KY drives

B class participants getting ready to the drag strip

After attending the GRA Autocross at KLCC and Drift Gateaway at Port Dickson the past two months, I followed up by going to the last local motorsports event of the year in the Sepang Drag Battle at Sepang F1 Circuit.

The competition is splitted into 5 different categories as follow, from standing race to the 402 meter end point:

• Category A: Open
• Category B: 2WD Forced Induction (turbo and supercharged cars)
• Category C: 2WD Normally Aspirated
• Category D: 2WD Limited
• Category E: K-Car (Perodua Kancil, Kelisa, and Kenari)

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A common problem that plagues the Toyota MR2 (SW20) is the leaky side mirror mounting that results in a lot of wind noise when cruising at high speed. This is rather annoying, especially when you try to have a decent conversation with your passenger, not to mention it dampens the sweet turbo spooling sound that we all love to hear.

The procedure described below is for Toyota MR2, but I assume the same should be able to applied to other make and models facing with the same problem.

To determine if the noise is from a leaky side window mounting, place your finger near the tweater when travelling over 80 km/h. If you can feel a tiny stream of air coming out of the tweater, you’ve got an air leak that needs fixing, unless you have a very loud stereo.

I first read about this procedure from the Japanese MR2 FAQ site, and decided to do it myself. This is what I did:

First, take off the tweater mounting by prying it off with a flat screw driver. It is mounted much like cell phone covers, should come off with relative ease. Proceed with unscrewing the 3 screws that are holding both the tweater and the side mirror together. If the screws are too tight, use a hair dryer to melt the thread locking glue that are covering the screws. I did not face with this problem.

After the screws are undone, the side mirror should be left dangling on the power cord that powers the motor for adjusting the mirror.

Other than screw drivers (both philip and flat), all you need is some thick double sided tapes, and a pair of scissors.

Apply generous layers of double sided tape around the mounting of the side mirror. Make sure you do not leave any holes for any chance of air seepage. I applied about 3 layers of double sided tape.

Put everything back together, the screws might be a little tougher to get in this time since the 3 layers of double sided tape are rather thick. Just push the mirror closer to the door and give it a good squeeze.

After putting everyting together, give it a test run. The wind noise should be gone, you’ll be able to enjoy the turbo spooling sound even at relative high speed now.

The next Sepang Drag Battle falls on the 17th of December, 2005. This will be the 3rd event I am attending in the past 2 months, as spectators, for now anyway. First was the GRA autocross event at KLCC on the 20th November, and then the Drift Gateaway at Port Dickson on 3rd and 4th December. The local racing scene is alive and well.

This event will start on Saturday evening at 5pm, with the Sepang Drift Exhibition, at the same time the registration, scrutineering, and driver briefing for the drag race will be commencing. Trial runs is scheduled from 9 to 9:30pm with the actual competition from 9:15 to past midnight. Paddock access is opened to all tickets at 1am for everyone to look at the cars and mingle with the drivers, and of course, race queens.

Some pictures of the 4th Sepang Drag Battle posted by cheaka can be found here.

More information at zerotohundred forum, though kinda lacking in updates.

Video from the Drift Gateaway @ Port Dickson, Sunday 4th December, 2005. A great piece of driving showed by one of the drifters as he navigated his way through two spun out cars and avoided contact.

I attended the Sync Optima Drift Gateaway at Port Dickson last Sunday. It was a two day event on the 3rd and 4th of December. However, I only attended the sunday session as a spectator. The previous owner of my car, who had participated in drift events with the MR2, was also at the event. This time as a spectator since he is currently lack of a drift car, I doubt I’m giving the car the continuation anytime soon.

I reached the venue, Extreme Park at Palm Resort City, Port Dickson, at around after lunch hour after navigating my way to PD for the first time. As I get down the car I could already hear the screeching sound of tyres against the mortar muffling the engine noise in the background.

There were a few dozen cars in the event consisting of mainly old school toyotas (KE70) and nissans, and a some newer models such as nissan 180sx, 240sx, skyline, silvia, and mazda mx5. These cars power through the rear wheel, or in the case of the skyline, all wheels. This is of course, essential for drifting.

The course is designed for go-karts racing, so naturally it is pretty short and tight. There were some pretty good drivers showing their sideway mad skills. However, as there were around half a dozen cars on the track at one time, a single car spinning out meant the whole track needed to be stopped, and that was pretty frequent. The Pajero had to tow cars out of the ditch quite a few times.

Other than drifting, there were a few show cars at the event. Including a Lamborghini, a Ferrari 348, and a BMW 3 series with lotsa CF panels.

We left at around 4pm to avoid the insane ‘back to KL’ Sunday traffic on the highway. Can’t wait for the next Autocross.

More pictures in the Gallery. Will try to post up some videos next.