Misadventures of a Drift Newbie, Part 7: Novice Clinic Preparation.

Trial setup of our pit area. thanks Mom & Dad for the canopy!

Once we made our goal of getting our trusty 300ZX to the Spirit.jp event for our debut in the VIP parking section last month, it was time to start refining the car and getting her ready for drifting. We’ve been pretty busy. I’d been driving the car to work a couple times a week and on random errands just to get some miles on it, plus it’s just a really fun car to drive!

The clutch started getting weird on my way home from work one day, so we figured the slow leak had grown worse. Nate ordered a replacement clutch cylinder, and it arrived in time for our team work day last Saturday. Sure enough, the old cylinder had a big tear in the boot, so we slapped the new one in and bled the system. Now it’s doing clutch stuff just the way it’s supposed to!

There’s your problem.
“New” seats installed!

Next on our agenda was to do something about those nasty old original seats. My friend’s dad had some ratty Recaro knockoffs collecting dust in his shop and was kind enough to send them our way. We took a field trip to the junkyard and were lucky enough to find an original passenger’s seat that was in excellent shape! We bought it and threw it in, then cannibalized our original passenger’s seat to make a mount for our driver’s race bucket. Frank sliced and diced it and was able to make it fit the driver’s side of the car! We had to get creative with an old BMX bike peg and floorpan washers from a VW Beetle, but we were able to weld it all together into a nice sturdy mount for the seat. We were even able to keep the sliding back and forth function! It took us til after 3 AM but we finally got it to work. Huge thanks to Nate, Frank and Travis for all their hard work!

Thanks for making sparks fly, Frank!

The next day was the Speed & Style 2 event at RIR, so once again I took Chizuru to the VIP section and met the rest of the team there. We had a great time as usual, and I’m more eager than ever to get sideways myself after seeing all the incredible drivers!

VIP parking at Speed & Style 2.

In my last post, I mentioned that I wasn’t able to make the next Novice Clinic due to a scheduling conflict. Months ago I’d committed to attending Heavy Rebel Weekender in Winston Salem with family that weekend, so there was no getting out of it. As luck would have it, the almighty Joe of Spirit.jp added an additional clinic on July 21st! I signed up immediately. I’m simultaneously thrilled and terrified to let loose on the track, it’s going to be so amazing! Til then we’ll keep fiddling with the car to get her as ready as possible. Hope to see you there!

P.S. We now have an Instagram account, give us a follow for more behind-the-scenes stuff! @team_lemon_house

Can’t wait to get this thing sideways!

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