Tag Archives: duraplus

Ace Drift Challenge Round 1,2 & 3

ACE DRIFT CHALLENGE Round 1 @ Jebat Stadium, Malacca 2nd-3rd Jan 2010

With my S13 still in the panel beaters after my major screw up in Formula Drift Malaysia, Jane and I decided to take part in the inaugural ACE Drift Challenge in Jebat stadium in Malacca. ACE is a company that specializes in suspension and undercarriage components for drift cars here in Malaysia. They are quiet popular amongst the AE86 and KE70s crowd as they are known to make top notch robust absorbers that could withstand all the abuse drifting could offer 🙂

Photos taken from :

http://ellmiesupreme.blogspot.com/2010/01/ace-drift-challenge-round-1-2010.html

The course that was set by sole judge, Ah Keat, was the usual ‘R’ Shape with a single rear clipping zone and two front clipping points. What made it different was the line that he wanted us to take; Entering in third gear, we were required to take a angular line towards the rear clipping zone!! To be honest, I was a bit confused about what the judge wanted when my run where I  clipped the rear zone (knocking a cone off) and nailing the two front clipping points only earned me an 9th qualifying placing . Unfortunately Jane’s runs , which I thought were good, wasn’t good enough to make it to the top 16.

TOP 16

My first tsuiso run was against Rocker Loh ,in a borrowed Cefiro. I had managed to follow closely the RB25 powered car while trialing  and managed to distance myself  while leading . With that I got through the best eight.TOP 8

My next opponent was top qualifier Tan Tat Wei. My AE86 was no match to his high powered hatchi  but unfortunately he made a fatal mistake of following too closely on this tight course which ended in him rear ending me  during the switch over and straightening in the process. With that, I’m in the top 4!!

TOP 4

Top 4 was against me an Zulfikar. Zul was still struggling to get in grips in his newly transplanted SR20 turboed trueno.  An uncharacteristic spin by Zul and  strong chase run by me ,allowed me advance to the finals.

Cool sequence shots taken from www.rattlezasia.blogspot.com.

FINALS

The finals was me against Derrick Lim. At this point, with the total of six tsusio runs I had,  along with the two qualifying runs I was still using the same pair of Goodyear Duraplus tires at the rear.   Jane was getting a bit worried if they would last the next couple of runs but after thoroughly inspecting them, we were amazed that they were  good enough to go for another dozen of runs!! Most importantly, the grip level stayed consistent throughout. I believe this gave me the advantage against Derrick as  I was alot quicker than him during our runs even when I was short of more than 50 horses against his car!!

In the end of the video  by eddie88  (www.zakumalaya.com) below , shows the final tandem battle of me against Derrick !

After a disastrous Formula Drift Malaysia last December, it was good to be on the podium again .

RESULTS

1st Place : Ariff Johanis Ahmad (Goodyear Sync Optima)

2nd Place: Derrick Lim ( D-Works)

3rf Place: Hanizam (GT Radial)

Jane can’t remember her placing 😛

ACE DRIFT CHALLENGE ROUND 2 @A’Famosa Resort Malacca

10th-11th April 2010

Five months had past  when my S13 is finally ready. With a hefty  power up grade and a newly acquired control arms and knuckles, the round 2 of the ACE Dift Challenge seem like the perfect opportunity  to test out the car before Formula Drift Singapore 2010, scheduled  was 2 weeks later. However, things didnt go as smoothly a planned with an untimely  failed LSD and a misaligned knuckle kit that would either cause me to straighten or spin at any given moment.I had barely scraped through qualifying with an 8th placing but got knocked out early by Hong when the s13 veered off course during my lead.

Videos by Nash from Singapore

(www.youtube.com/user/driftonowhere)

Jane wasn’t spared either as she had suddenly developed  misfiring  issues right during  qualifying!

We were glad that we were able to identify the problem and have two weeks to rectify them!

RESULT

9th Place : Ariff Johanis Ahmad (Goodyear Sync Optima)

Jane can’t remember her placing again 😛

ACE DRIFT CHALLENGE Round 3 @ A’Famosa Resort Malacca 7th-8th July 2010

With our maid having to go for surgery. We had Johanna with us for this round of competition. I was a bit worried as the environment at Afamosa isnt what I would call ideal for a two year old   . So Jane and I had  took turns looking after her while one of us would go out for practice. It helped also, that  Yoong and Swee Kin had brought along their daughter Sze Yun to Malacca too. Swee kin had the daunting task of  looking after both of them when we both were out during practice!! Thanks Swee Kin!!

We had taken baby steps to develop the handling department of the S13 since it debut in April and we are glad to say that we are almost there. Our experience during round 2 of FX Open ( report will be done later) had exposed the car’s weakness of its intitial set up.The car handles alot better after making a few adjustments and  we reckon we are able to make it even more faster.

I managed to qualify 3rd with two strong runs with Jane making into the top 32 with a 28th placing!!

Having to take care of Johanna and also not having (our photo/videographer,caretaker and friend) Kevin Boey around results in having no drifting photos of the event!! My apologies..

TOP 32

Jane had to go against Kecik of Sultan Sulaiman Team. Jane did a strong trailling run but had straighten during her turn to lead.A One More Time was called. Unfortunately Jane had straighten during both of the runs giving the win to Kecik. I believe with her new power upgrade coming up, she wouldn’t have to struggle so much during her tsusio run.

