Misadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 13: We’re back!

After a bit of a hiatus, we’re back! Back in November at our last practice day we obliterated the clutch to the point that the car had to be towed home. Then between the holidays, family stuff and new work schedules time got away from us for a couple months. At the beginning of February we were finally able to get back to work reanimating Chizuru for the new year.

Work finally begins!

We started out getting the car up on jackstands, where it would stay for the next 3 weeks. Due to Frank’s new work schedule we only have Sundays available for all-hands-on-deck jobs.

We worked under close supervision.
Nate and Frank getting the transmission out.

At the end of the first day we had everything done short of actually removing the transmission. The second work day saw the transmission on the ground and the old clutch out.

Well there’s our problem!

Leading up to our next work day for this project we had the flywheel machined to accept our new Centerforce stage 2 clutch that Travis tracked down on a Black Friday sale. On Sunday we got the new clutch in, put the transmission back in the car, and finally got it back on the ground.

New clutch!

Now all that remained was putting the exhaust back together! We had to cut it apart to get it off, but Frank rebuilt it with some fancy bolt-together flanges. Now we’ll be prepared next time it needs to come off for whatever reason.

Exhaustive repairs.

And with that, Chizuru is back on the road! I’ve been using her as my daily driver for the past week and a half so we can get the new clutch broken in. I’ve really missed this car, I forgot how fun it is to drive! I’m also perpetually amused by running normal boring errands in a ridiculous itasha wrapped drift car, it’s just so much fun.

Most ridiculous grocery getter.

Our plan is to sign up for a Spirit,jp practice day once we get new brakes on it and the clutch is properly broken in. If all goes to plan, we should be back to doing mad skids within the month! We can’t wait to get back on the track. As always, huge thanks to my team, I couldn’t do it without you guys!

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