Ugly Projects & Motorsports
Misadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 8: Novice Clinic Day!
The moment we’ve all been waiting for is finally here! We participated in our first Spirit.Jp Drift Series Novice Clinic, and we lived to tell about it! Since my last post we’ve just been ironing out the bugs and putting some miles on the car to get it as ready as we could for the…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 7: Novice Clinic Preparation.
Once we made our goal of getting our trusty 300ZX to the Spirit.jp event for our debut in the VIP parking section last month, it was time to start refining the car and getting her ready for drifting. We’ve been pretty busy. I’d been driving the car to work a couple times a week and…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 6: Chizuru’s Debut.
This was a big week for us! On Friday Nate came over so we could do some more work on Chizuru the 300ZX to get her ready for the public debut. He replaced some of the broken and duct-taped-together rubber bits in the intake plumbing, which cured a lot of vacuum leaks. She’d been pretty…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 5: Chizuru Emerges.
Chizuru has left the driveway! Teammate Nate and I have gotten the Z31 up and running enough to start making short ventures out into the world! The maiden voyage was last Monday to the the Autozone still within my neighborhood. The battery light on the dash was on and we wanted to see if the…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 4: Chizuru Awakens.
Last Sunday my teammate Nate came over, and we set about rousing Chizuru from her slumber with the help of a new fuel pump. We thought it was going to be just a matter of removing 2 screws and popping off that access panel in the trunk floor to get at the pump, only to…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie. Part 3: Work Continues.
Work has been continuing on the Z31, slowly but surely it’s coming along. Since the last post my teammate Nate and I have removed the carpet and headliner, and many of the other unnecessary interior parts. It should weigh less and smell better inside now! We discovered a bit more rust than we’d like to…
Read More“Stumper” an explanation for the jeep rat rod thing in the corner of our shop.
This whole project started a few not so short years ago with a relatively simple idea: “After years of wishy-washy feelings towards modifying this car or that, I decided that I may have more motivation and better results making the whole car, more or less… Goals: Handle and stop like a Vette, Look like a…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie. Part 2: Chizuru Arrives.
So in my last post, I talked about how I fell in love with drifting in the not-so-distant past, and how I planned to start doing it myself. The crucial component is a car in which to drift, so here we are! The fine folks at Roscoe’s had this forlorn 1985 Nissan 300ZX in the…
Read MoreMisadventures of a Drift Newbie. Part 1: Introduction.
Hi, my name is Tim, and I am addicted to drifting. It all started back in November of 2018 when I was bored and needed an excuse to get out of the house. Spirit.jp Drift Series was holding their first event at RIR, which just happens to be about 10 minutes away from my house.…
Read MoreBecause (diy) Racecar
This vehicle came to us from the son of its original builder. He worked on this car for years but sadly illness moved in on him faster then he could get this project finished. We saw it for sale and heard the story and knew immediately it needed to come here. It’s built mostly from…
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