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Mini Hari Raya Gathering : Wangan Session and Goodyear DuraPlus tire review # 2 (20/9/2009)
It is a tradition for us to have a meet up during the many festive holidays that our multi national country celebrates. For this Hari Raya we had a gathering in Sunway for a mini Wangan session to a secret location 😉 . Bringing the panda AE86 to a meet such as this ,perfectly exemplify the term ‘ Bringing a knife to a gun fight‘ especially in the presences of 500WHP Skylines ,Type Rs and a couple of souped up Hondas!
However there was a reason for this . I was given a set of , Goodyear DuraPlus to do a review a while back. Testing it in drift application had me using up the rear but the fronts we still as good as new! I had actually bought an extra pair of DuraPlus and found that this gathering was a perfect opportunity to test these tires under these condition. Being H rated tires, the Goodyear DuraPlus’s maximum recommended speed rating is about 210Km/h which is about as fast as my AE86 could go. As this test was being conducted by the seat of my pants ,without the aid of any form of scientific measuring device ,all I could conclude was
A)Low tire noise. while this fact may not bother some performance orientated drivers , I do find that the lack of humming or noise emitting from the tires gives me more confidence traveling at speed. Furthermore, the lack of tire noise allows you to hear other things that might be a warning or tell tale signs on your car’s condition (ie: pinging)
B)Structural integrity; as expected , the tires did not developed an form of thread deformity or such after a number of high speed runs. This doesn’t come as a surprise as we had found similar results during our drift testing , which I believe is more abusive to tires!
C) Less rolling resistance. To be perfectly honest, the sensation of having less rolling resistance may just be a psychological effect from reading the product brochure 🙂 But somehow I felt the car was a lot smoother at 33 psi pressure in the tires compared to the others I have tested. So don’t flame me on this 😛 One good indication of the lack of rolling resistance is from the fuel economy performance but i think you’ll understand that in this case there’s an exception
Anyways here are the pictures of the cars that turned up that night
Its time…
to put the nose back to the grind stone…
No.4….Got Dish?
Err..the rear’s got to go… 😛
No.4……. white?
MICCOS Drift Challenge 2009 ,16th August 2009
Since we had withdrew from our role as organisers of the MICCOS Drift Challenge , Ivan Lim from Binter Singapore and I had decided to participate in supporting in the event whom had newly appointed organiser, Feinto-D on the helm.Ariff did not compete in this event as he had gone off to salvage his placings in the GRA event held in Sepang on the same day.
As mentioned earlier ,our withdrawal from the event was due to the absences of safety equipments , like water barrier, tire barrier, cones, fire extinguishers and etc and due to that, the newly appointed organisers had to alter the course to a much smaller course which in turn is a much slower course with much more run off space. This was a wise move as at the edge of the course , there’s a steep downward slope which we fear might cause cars to come barrelling down if they were to veer off the course!!
Binter’s Toyota Chaser was sent to Malaysia earlier for Ariff to work on the handling set up of the car
Due to other commitments, we had missed out the Saturday’s practice,but we arrived early enough on Sunday morning to get enough practice .
Driver’s briefing by the judges Loyai (Team GT-Radial) and Along (Team Toyo).
After briefing ,we were then given another 30 minutes of practice.
As we were in Group C. We had enough time to drop by the cafeteria at Maeps Exhibition Hall D to grab our lunch. It was full of stalls with local flavors.
After lunch break, it was time for qualifying . I had some great practice runs earlier but when it comes to qualifying the weather changed tremendously .As the temperature drop so did my grip level. Due to my lack of experience with the Asymetrics tires, I had trouble adjusting to the tire and totally ruin my runs thus not being able to get into the best 16.
As for Ivan Lim, he was very consistent with his runs and he qualified at 5th place. Since not qualifying, I became his spotter during the tandem battle to help him as he was going against driver’s that he had no experience with.
Unfortunately, the rain came pouring down heavily immediately after the best 16 driver’s briefing. . Due to bad water irrigation on the car park, the track is all flooded so the competition was held up.
It took almost 45 minutes for the rain to stop and all the top 16 drivers were given some runs to get use with the wet surface of the track.
Ivan had to go against with Kevin Rajoo on his 180sx at best 16, with such , which he managed to stick by Kevin and won the round , credit to the great performance of the Goodyear Eagle RS-Sport on his Binter Goodyear Toyota Chaser for the win
At best 8, Ivan had to go against with Tan Tat Wei from Team Bridgestone in his Toyota AE86.A small and tight track , along with wet surface tends to favour the smaller cars, especially when it comes to tandem battles. Both of them had good runs but the judges gave an extra advantage point for Tat Wei for keeping closer to Ivan while following. Though losing out at best 8 ,Ivan did a great job drifting his newly setup Chaser! He was alot more precise and confident while drifting.
Having qualified 5th and losing out on best 8th earned him 5th place overall in this competition. Great job Ivan!