Digging deeper: ARD CER steering mod V.3.1/ Suspension Mod V.1

This idea of customizing my chassis caught me. Now I can't stop. I just hope it's all for good.
As I shown before, Alex is now rocking a full Yokomo front suspension. So, what has been done?

Team "Drift Lab"

My team is now officially complete. 

My good friend Ilya, whom I taught a few "tricks", filled the spot.  He have chosen this GP sports 180SX, which I do appreciate.

You might see, that the color is slightly different. Well, I was short on Translucent orange and Semi-gloss silver, so I used whatever orange I had left and backed it with LRP chrome. 

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.

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.

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 :-(

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.

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.

ARD CER torque rods

It's not a secret, that ARD has some play in front suspension arms and C-hubs. Not critical at all, but still a bit frustrating. 

Some time ago, I saw this mod on one of Malaysian (or somewhere in that Area) forum. As I was explained then - it increases the stiffness of the whole front, and removes all of the play. I was surprised, how stiff the chassis became. 121 Spur clearance is pretty tight.

 And it almost does not influence the suspension work at all.

Onevia gets Uras'd; part 1

It's always nice to get of a shelf, a body that you don't run to much. Sometimes, you look at it, and think that it has to be "refreshed" in a way. So, that's what I did. Set of Uras fenders to refresh my first self-made oldie Onevia. 

Nice fitment for +10 rear and +12 front, especially with that tires.

Achieved almost perfect fitment today, and will paint tomorrow.

Random weekend outdoor footage

Small compilation of outdoor footage, starring my lovely dog.
HD available on youtube.

ARD CER D11 CVD mod: the cheap way

SO, I have finally finished the steering mod. It's the simplest and cheapest way to give your CVD's a few more degrees of lock. Basically you just have to shave off the material that stops the dog bone from moving further into the cup. Simple as that. Also, had to shave off some material from C-hubs. 

I think the increase is around 2-3 degrees. Is it enough - judge for yourself.

Latest video Update: 13.07.2012

I haven't posted a video for a while. Partly because no one wants to film anything, and partly because not all people like to ride tandem rides, and just do freakish stuff when I try to follow them.

But I finally found a solution to both problems, and made a video. 

Beter to watch on Youtube.

Spice Toyota Vellfire

Earlier this week, my new mate came to me during practice and asked, If I could make him a favor and paint the body. He did not say, what kind of body it was, but he only told me the colors he wanted - white body with a red stripe. That were the colors that I had left from my previous works, so I said "Yes, why not".