Hi guys. Long time no post!
Please forgive the copy and past from DW, but I feel a need to assure you that I don't just turn up to SXOC events in unreliable Lamborghini's , and I do in actual fact still get my hands dirty on a good ole unreliable Sbody from time to time too.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a project thread, but I’m told that there are still a handful of people left that have more than a 15 second attention span. So I thought I’d throw something together about our new simple recipe S15.
First a quick catchup for the newuns:
In 2001 I started my journey into the world of the S chassis right here on the SXOC. I built a car, did some skids, max’d my loans, built it some more, won some events, and started a business with my buddy off the back of what I had learnt.
That S14 in its final incarnation was sold to Norway after I took the 2006 D1GB title that year. The car had had many different looks. This is my fave though.
In 2007 with the help of the very talented Julian at Garage-D we built the DWS15. An all out competition drift build with a 720bhp 2JZ pushed back through the bulkhead 30cm. This was a special car in so many ways, and even now at eight years old, I think could still hold it’s own against the best builds in Europe. This car served Driftworks very well, giving me many podiums, and another championship title. Unfortunately a rule change in 2012 meant it was no longer eligible to compete in the UK, and the car was sold to eventually end up in Greece converted to LHD.
Since then it’s all been about our DW86. This car stepped things up again from the already pretty insane DWS15, and to be perfectly honest I’ve spent the last couple of years just about hanging onto it’s reigns as it propels me at a billiontytwelve miles an hour on a path it kind of chooses itself a lot of the time.
It is an incredibly fun car to drive, and very rewarding when I get it right. But sometimes I do find myself pining for the days of the simpler less unhinged ‘point and click’ Sbody.
So enter the new S15, and don’t worry it’s not here to replace the 86. The idea is to build something with mostly bolt on parts that we stock here in the Driftworks shop. I’ll do a few practice days and see where it takes us. I’m under no delusion about not getting carried away with it, so I can’t really say where the end point for it is. But for now I’m just going to have fun driving and building it. Reminding myself of what it’s like to pick parts up off the shelf and fit them instead of design, fabricate, test, redesign, re-fabricate which I’ve done so much of with the DW86..
With the help of JapaneseUsedCars I’d kept an eye on the auctions for a couple of months, and eventually found the right car. An S15 Auto spec S with a manual turbo conversion. It’s always hard to tell from auction spec sheets, but I knew it had some suspension work, and had probably been used as a drift car at one point. I even liked the Origin Agressiveline Aero, as it was on a black car so hid lots of the unnecessary ‘styling’ the kit includes.
The Friday I collected it from Southampton docks.
The day after I collected it, I spent the day trying some different wheels/tyres and ride heights. Here it has18×9.5 and 18×11 Cosmis XT006 wheels.
About 40 seconds after that photo I exploded the front arches and pulled the bumper off skidding it round the corner, so went home for beer and pizza.