10 000.

1 Year, 10 000 views. Isn't it awesome ?!
Thank you very much for showing interest to my blog. I will do my best to keep it up for you, guys.

YIDM through my lens, pt.2 - bodes and chassis

During the second day, when we were waiting long 5 hours for our finals, I decided to walk around and take some pictures of the bodies and chassis. 

Now opening: Garage sale

 Today I have opened a new page with items I don't need any more.

This one is mostly for local readers, however, if I ever put up something you are extremely interested in - EMS and paypal ARE an option. 

Feel free to contact me any time.

 

YIDM 2012 through my lens, pt.1

Ever since I returned, all my friends were desperate to know, how was my experience at YIDM. Since I had no time to post any pictures during the competition, i at least can share them now.

   

Team "Drift Lab"

Lately, Saint petersburg competition scene have been refreshed with a new Evil Empire championship, which will consist of numerous stages and include team competitions as well. That is why i founded team "Drift lab". Team features me, as one of the strongest drivers in the city, and my protege, so to say. This combination is very promising, so we hope to win this year's championship.
He will be driving my Yokomo DIB , and i will stick to ARD for now.
Since we don't have the desired paint in the city, team bodies should be ready in a month or so.

SPB arena runs #1

Latest video update.

Japan Inspired Koguchi 180SX

I am sorry for not posting anything during the championship - I simply didn't have a spare minute, and WIFI was no the strongest point of Yatabe.

Major write-off is yet to come, and in the meanwhile, I would like to share something I brought from Japan. We don't have much color choice of Tamiya PS paints in Russia, so I made a body right where color choice is perfect - Japan.

 Only 2,5 days took me to make this body, so the paint job is, to be honest, is the worst i have ever done. But who cares, when it has 10 signatures of D1 drivers, Manabu Suzuki signature, and the manager of "team Suzuki" brand. This is much more important to me.

Kumakubo, Ueno, Taniguchi, Saito, Kawabata, Orido, Shinmi, Tokita, Nomura and 1 more signature, that I can not identify at the moment.

This, as a "Japanese inspired body", should have proper battle stickers and a big wing to spice things up. At this point I plan to stop the bodywork and get into hardware upgrades, modifying and setting.

Yokomo international drift meeting

Its happening

Rajicon track video

Here are a few clips from Super rajicon track. Although i had whole 2 hours of riding time, turned out my Yokomo R2 are super slippery on the surface. The speed was very low, but the car was very hard to control either, so it wasn't that easy. Basically, I filmed 90% of my riding time, so please excuse my minor mistakes, while I was getting used to the track.

Tokyo rc scene

Greetings from Tokyo. It's my second day here and I decided to visit some rc shops, thanks to my friend Re-xtreme, who made a wonderful guide.

So, anyway, my choice stopped at "rakusei models" because it was easy to find, and "super rajicon" as it had a small track.

Rakusei was really fun as the cashier knew English and helped me out to find what i need. Stock is good, but it's hard to find what you need.


All these parts, that we have to wait weeks to arrive to Russia, are all here on the sliding shelf, available to touch.


 

SPB arena video Update

Here is the latest video update. No Superior driving skills, but a good overview of the work done on the track.

YIDM 2012. Team Russia.

"Team" is a bit too much, to be honest.  I am the only one from the western part of Russia. I know 1 or 2 guys are coming from East too, but I only know one of them, very briefly. 

These are the bodies I am going to use. Stay tuned for daily updates, and of course, wish me luck.

See you on the other side.

DL-drifting DIB tension rods

To my big disappointment, lower caster blocks came with a fair amount of play in them. That was predictable, so I was quick to implement my tested solution - tension rods. Simple, easy, super cheap.

This does not influence suspension work at all, except for a small dynamic camber, which is acceptable (and obviously better that a sh*t load of play).

Also, some shims were inserted into steering assembly. That gave me a very rigid rack.

DL-drifting Yokomo DIB

Even though i wanted to make a build review for my fellow Russian mates, at some point I simply got bored of photographing every bolt and package, like most of them want it to see. The main idea of the hobby is to have fun, so I put my camera aside, and finished the build, having proper fun.

Yokomo DIB. Getting ready for International Drift Meeting

Christmas came early this year. Today I received this amazing 3kg package of all kinds

 of Yokomo parts. 

Evil Empire RCdrift Championship, stage one

We spent almost a complete year without any championships or tournaments. Nobody seem to be interested in testing their skills (If there were any) on the track. Instead we just drift wherever we can in small groups of up to 10 people and don't know about other groups like us. That's not a proper hobby family.

Anyway, Evil Empire drift team, which is a 1:1 drift team with rather good drivers, was kind enough to support us and make a test event, called EERCDC. It was not anything around "WOW", but we were very happy to compete against each other and, finally, meet our colleagues from Moscow, which was a big surprise for us. 

Rebuilding the Arena for better

Sorry, guys. It's been a while since I posted anything, because mostly, nothing has really been happening.

Recently, our local track was finished and tested. To the great disappointment, the track turned out really narrow and hard to drive. Driving it alone is a tricky thing, let alone couple drives. I am not talking about trains, because skill level does not allow us to do that yet(

After a while, we decided to make some corrections, which actually, made track a lot better. Longer bridge allowed to widen the main line, however now we have to make a "blind" switch on a rather high speed which is not very cool. 

