Well what a crazy few days. Firstly, the two drift events on this weekend at Oran Park were absolutely awesome, big cheers to the guys driving and giving a great show to the crowd. Drift is definitely going to be big in Australia now I think.

Unfortunately though, I was not driving in either, as my engine carked it on Thursday/Friday morning. A cruel turn of events considering the car in my eyes was almost finished, with the final steps for the big turbo on the way, but what can you do? The engine has a nasty death rattle suggesting bottom end bearing damage, to which I hope is the extent of the problems. I have no idea on how this happened, as the previous owner claims to have performed frequent oil changes, and myself not undertaking any silly driving that could starve the oil pickup.

The car will hopefully go to IDA sponsors Ricol Automotive early this week, for the bottom end to be rebuilt. I can’t afford to install forged pistons or anything like that, but luckily a compression test a few days ago yielded 160 psi in all four cylinders, which is an excellent result. I will however very soon spend some cash on an aftermarket sump to prevent oil starvation on the track and give the engine some more oil capacity. This should go a long way to preventing such a problem ever happening again.

More news soon I hope.