JDM S130
Now I had gone in halves with dad, I actually had some money to spend on upgrades thanks to Ebay. First we needed a deadline, so we entered Sandown in October 2007. The car at this point was still only a paddock basher. As everyone would agree, these cars of ours are an ongoing project no matter what stage you are at. Both dad and myself clashed heads on what to do next. He wanted to increase the power of the car and I wanted to improve handling. Luckily for me, fate would intervene. As we were bleeding the brakes we had a failure coming from the master cylinder. As we had already booked it in to have extractors and a 2.5” exhaust, we got them to replace the m/c too. The mechanic claimed that new m/c were now not available and the only solution was to rebuild, which involved a re-bore and sleeve increasing it from 15/16 to 1”. I was happy to do that as I had plans in the future for the brakes. We had also bought a 200ZR rear end that has an R200 4.375 LSD in it. I am a toolmaker by trade and have access to some pretty cool equipment at work, due to a nice boss. So I made some adaptor plates to fit the CV driven diff. If like us, you have a stash of spares lying around. I was able to fit double sway bars front and rear. Semi slicks from Ebay were to be used for the first time for us too. We also changed the oil and coolant then fitted an extinguisher and off we went to our first sprint.
Wow, it was a 35°C day. Which on the track is bloody hot. Mum entered in the 200ZR, it had a dodgy ignition module we found out later (Even I could drag it down the straight). To the Datto’s credit, it did fantastic to take 2 drivers without an engine failure after all that time sitting in a barn. I have the philosophy from my 4X4 days. “When in doubt, rev it out”. I tend to go as fast as possible, find the line of being out of control, then pegg it back a bit. After setting my best time for the day, I had a brain fade at the end of the front straight, when braking I dropped it from 5th to 3rd. This created the biggest compression lock up that I have ever experienced. I didn’t jump on the brakes, I thought to myself. “I can accelerate out of this”. Boy was I wrong, maybe with more power. But what happened was the car flicked around to be travelling at over 100km/h on the grass, backwards. It was all in slow motion. When it stopped, I thought “WOW that was fun”. Don’t think I want to do it again anytime soon though. That was the last lap of the 3rd session. Dad went out on his 4th run and set his best time for the day. Then back to me to jump back on the horse. I set another fastest lap and on my 2nd lap of my 4th run, after dad had his 4 runs, I was having a blinder. “Fingers and thumbs…….fingers and thumbs” I thought to myself as each corner was smooth and fluent. Until, approaching turn 9 after racing through the chicane’s I jumped on the brakes…….. "Ping". My foot went straight to the floor. Which meant I was carrying a lot of speed into a 90° left hand corner. I threw the car sideways to wash off speed and try to get around the corner without luck and end up with the front of the car in the sand trap. I limp back to the pits only to find that I spat out a front driver side brake pad. I think my driving philosophy changed that day! My best time was a 1:43.31, 2nd last in class only to my dad in the same paddock basher.
There are things to take away from every negative event. First, check underwear. 2nd You're not as good as you think you are. 3rd Make sure that you can slow the car down and go around the corner.
Things have got to change.
To be continued………
