bad.

hopefully these will stop this happening to my tires........

Christmas was very kind to me this year... thanks to my pretty awesome girlfriend, she had been doing some research and digging into what i really wanted (apart from lynx, socks and chocolate) and she ordered me a Parts shop max super angle kit from the states!!!!!!!! F**king awesome!

i can't wait to get this fitted and have some decent lock! (example of same kit)

With the lock kit i need some extended tie rods so went for some tein ones

Im not sure if i have mentioned before about my driftworks front camber arms, but ill say it again.... once fitted i took the car for a run down the road and something was knocking later found out it was the rose joints on the camber arms, turns out driftworks just throw shitty rose joints on them, very annoying!!! after speaking to them about it, they said they had just released a brand new better quality rose joint for all camber arms and they were offering a free replacement on any arms sold over the last two years, so this soothed my anger. they look alot better than the old ones and will hopefully sort the knock.

At the moment i have all these parts sat in my room not fitted, mainly because ill need a full alignment after fitting, im getting my friend martin to fit the lock kit as its very adjustable and looks quite tricky to set up, and he has done a set before so knows exactly what hes doing, he can also align my car so its all getting done at his place in the next week or so! exciting times!

Unfortunately the other day i decided to drive over a load of rocks in the middle of the road...... the exhaust turned strangely loud and was down on power, jacked up the car to find it had done this to my Y pipe

in all fairness the y pipe was pretty shagged anyway from my car being low, but the rocks had truly finished it off, so off that came

ive ordered a cheap replacement for now as my money needs to be put towards other things at the moment, should arrive tommorow and ill get that fitted along with some new exhaust tweaks that ill be doing this week.

new y pipe i have ordered.

thats all for now till i get all this stuff fitted, will post some photos of the lock kit fitted as it should be pretty epic!

next up mods wise is probably going to be dropping the subframe and renewing bushes etc. might be looking at some new wheels too as im not sure if my 10.5 et-5 is going to work with my lock kit, got a few ideas in the pipeline but we shall see.

Forgot to mention, had a drift day at santa pod in December, although it was wet and struggled with grip had an awesome day, car performed faultlessly all day.

next drift day will probably be the probably be the spring matsuri in march, unless i get a ticked for the 3 sister day in February. will have all my new stuff fitted then so will be interesting!

yeh your right, it would probably last better than the one ive got haha! how much are they out of curiosity?

Get the stillen if you are after longevity!

 

 

Sent from my potato using duct tape

i would love the stillen as it looks really well made and heard nothing but good about it, however my car is so low it wouldnt last probably

Does changing a y pipe change the sound at all?

im not sure tbh, i know the aftermarket ones allow for better flow as they are less restrictive, but sound wise not sure.

If I'm honest you are better just to buy new for 100, i have a second had one installed with 30k on it and cracked on the flexi. Meaning it blew more than my old one.

yeh i thought that mate, have you had any experience with those cheap ebay £100 jobbies?

hello everyone,

my stock y pipe is on its way out, has anyone got an aftermarket one for sale, or thinking about selling......

thanks in advance. Doug

Do you mean the side steps that Tarmac sells that run below the sill?

Yeh those are the ones mate! Was just wondering if there was a second hand pair about anywhere! If not I'll be contacting good old Tarmac sportz

hi there, has anyone got a pair of side diffusers for sale? many thanks. Doug

Great read fella and the colour looks cool, sorry to see the door though : ( Good luck with your drifting.

thanks mate

All sounds awesome, new colour is ace, black is the best.

 

My friend had a siezed toe bolt that snapped on us, ended up temporarily using a standard bolt and nut and just centring it best as we could had no issues.

 

I was going to get the DW front arms so that knocking isn't good at all, can you pm me with more details on it?

 

Have you done the washer on steering arms trick and cut the stops for more lock?

thanks mate, ill drop you a pm.

Great read and progress ..... No one can say you're not getting the full use out of the car !! Looks so much better in the black ( apart from the tyre marks )

thanks man! yeh its a shame about the door...it was kind of expected though aha!

