Misadventures 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 alternator was in fact problematic, or if the light was a false signal. That’s well within reason because the whole gauge cluster is a wonky flickery mess, so it never instilled a lot of confidence. Autozone was a bust, because all they did was tell me that the battery voltage showed a little low when the car was off. When I asked if they could test the alternator she said no, and suggested I drive it around for a half hour and bring it back to see if the battery voltage had changed. Sounds like a good way to get stranded in rush hour traffic, so I hightailed it back home. Fast forward to Friday, I was home a bit early from work and feeling adventurous so I tried the Advance across the busy street from the oh-so-helpful Autozone. They were able to confirm that the alternator was, in fact, doing it’s thing! With renewed confidence, I took her on her very first beer run! Once that’s done you can truly call a new car your own. She performed flawlessly.
Over the weekend I got a few other things done. Bit by bit she’s becoming a more usable and trustworthy car! I also went ahead and wrapped the greenhouse with some leftover diamond white metallic vinyl I’d rescued from the dumpster at work. I’ll admit it looks kinda dumb now, but it’ll all make sense once the itasha wrap goes on.
Fast forward to this morning, and I decided to drive her to work. She was a little grumbly at first, but once she warmed up she did great! I have to say, there’s something incredibly amusing about driving a ratty drift car to work, I kept giggling the whole way!
Next step is more fine tuning, then start racking up some miles! Nate is coming over Friday so we can do a few more little things, then we plan to go cruising around and get a little farther from home. Nothing like the ol’ Italian tuneup to blow out the cobwebs! Then comes the big day, her formal debut at Spirit.jp’s Soukoukai Practice Event on this Sunday, 5-19-19. Come see us in the VIP parking section! Thanks for reading, hope to see you at the track.