I’m supposed to be taking a break but Darnell asked me to join him at a Piedmont event. So I did and it was fun.

I had to do brakes on the truck and fix a few broken front suspension parts on the G from the last event.

Some photos from the last Yokai event.

The first set is by the homie Juan of Relax Amigo!

And this shot is my favorite drift related photo.

And some from the MB Drift event.

Everything I did to the G made it worse. Lost all the oil 3x, the alignment shop did not great, and even the SC didn’t feel right. I also was not feeling right and was the biggest contributing factor to the bad weekend.

The test drive after the alignment did not go well.

Took the SC for day 1. I could not get a handle on it. Lots of spinning. Not sure what the issue is aside from bad head space.

I came home early and put a skid plate on the G. There were deep drop offs and the track was super narrow. 

I lost engine oil from one of the fittings on the pull cooler. The car had no self steer and I had cheap tires on the front that started to understeer halfway through the day. More loops and general bad driving.

Gonna take a break for a bit.

I was sharing pictures of my bros Juan and Jay’s slammed S13’s and when I looked at my G35 I felt shame. So I ordered rear upper control arms and SPL spherical coil mounts and maxed the coils. I also added a smaller steering wheel, Z1 steering wheel control bracket, an oil cooler, and did pads. There is a 2 day Spring Matsuri I plan to go to on the 7th and 8th at Rockingham so even though I’m lowering the car I want no more than -1.5 camber rear.

Thanksgiving day I flew to TX to pick up a new truck. BTW never fly Frontier. I ended up breaking up a fight in the back of the plane. 

I had been looking for a few months and missed out on 7 trucks I was going to purchase. So I didn’t wait till after the holiday to try and jump on this one. While I was there I took the opportunity to take some photos in front of the Cowboys stadium, and on the drive home I stipped in to see a homie.

Chrome on darker vehicles seems cheesy to me so I bought some black out parts and installed them this weekend.

Before:

After:

We stood in a loose circle in the parking lot of the Kill Boy lodge. The sun, long gone from the horizon gave way to cool mountain air. Jokes and short stories from the day of Dragon runs lobbed back and fourth across the circle interjected by legends of even better driving roads nearby, and the sound of ranom cars doing night runs. Inevitably the conversation turned to introductions and “what do you drive?”
C6 Z06…
NB Miata…
R32 GTR…
I began to slowly back away trying not to set off anyone’s motion detection.
But then… it was my turn. The name part was simple enough. My usual fake would do…”Hardy Nickerson”. But could I lie about my car? Was it dark enough that when we part, they perhaps wouldn’t recognize?
I drew a blank and accidentally I told the truth.

“G35…”
The group grew quiet.
“…coupe.”

Silence…aside from the nervous crunch of gravel under polotti driving shoes and the sniffel of mouth breathing HPDE enthusiasts. The circle melted closed slightly making my failed position of retreat even more obvious.

“Aight I’m gonna call it a night.” The Z06 owner said with a slight tone of disgust. The rest agreed and retreated to their various vehicles bidding each other goodnight. No one made eye contact with me as if they had just learned I was a carrier of a most highly communicable disease. I waited until they had all pulled out the lot before walking across the street to the remote parking space I had left my pride and shame.

The G35 has been going through passenger side balasts and ignitors since I bought the car. That headlight always collected moisture so my guess was water was getting in through the cracks and killing the ignitor. Then I got into a boof with the homie Kwame at Shennendoah and destroyed the mounts on that same headlight. The light out put was so bad I could barely see at night and recently both main beams went out while I was 40 min from home leaving me to drive home with just the fog lights. I had been looking for a deal on the Spec D lights but finally gave in and paid full price. After installing I see why they cost so much. The difference is drastic.

My homie put on an event to promote the next iteration of Gran Turismo. He invited me to see what I could see and possibly network.

Mike Borroughs 288.

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