Lauren's AE86. Pics on page 13.

[Lauren]

Ali's vid of Buxton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHWlJH8L ... r_embedded

[Bender Unit]

Thought you were pretty brave to go to Buxton Lauren!

[Lauren]

I was sitting in the car, waiting to go out crapping it James!

It's not quite as bad when you are out there, but that wall is ever present. Am hoping Oulton has less to hit!

What I need now, is a 'I survived Buxton' sticker!

[Lauren]

Another vid of Buxton:

'Buxton - The Wall'

http://vimeo.com/25670289

[Lauren]

If only I could read Japanese!

Just bought this from DW:

Drift Tengoku AE86 Special:

[Lauren]

Went drifting at Oulton Park on Friday on the 'rally experience' track. Basically the track is always wet (they have a bowser that goes round) and it's a very low grip surface.

This means, no tyre wear and being able to drift at 20mph, so really good for learning technique. This was just as well as clearly I had a lot to learn. Whilst I was of the belief that I could hold a car sideways pretty well on track, this was a whole new kind of sideways.

After about an hour I got some instruction which was free and I must have had an hour's worth. Basically I was told to be more of a hooligan and learn to clutch kick, which really helps get the back end out.

Following this I fell off the track everywhere, must have spun 20 times, but as is the way with these things it started to come together in the afternoon. I found there was a real sweet spot with the car when you had about a turn of lock on. In fact, it was all about balancing the car on the throttle and a looser type approach with the steering. What did mmc, was I was holding the car nicely sideways and went to put more lock on and I was straight on the lock stops.

I also learnt how to transition and use the weight transfer to get the car round. All in all great fun, zero tyre wear only used half a tank of fuel. Mark had one go and put it in a bit of a ditch, think he was too worried about dinging the car after that.

A pic from very early on as the batteries on Mark's camera last about 5 minutes:


No doubt had Mark has his camera in the afternoon the pics would have been better.

Am definitely thinking about doing this again. The guys at Drift One want me to be a regular at Buxton by the looks of it.

[Bender Unit]

This means, no tyre wear and being able to drift at 20mph, so really good for learning technique. This was just as well as clearly I had a lot to learn. Whilst I was of the belief that I could hold a car sideways pretty well on track, this was a whole new kind of sideways.

The trick is letting go - swing the car in, clutch kick and let the wheel run free and wind the lock on (at least that’s how it works with a manual rack) If you try and manually wind it on your going to struggle. Handbrake / power over doesn’t work with the 86, you need to be brutal.

PS rack makes it harder – that’s why nearly everyone runs a manual rack. You can still drift with a PS rack, but when I let a lad jump in mine for a drift (he drifted his 86 really well using a PS rack) he commented that the steering feel and response was night and day. He also felt he could be more relaxed behind the wheel and could throw it around a lot more with the manual rack. PS racks have less resistance so wind the lock on too quickly which makes the car snappy.

[Lauren]

Yep, I got the letting go of the wheel thing and balancing on the throttle. To be fair I didn't find the car snappy it all seemed to be in the throttle control. I found that if you just floored it the lock would wind on very quickly, but I could ease the speed of it by modulating the throttle mid-drift.

Yes, also learnt I had to be a fair bit harder on the car which is not what I'm used to do doing. Clutch kicking was taking me a bit of practice to get it right.

I take your point about PAS and non assisted racks, though I've never tried to drift a manual rack. My problem is a manual rack will never happen because it's pretty much unmanagable at slow speeds, it's just way too heavy for me. I guess though at least with the PAS rack I can make quicker corrections as I haven't got the issue of weight. I understand I lose out in feel, but it's still light years ahead of the crappy electric power steering you find on newer cars.

Anyway I've got a whole load of ICE to go in the car shortly so that won't help either.

[Lauren]

We have been busy, with ICE at last! 4 months of no, music at all, well apart from the tuned 4AGE.

New head unit:


Mark's words but no pics:

huge thanks to neil for helping

/cutbyeyedrawnbyhand

not to mention the thanks that go to the bosch jigsaw that not only did the cutting but also provided the perfect radius for the front curve via it's mains lead

There is still more to do... source speakers, cut out the holes for them. Add some reinforcement plates to the top side where it rests on the rear panels as it's only hardboard, screw down the top hardboard, add the hinge pins, cover it, maybe lose some more mdf etc... then there is the amp, wiring etc...

[Lauren]

Double post

[Lauren]

It's all in! Huge thanks to Mark and Tom.

Setup is:

4" 3 way speakers in the OEM mounts in the dash
6x9's in the rear parcel shelf that Neil and Mark made from MDF. (sorry for lack of pics at this point). The rears are driven by an amp.

I hate to say it but it was a bit dissapointing upon initial testing, though we found a drastic improvement by using the rears as subwoofers which cut out the mid and high range coming from the rear. This allowed us to hear the fronts and also allowed us to turn the sub up and down in level, so we found a much better balance. We still have a bit of an issue with the front speakers getting hammered by bass when you turn it up, so Mark is looking at fitting filters to take all the bass out of the fronts, so we can maximise that at the rears which ought to improve things still further. The Alpine head unit we bought was a huge PITA in terms of not allowing us to set it up how we so wished.

I think in retrospect we probably should have not gone for 6x9's in the rear. In an ideal world I think it would really need some separate components at the front, so good sized door speakers, some mid range in the dash and some tweeters around the door pillar area. Then it would probably work well with a big old sub either in the boot or rear shelf driven by the amp.

