Letty Blog 1 – Commitment Issues.
Back to basics
Those who know me will know I tend to do over commit and don’t do things by halves.
Lily my JZ lexus is still in a million pieces and needing lots of work so I have decided to take my time rebuilding Lily so she probably won’t be ready until next year now.
The thought of taking a year out from drifting and not crashing into my friends or walls, or bankings, makes me break out in a cold sweat. Living like normal people for a year that shit is scary. I mean imagine my friends feeling safe on track knowing I can’t crash into them. Now we can’t have that.
I’d like to introduce you to Letty. She is a 2003 Lexus IS200 and I’ll only be going half mental with her.
Why buy another car rather than spend money on finishing Lily? There are a few reasons behind.
- I don’t have an unlimited budget or unlimited spare time so rebuilding lily the way I want her will take me both a fair about of time and money and I don’t want to rush it.
- The best investment any drifter can make is SEAT TIME.
- I became a drifter because I love drifting. Building my own cars because I love building cars and now with 2 cars I can do both. Passion is what fuels life if you’re not passionate and enjoying what you’re doing then don’t bother.
- Letty was a very good price and built mostly from spare parts I had lying about my workshop so letty cost me in total £800
- I now have a spare drift car to test out new developments, techniques, products on.
- More cars equals more FUN………
Letty’s Specs at the moment
Steering = Lengthened lower arms made by Millermods Garage, Minty Fresh Rega Rox knuckles, 5 mm steering rack spacers, shortened corolla tie rods. Cheap ebay coilovers there were on the car when she arrived but I have replaced the springs to 20kg HSD Springs. Front Geometry settings are 6 degrees negative camber, 8 degrees positive caster, 1mm toed out.
Braking = Standard calipers all round with a cheap hydro handle and a 0.625 cylinder fitted in the standard brake system. ABS unit unplugged (you don’t need to remove any fuses or relays just unplug the Abs unit in the engine bay and that will disable ABS and the traction control system)
Wheels = Front 17×9 ET25 XXRs with 215/40/17 Federal 595 RSRs. Running 20/25psi
Rear = 17×9.5 et 25 Rotas with 225/45/17 El Cheapo tyres running 35/40psi in the dry. 25/30 psi in the wet.
Engine = 1G-FE with Induction Kit, Decat stainless steel exhaust system.
Transmission = Standard manual gearbox and a welded Automatic Diff.
Manual diff is 3.9/1 ratio Automatic diffs are 4.3/1 ratio so easier to spin and skid with but due to the different ratio your speedo will not read correctly.
Bodykit = Vertex front, sides and rear lip. Which I have ran over and destroyed already.
It was a bit of a Baptism of fire for letty’s first shake down. It was a private day set up and organise by a local drifter Briony for the sole purpose of practising the track layout for the Scottish Drift Championship that was being held that weekend which happened to be the same layout as the British Drift Championship run this time.
Man, I forgot how much work is involved skidding a standard lexus especially on big long sweeping corners but none the less we had some awesome fun and many many clutch kicks.
The weekend after that I have done a public practice day where we ran the reverse shift lock set up at Driftland. This set up is full of tight corners and flick entries and so much fun.