*update*

so..... the lead up to drift matsuri was pretty manic, trying to get everything sorted and check everything over to minimise break downs and problems etc, the main thing i wanted to do was to get the front and rear camber arms on and get it aligned.

managed to get the arms on easily enough, the rears were easy and the fronts taking a bit more time, i measured up the arms against the oem ones to try and get it somewhere near just so i could get to the alignment centre, i choose to go to A-line in dudley as i know a few people who go there from the drift scene and had heard that they are "low car" friendly. fitted the arms on a friday night and was going saturday morning to get the alignment done, about halfway to A-line and i could hear a knocking noise coming from the front of the car turns out driftworks camber arms have a distinct knock due to the rose joints.... not happy and not impressed! managed to get my car on the ramp and much to my disappointment the guys could not get the toe bolts undone and i didnt want to risk breaking the bolt as i would not be able to get the car home....gutted so they had a tweak of what they could to even up the camber i had and off i went!

next job was to get my harness's in, was a pretty straight forward job, did not have to weld any eyelets into the car and i was using a "wrap around" on my roll cage, i did have to fit some eyelets on the seat subframes though, which i just drilled through and bolted some on. job done.

earlier in my build thread i said i had bought a universal roof rack and it fitted and worked....well it didnt last very long, after test fitting it a few times the metal clamp buckle system decided to die... so i scratched my head and came up with a different idea! i ended up shortening the rack and re fitted the feet so its perfect width for the roof of my car, and totally removed the buckle/clamp system that was on it and ended up bolting on 2 small ratchet clamps on each side of the rack with the roof clamps on the end of the ratchet straps.....it works perfectly, really impressed with how solid it is, i had 3 tyres upright across the rack the whole way down to drift matsuri and it didnt move an inch.

next up was a service on the car, oil change, filters, and diff oil. i always do a service like this every 2 drift days just to ensure the car has the best chance of surviving

last on the list was sourcing some tyres and changing tyres on wheels from previous drift days, local garages are very helpfull and put aside good tyres that they would normally throw away for me, some are perfectly road legal too! some have punctures but easily fixed at my friends unit who has a tyre machine and puncture repair stuff!

so...... was it all worth the aggro and work for matusri..........YES! what an amazing weekend and venue! the event itself is ran by the bdc and for once was very well organised! had loads of seat time and minimal delays! the weather was typically welsh, it rained hard saturday morning but did clear up by about 12.30.

there were 3 tracks to choose from, the twisty touge track, the fast track and the hairpin practise corner. all are very fun and very different!

in the morning i opted for the touge track first, its so much fun, its got an uphill section, long corner and a downhill section too, it really does offer the best of everything, i got used to the track pretty quickly even though it was severly wet, but it just got better throughout the day as it dried out!

i then thought id have a go on the fast track, and it is.... fast, the last corner i was entering at about 90mph so it was pretty exciting stuff! but with all the excitement i did mess up.... ive thought of a million excuses as to why this happened but i simply... ran out of talent! as i exited the first corner i was manji'ing down the straight and over cooked it and did a half spin, and was flying down the straight backwards, as i hit the stop pedal it swung the front of the car around into tow large tractor tires.....

its fairly minimal damage and i was not too bothered as im building this car to be a drift car, not a show car!

The hairpin practise corner was good for practising good angle, but it was nothing on the other two tracks! it was pretty quiet all day as people wanted to just drive the proper tracks so it was something to do whilst the others were busy!

all in all the event was just amazing, i highly reccomend it to anyone who wants to drive a real track! everyone was friendly and no one judged another on skill level, everyone was there for the same thing.....to have fun!

here are a few photos taken off me.

for the last years this event has been on its been a once a year event, but there are rumours of there being a spring matsuri now so fingers crossed!

so back to the car,the car ran faultlessly all day and i was pretty happy with how it was on track, enough power, chassis felt good, but i do feel i need more lock, ive looked into various options but i think im going to go for a powered by max "max lock" kit, its $800 and made in the usa, one of my friends had a kit fitted to his 350z and the angle is immense, not quite wisefab, but nearly! and it doesnt look stupid fitted to the car. plans are to mabee get a kit early next year. obviously the alignment will be sorted too, sooner rather than later as grip was another problem at matsuri, im only using about 50% of my tire on the rear which is annoying. set of adjustable toe arms and that will be sorted hopefully in the next week or so.

realised i hadnt put a picture up of my hydro yet either so here it is.....

i have got a go pro vid of one of my runs, i didnt get many as the battery died and i forgot my cable but its something, ill upload to youtube later and add it on here for you guys to see

thats all for now, ill keep you all updated with anything else that happens

standard pose photo

Hmm a few Stephen Browns on fb haha! Are you friends with Noel Phipps by any chance haha?

Haha yeh sometimes it's unavoidable, but more lock does help! Ah cool, yeh is that the lock stops your on about? Yeh that would be a lot easier haha, my names dougie cant on fb! Cheers man!

Aha yeh I wish I'd sorted something out before drift matsuri last week, Mabee then I wouldn't have gone into a tyre wall ( totally blaming it on lack of lock) haha! Yeh that would be sweet cheers man! So in theory you've got 9mm spacer on now?