Im at a pretty exciting point in my life at the moment. In a week’s time I start my new job and I’m also taking some tender steps into the world of drifting! First up, new job. Ill be starting work at a place called Vistra as a system engineer (bowing gracefully out of the IT security world for now) which, amongst other benefits, will see me visiting random places around the world from time to time. The offices are spread around the world so occasionally Ill be expected to visit these sites for auditing, maintenance etc. A very exciting career move I feel, and one that should keep me interested and active for a long time!

The second aspect is my move to take up drifting. It’s a sport that I’ve been always mildly attracted to but never thought about too much. The closest I’ve ever come to doing it is drifting in Need for Speed, or that time I slid the bum of a Ford Scorpio Cosworth out going round a roundabout.
My girlfriend Kayliegh has offered to buy me a drifting “taster” session for my birthday in July but the majority of the sites require you have your own RWD car to use… not very handy when I drive a 1.2 FWD Punto. This has led me to consider selling the Punto and investigate some RWDs (and an AWD…) but nothing concrete yet.

I joined two communities to get a better idea of the drifting world, particularly in the UK scene. The first was “driftworks.com” and the second was “trampdrift.com”. Driftworks is a huge site, home to a successful team and a lot of users. The community is very diverse but is amazingly relatively self moderated. Abuse is handed out frequently but pretty much tempered with useful advice.

The second community, TrampDrift, is a lot smaller but more tightly knit. It revolves around people drifting on the cheap (welded diffs, cut springs etc) and so far they all seem to be really cool guys. I think out of the two communities, this is probably the one Ill end up idling the most.

Interesting little adventure to note though. There’s two drift taster people I found out about; “drift-tutor” and “driftexperience”. Drift Tutor expect you to have your own car where as the other supplies one, but after a suggestion from a forum member at Driftworks I pm’d the man behind Drift Tutor and double checked.
I got a very prompt courteous reply confirming that they could supply a car but it would cost more money and that even though I had no experience I would still benefit from the course. Grade A response and one that made me want to find a RWD just to use them.
However, I was keen to see just how helpful the community at Driftworks were and posted a question about how the LSD actually works. I need to make it clear that this wasn’t a semi-troll post or anything; I genuinely didn’t know how it worked properly. First response? I was told to google it. By a man who was advertising the Drift Experience people….
So yeah, think Ill stick with Drift-Tutor or anybody else over that company! I admitted that I had googled it before but all the answers were too technical for my non-mechanic brain but I still can’t help thinking “Wow, what a dick!”. After the general pleasant atmosphere I had witnessed over the previous few days, this just seemed such a shitty response to make. Anyway.

So now I’ve made a sizeable update to this blog, Ill update again when I have something hopefully awesome to say about getting a new car or something.

One step closer to victory! The current state of play now is that I’ve removed the original filter but left the housing and have the kit attached to the end of the housing:

The next step now is to wait for the correct pipes to come down so I can remove the original housing and run the induction kit down the back, making the engine bay look a lot neater and, well, cooler. The sound it makes now is very nice, a lovely deep whoosh sound when you accelerate!

Stay tuned for part 3 (most likely after Christmas though!).

My christmas present from my lovely other half this year is an induction kit for my 1.2 8V Punto Sport. The power gains will be barely noticeable but it will have a nice throaty sound and generally make me feel happier. Anyway, as we’ll be away for Christmas this year, we decided to swap gifts early so it was with great excitement that I prepared to fit it. It was a quiet afternoon at work and although there was a light drizzle we (myself and a co-worker) decided it would take 5 minutes to do it. 

Can you imagine my sadness when it didnt fit straight on first time round? After standing in the now pouring rain in the car park trying to remove the existing factory fitted air filter, we established that a) the kit would never fit the way the manufacture intended as the engine bay was too small where the carburetor sits and b) the aluminium pipe they sent as a cold air feed would be ideal to change where the kit could sit except they sent a plastic one instead (which we cant risk sitting on a nice hot engine…).

It was also discovered that the kit didn’t allow space for a breather pipe to fit in so I have to order a filter to go on it as well as try and persuade the manufacturer to send me the correct part! Looks like this little bit of fun will have to wait till next weekend now.