Stay tuned for another update this week, with pictures and videos. Track already has hanging clipping points and markings.

SPB Drift Arena pt.2

We are slightly getting there. 

SPB Drift Arena

Not so long ago, we lost the last indoor riding place in our city. And since the terrible Russian winter is about to come, we decided to rent a new place for this winter, and see how it goes.
Only 60sq meters in the basement of an big house, but close to subway, which is pretty rare for this price.

AASBO/TRA Kyoto GT 86: part 4

Yet, another huge milestone in my project.

Silver and black are covered in PS-55 matt paint, rear diffusor and fog lights are painted with black from the outside, most of the window trims are on, and most important - body panels are glued to the body. I still need to trim them and make more realistic by adding some parts to them.

AASBO/TRA Kyoto GT 86: part 3

Finally I managed to find some time on my project. Studies are hard, so I can only work on it on weekends. This time I painted the body and 1.5 fenders. Still, I have to spray black and silver with PS-55 and paint rear diffuser and fog lights with black from the outside. Plenty of work to do.

Custom RC body Paint jobs by RDT team member "Drew"

Since the paint job for my GT86 will be done by Andrey "drew", I decided it would be very nice of me to feature some of his works. 

AASBO/TRA Kyoto GT 86: part 2

Another day spent, rubbing off 3 layers of old paint from my lovely BMW. One of rear arches is now almost ready, thought I made some mistakes during cutting. But I know how to correct them. Black color will hide everything)

Arch came out a bit wider than I thought it would. Who knew I'd ever need a spacer for a +12 wheel.

Picture starts to clear up

AASBO/TRA Kyoto GT 86: part 1

Boom. Here comes the new project. This should be the most awesome one I have by this moment.
Tamiya Gt86 body + custom fenders (previously trashed Yokomo BMW) and a custom paint job.

Latest video update: 09 September

Here is the lates video, filmed during the weekend training. This is not in the best quality and somehow does not include some great shots, but still show some skills. We now have 3 drivers in our drift trains and we try hard to go up to 4. Thats a huge progress for all of us.

Here you go. Don't expect more than 480p :-(

Russian Body of the month: August 2012

Just in time to keep the blog updated - new body of the month by dubosos from Moscow. You are looking at rare BMW M3 GTR, that was found in the backyard of German E-bay.

Russian Body of the month: July 2012

Today I decided to start a new column about Russian Body of the month series. Sadly, there were a lot of nice bodies before this post, so I will have to fit all of them in the next article.

For now - what we have here, is a Yokomo Mark II by RusDJ from Vladivostok.

 

D1:10 random video: part 5

All of a sudden, video 5 comes out. And there I am, battling with Adoru. BMW vs BMW. Surprisingly, i did worse than I thought I did. I need a lot of practice so I can face him again.

D1:10 random video: part 10. Final

Looks like we are done here. Final video from Italian guys.
It's probably top 6, with my Russian mate Nikita at work.

Video 10, FInal

D1:10 random video: part 7 and part 8

Whoever this guy is, he is spamming us with his videos, which is pretty cool actually.
So, there we have it. Part 7 and part 8 respectively.
Part 7 is probably group B, and 8 is group A. I have to admit, that I saw more interesting duels in group B and below, rather than in group A. What is really worth seeing is at the end of video 8, where Takahiro (s15) chases Adoru (BMW). Takahiro has MAD skills and very very heavy body.

Can't embed them guys, so below are the direct links.

RcDrift Olanda 2012 p7
RcDrift Olanda 2012 p8

D1:10 random video, part 4 and 6

It resembles a story with 3 pigs, when police found pig #1 and pig #3, and then was trying to find pig #2, while there was no pig #2 at all.
After video #1, and video #2, we have video #4 and #6.

Video #4 have some footage of me (Look for red BMW) and a lot of Adoru.

Video #6 can not be embedded for some reason. But anyway, both of them are available in 1080 on youtube.
Video #6 link

D1:10 random video, part 2

Yaay. Another video from D1:10. Mostly, is is filled with italian drifters. But eve this is a pure luck - seems like all news about D1:10 is a secret and a big mystery.

CVD mod. The hard way.

Now you all remember the previous post, about the easy way. Today I tried something more hard.
Basically, I had 45mm square wide angle dog-bones. They did not fit the CVD cup, because the ball joint was too big. So, I had to widen the cup, and also widen the pin holes.
Everything turned out great. No play, very smooth, and stiff - almost like a factory CVD. Angle increase is significant, as you can see from the picture below. Now I will have to find a way to increase Steering rack travel to handle these nearly 60 degrees of lock.

Stock (left) dog bone compared to Square wide angle (right) dog bone

Onevia gets Uras'd; part 3. Finished

Here it is. Not as wide as I expected. Only +5-6 mm in total on the rear and +3-4mm on the front. Can't even fit my +12 wheels. +8 are still pretty good though.
I can't tell exactly, what I feel. One minute - I love it, other - I hate it. Maybe I should refresh the front bumper too...

Onevia gets Uras'd; part 2

It was such a shame to find out, that white LRP paint turned out to be pearl white (Scumbag salesman).
To me, it was more like a pearl base for white color. But anyway, I had no will to go to the farthest end of the city for another overpriced 150 can of paint, so I backed the parts with tiny coat of this pearl white, and then with silver. Of course, colors did not match, since body is backed with white. I am thinking of respraying the whole car from the outside.