The car sat a lot for a few reasons: I moved to a new home and recovered from surgery and had this car at a friend's house doing new product testing for a 4agze setup and I avoided the car because I couldnt figure out what was keeping it from running right.
May 2015 was my first attempt at drifting again at Hyperfest (two day drift events) and the car broke 6 things in two days. After many attempts at trying to fix the car, I had to hang my helmet after only 6 runs in two days. The car had starter troubles, 3.5k RPMs idle revs at the staging lane and was overheating sitting still (but dropped when driving). The following week I tried a DriftValley event after fixing a few of the critical problems from Hyperfest (broken belts, broken tensioner bolt, worn supercharger clutch pulley amateur welds snapped, cracked fuel hose). It still had starter/idle/overheating problems. Half the event was rained out and just about everyone packed up and left two hours early. I was hotlapping most of that time and the temps stayed down. Very fun day when i wasnt sitting in line freaking out about the temp gauge.
It wasnt until right before thanksgiving that the car finally ran perfect. First part of the problem resolved was the distributor timing was off by one tooth. Because the crank pulley had the timing mark on the bottom and the mark indicator was on top (I think it's an MR2 bottom reading pulley with an AE86 RWD layout 4age top reading timing cover), It was difficult for me to check it myself. This fixed my RPM/overheating sitting still issue. Second part of the problem was the vacuum leak and incorrect/unstable AFM reading on the wideband gauge. I knew there was a vacuum problem and I replaced every gasket and vac port cap I could find, but it turns out the supercharger to intake gasket was home made with paper instead of a sheetmetal gasket like it should have been. This was done during the last rebuild by a previous owner. Also note that when I ran this engine setup in Sway the gray panda hatchback in 2009, I was starting to have this vac leak problem, thus the reason for temporarily retiring the engine at that time.
100 DoD only a week later after being fixed was my first (and last) attempt with running the now perfect setup. The car never felt more like a beast. It was fast. It was angry. It was pure love. It survived some crazy off roading sessions and smoking some 205s at Drift Nirvana and it went home in one piece.
I cant wait to go back out again.
Currently it is sitting in the garage at the new home for the off season and I do have some more tasks for the car. Mechanically I just need to install the bigger dual core radiator I have laying around. I have to replace the battery wiring for something stronger and better. Other than that it's just cosmetic issues I've never addressed since I got the car, as well as drift damage I've accumulated over the years.
Now for some dirty eye candy.
Video of a run. Listen to the shenanigans.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeHJD4LGI7w[/youtube]