I had a ‘walk by’ as I qualified 3rd (within the top 8) and went straight into the top 16

Top 16

I had to go against another Sultan Sulaiman team member, Popeye (i swear, thats his name) . During my lead, Popeye had taken the inner line while I was clipping the rear clipping zone thus forcing him to brake and straighten when I dove into the front clipping point. During my trailing run, I followed him as closely as possible and manage to advance to the Top 8

T0p 8

In this round, I had to go against Oliy of Feinto D. Oliy and I have gone against each other before and we are both not shy about exchanging some paintwork (report of Cyberjaya competition  later). However it was unfortunate that his NOS powered supercharged AE86 was low on NOS which result in me gaining a huge gap during my turn to lead and him straightening during initiation when I was trailing. I’m into the TOP 4

Top 4

This is the second time I have to go against Tan tat Wei. But this time Tan is packing even more power with a 300bhp++ Nos powered rotary AE86!! Not wanting to take any chances I opt of have a tire change. So I picked up my crew from the starting line and off we went to our pit. This is where things got a bit weird; somewhere during the time my tires were being changed, the NOS switch on my car was switched off. I was in the car the whole time and my crew reckoned that I did it. I strongly doubt it as during my experience of FD Malaysia, I made it a point to never touch it !. Somehow i suspected that my crew had accidentally knocked it off while trying to get out of the cramped caged car. Anyway, I not pissed or anything but I just found it weird. So as you might have guessed, my run with Tan was a disaster. He qualified 1st , so he was first to  lead. The starting point is extremely sandy so I am forced to drive half throttle throughout the 1st gear and floor it mid into 2nd. Usually the car would response with a sudden surge of power. However this time nothing happen!! I saw Tan gained 4 cars length infront of me and I knew there was no way of catching him.Upon returning to the starting grid ,only had I realised that the switch was off. With my over zealousness of wanting to gain a gap during my turn to lead, I had entered the rear zone a bit too hot causing me to hit the rear barriers but not losing drift! However this slowed me down tremendously thus allowing Tan to stick close to me!! So that puts an end to my day in this competition

With that I was awarded a third placing and inturn making currently in 1st spot in the overall standing!! With one more round to go, I hope my luck improves for me to win the title..wish me luck 😉

RESULTS

1st Place Ivan Lau (Bridgestone)

2nd Place Tan Tat Wei (Bridgestone)

3rd Place Ariff Johanis Ahmad (Goodyear Sync Optima)

28th Place  Azrina Jane Abdullah  (Goodyear Sync Optima)

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!

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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

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MAEPS course testing

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Since we will be organising a drift competition in August in MAEPSMAEPS, we were given the opportunity to test the place out. As the course is fairly huge we thought it would be a good to conduct our own form of testing too. Drift House: Their Cefiro V8 and their SR20 TE71 and me with the Goodyear Duraplus tires.

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Here is the world premier of Drift House’s Cefiro V8 in action..

Goodyear Duraplus tire review @ MAEPS drift course

Designed to provide outstanding mileage on Asia’s roads, Goodyear has launched DuraPlus for the passenger value segment. These tires had been tested on rigorous Thailand roads for 100,000km thus creating a new Goodyear standard for tread life in this segment. With its new TredLife TechnologyTM, Goodyear is said to be able to manufacture a tire which delivers longer mileage without sacrificing any of the safety and performance !

Having heard all this, I was eager to test these tires in Drifting application and was pleased when given 4 pieces of 185/60/14s for this purpose.

The first thing I noticed was the tires were asymmetrical in design which essentially a tire with mix tread patterns or designed and manufactured to put more rubber on one side of the tread than the other in an effort to make one tire out of two different tread patterns. These tires needs to mounted in such a way where there will be an inside and outside thus making tire rotation swaps impossible. However, drifters might see this as an advantage as we no longer need to worry about tire thread directions when bringing spares based on the course ( some drift course tends wear either sides of the tires more thus having us to plan ahead when mounting directional tires on our spares)

Next was the thread design, which incorporated deep designed grooves with what appears to have more rubber in its pattern on the outside shoulder of the tire. This I believe will help in wet conditions where the water could be channelled easily and the tires would be less prone to understeering. I had also noticed the side walls of the tires were softer then others which I reckon to help ‘roll’ the tires to its grippier ouside shoulder when taking a corner!

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The MAEPS course had a fairly smooth tarmac and was big enough for me to do 3rd gear 90-100km/h entry drifts.

We first tried out these tires at the rear and later had them on the front too.
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As advertised, these tires had a decent amount of grip, even when fitted to the front! At the rear the tires were able to take maximum abuse without any signs of breaking or chunking. Even after going through a few heat cycles , the tires were still intact. And most importantly; the tread wear was a lot less then the other tires that I had used before!! So more drifting and less tire changes. As the course in MAEPS tends to eat the rear passanger side tires more, I am able to just change one side of the asymeterical tires without worrying about not having enough of the correct sides. That’s another plus!!!

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This the condition of the left rear tires ( the side the gets worn the most) after an excess of over 20 smoke filled runs and it looked like its good for another 10 more!!! The other tire that I used on this course before this only lasted half of what this tire went through. I was truly amazed with its performance and durability!!.

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This is the front tire after going through 8 runs. There’s hardly any sign of wear and yet it gave ample amount of front end grip for drifting!

Guys don’t take my word for it. Go visit your nearest Goodyear dealer and try it yourself!