Speakers that could handle a bit more welly up front would have negated the current issue we have. That said it does sound pretty good to be fair and with the fronts doing more of the work (they really are very good for 4" speakers, but 4" speakers do have their limitations) it does provide a pretty crisp sound which is better than I expected. As Mark said the setup works better for the kind of music he listens to. My music tends to have a lot of bass, as it's all Indie with strong bass guitars (think Stone Roses, I wanna be adored, Fools Gold, breaking into heaven etc), so the rears are a little marginal on bass and the fronts get a bit hammered. Still I think we'll try those filters on the front to see if it allows us to get a bit more bass out of the rears.

[Lauren]

Hmm, have given it a road test, I just can't get the depth of sound out of it that I wanted. The problem is we can't turn the bass down to the front, stupid head unit settings, just don't allow it.

I'm also not sure that the 6x9's have enough welly. So am thinking about what to do... I think it does pretty well, if you're not mad about your bass (like I am), but it needs something more. Not sure if adding a subwoofer and wiring the 6x9s to the rear output would help.

Comments from ICE experts welcome.

[Marf]

12" Sub in the boot
5/6" two ways and tweeters in the front.

Big amp to run sub
Smaller amp to run front speakers - connected via a crossover.

High pass filter on rear sub
Low pass filter on front speakers.

[Lauren]

That would be nice.

Can only get 4" in the front, there really isn't any room, unless I start carving up the doors.

Also not sure about tweeter mount points again unless the A pillar cover was modified.

Not sure there is any point in amping the front speakers as they aren't that powerful. Also we've put filters in to cut the bass out of the front speakers, so they are only doing mid range and treble.

I've been driving around in it today. Think the best solution seeing as obviously I can't take back what I've already bought, is to put an enclosed sub in the boot and possibly use another amp to drive it.

My other idea was to run the 6x9s off the HU amp and use the 360w amp to drive a sub, though Mark said he'd prefer to use another amp to drive a sub and run it through the existing one that is already wired in.

Mark wanted to put a sub in the parcel shelf, but I'm not convinced a sub will work well mounted in such a way. He's worried about losing boot space, but in all honesty the only time I have a relatively full boot is when we go camping, it's empty for the most part so I'm not worried about that.

[Lauren]

There I was on my last visit of the day looking forward to a long weekend at Tatton Park and the car's first show, when I get in start it up, drive off and notice that the exhaust seems to have got a fair bit louder.

I get the car home having worked out in my head it was something to do with the exhaust at the rear end. So I get out the car and there is my rear silencer at a funny angle and about 3" lower than normal.

Got it up on some axle stands, crawled underneath and where the pipe goes into the rear silencer it's cracked all the way round. The crack is inbetween a triangulated support bracket so at least it's going nowhere.

I realise now that the rear doughnuts supporting the tailpipe weren't doing that much and the constant flexing has fatigued the metal where the silencer joins to the system. Boo, basically!

I've wired up the silencer at the moment, just so it doesn't stress the support bracket which is holding it together.

I'll be straight on the phone to JP exhausts tomorrow and hope they remember me. Not sure what I'm going to do though, I've got to pay for my car insurance next week, so not good timing. Guess I'll either get them to repair it or toss up between a new rear silencer or a new system.

If they can't fit me in tomorrow then I'll bandage it up which will be enough to get to Tatton Park and back (it's only a 15 minute drive) then book it in for Monday. Fortunately I'm off work.

There is no way that I'm going to let the car miss it's first show. Way too much work has gone into it and besides I'm looking forward to getting sloshed with a few old friends.

[Quigonjay]

bummer, i guess its quite violent on anything that moves coming on and off the throttle as drifters do
just a thought - cant find a pic right now but have you seen one of those mr2 downpipes that have the extra flexi section in them to take a bit of stress out of the exhaust? might be worth trying to get something like that made up?

[Lauren]

Well, to be fair I haven't done that much drifing in it and I wasn't planning to do anymore. Have decided I'll stick to shows and trackdays.

Reckon it's all the bloody speedhumps I have to go over and the rough roads where I work, they truly are appalling and the rear end even wound down on the dampers is still pretty stiff.

If JP do it, they will do a great job, I will talk to them about extra supports at the rear, but I think that the rear silencer was not supported particularly well in the first place and this has hastened the fatigue as I reckon the weight of the silencer was being taken by the pipe going into it. I'm not sure you'd have room to put a flexi in though as there isn't huge amounts of room where the pipe comes down after going over the rear axle.

[Neil_turbo]

Sure JP will sort you out! If you do go for a full system (hopefully they can bodge weld for a few months to get wonga together) then they come witha lifetime guarentee, so would be on there head to support it properly anyway i guess

On the upside got a nice single malt to keep us all warm tonight

[Lauren]

Yep, know about the lifetime guarrantee, Neil, they did a system for our beemer some years ago.

Exhaust news:

Called JP, think they remembered me, they are really busy but have said that I can take my down there Monday and they'll fit it around other jobs and have it ready by Wednesday.

Not sure what I'm going to do yet, ie repair or bite the bullet and get a system which will mean I don't have to worry about it again. Will have some discussion with them on Monday and weigh up costings.

I've been to Halfords and got some gun gum stuff and managed a reasonable repair I think. I have also jacked up the back box and wired it so at least it will help to hold the joint together and give it some more support. It will do for the weekend as let's face it, I've only got to drive it to Tatton then park it up for the weekend and drive it back.

So, good news we are on for the show!

Just GJOB stuff to do, shopping and we're sorted.

[Lauren]

Yay, got car back, JP have done a lovely job in repairing it. They've put a new section on where it cracked off and have welded an entirely new bracket, so the exhaust does not move about at all anymore.

Reckon this ought to be good enough to get through winter and see me well into next year.

New bracket:


They've quoted me £350+ VAT, so £420 for a sytem from the manifold back. Will do that sometime next year, I think.