Passion, Drift, Family
At Shibuya train station, there is a bronze statue of a Akita dog named Hachiko. The dog is famous throughout Japan and faces towards the Shibuya Crossing, which you might remember from Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. A lot of Japanese use the statue as a meeting point and is normally very crowded during the day.
So Steve’s twin carb conversion wasn’t a simpler running engine then first thought. After spending a week preparing for Motorkhana and finally completing the project on Saturday, he had the car running beautifully. He took it for a run, and was preforming considerably better than his friends Sprinters. It seemed like the curse was finally lifted from the AE86, but on the way home Saturday night, the car began to cough and splutter, only running properly around 4000rpm and above. After a full weeks work, the exhaustion caught up and Steve called it quits for the AE86 Twin Carb Motorkhana debut.
While I was at Super Cheap Auto, picking up some thread locker for the diff, I spotted the ACT Mini Car Club meet that was happening across the road. I dropped buy, had a quick look around and took some photos on my Camera phone. It looks like the meet just started and more cars were rolling in to line up next to the other Mini’s.
Judging by increase in views of the blog, it looks like people are eager to see some photos of yesterdays Motorkhana at SDTC.
Turn out for the MG Car Club event was very low compared to previous Motorkhana. This could be due to ‘Marques in the Park’ car show that was on the same day or that unregistered cars are now banned from the complex due to noise complaints. A lot of cars were double entered, even triple entered. One competitor did turn up in a unregistered car and was refused entry to the event, luckily Kevin (please correct me if I’m wrong) kindly offered his car to the unfortunate driver.
If your free on Sunday, come out to the Sutton Road Driver Training complex out past Canberra airport. The MG Car Club will be holding the last Motorkhana for the year. I should be out there in my R32, but still struggling with shimming the diff. I’ve had to pull the center out again because the splines do not line up in the diff.
Incase your wondering what Motorkhana is like, check out the video I prepared earlier:
Now pay attention 
. This is one of the very rare photos I have of Rob sleeping in a car, train or plane. It is very common for people to sleep when traveling, especially in Japan where you take a nap anytime you can. Rob on the other hand was awake for almost all traveling times, until I caught him napping in the back of the hire car.
While I’m struggling shimming my diff for the Motorkhana, I figure I should post some more about progress on the Sprinter. Here is part 2 of Steve’s Twin Carb conversion.
So far, all the turbo bits have been removed from the engine and was being prepared to bolt on the carburettors. Grub and Chris Sarah had driven down to help out with the last part of the conversion.
So, Steve’s Sprinter has not had a drastic change……. yet. After all the issues with the turbo setup, Steve decided to run a more basic setup and considerable less electronics.
If you have not heard, the MG Car Club will be running the last Motorkhana for the year this Sunday 22 November, out at the Sutton Driver Training Complex. This is the closest thing that Canberra has for drifting and for only $30, it is a worth while event. So in preparation for the event, I thought I should fix up the car a little. The plan for the weekend was to fix the exhaust leak from the turbo, fit the new china radiator and shim the diff. Unfortunately the weekend didn’t go to plan.
Had an interesting weekend preparing the R32 for Motorkhana, which is coming up this Sunday. Things did not go as smoothly as I thought and everything took longer and some things did not get done at all. I actually just finished the first task tonight and probably have to do the rest of it during the week.
So yet another quick post. Take a look at the photo below as this might be the last time you see Steve’s Sprinter looking like this.
