Miata Turbo Forum - Boost cars, acquire cats.

It’s hard to believe but I've been doing track days for 15 years, but during the last 2 years I’ve only done a few events, due to other responsibilities, and not having time to get my car fixed up. When I first got the car, I did a lot of work to make it run reliably on the road race track, but figured the coilovers were good enough to run for a season or 2, and they were. Now the coilovers need a rebuild, the tires are shot, I need wheels with a reasonable offset and a few other items. None of this stuff is a big deal, but it all takes time that I don’t have at the moment.

Last Thursday I was hangout with a friend, who raced a T1 Vette for years, and he invited me to try a drift event. I said, “why not I’ll give it a shot”, so I topped off the oil and water and drove 3.5 hours to the drift event!

The good news is, even with a week suspension, the car was able to drift fine, except for a tendency to over rotate. If I do another drift event, I need to focus on holding the drift a little longer and work on transitions. Overall the car ran very well, so well in fact that I shredded the tires before noon.

The 3.5 hour drive to the event was pretty brutal, but the ride home was even worse. Since my Toyos were shredded, I had to buy 2 ten year old 205.60.15 of a guy for 20 bucks. They mostly fit, but scrapped over ever bump on the way home. The scraping plus no muffler, no seat padding and bad leg position makes for a pretty unpleasant experience.

It was neat to see some of the creativity that goes into the nicer builds, such as tubed front wheel wells to allow for increased steering angle. Everyone was well behaved, and the event was well run, but certainly not as regulated as a track day. The people where friendly, just like any other car enthusiasts, but they just have different goals compared to track day people. lots of spectators any many amazing cars makes for a pretty entertaining Saturday.

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