River City Speed

I know what you guys are thinking... Dambass kid wants to go yo-boy ricer drifting. Right? Wrong...

I'm 30, wife, kid, another on the way, mortgage, SUV, and 2 project cars.

I attended a drift event recently and really enjoyed myself as a spectator. My daughter had as much fun as me watching the cars slide the rear out with extreme precision.

I was about to sell my '94 Z28 to buy a Nissan 240SX(popular drift car) to get myself into it. But, I remembered an article in GrassRoots Motorsports from about a year and a half ago talking about NASA and SCCA possibly scheduling Drift events. To quote one NASA official as saying, "the hardest part of adding drifting to our program will be convincing all the Mustang and Camaro owners that their cars are perfect drift cars..."

So, I'm starting to modify the car to suit the sport(or whatever you want to call it).

I just installed LS1 front brakes and will turn my attention to suspension and weight reduction. I'm going to try and assemble the complete suspension upgrades and chassis stiffening for under $1000.(remember the mortgage and new baby on the way?) So, I'm looking at one of the adjustable rear sway bar upgrades, and maybe AGX shocks(those two items to keep costs down). Eibach Pro-Kit, larger front sway bar, poly bushings, etc... I will be hunting ebay and this forums classifieds for deals on parts for sure.

I'm a metal fabricator and will likely build my own LCA's and panhard bar, as well as my own torque arm. I'll use 3/4" rodends for all the attaching points. I read through ALL of the suspension forum and it seems the rodend parts are not favored for the street. Is that due to noise, or some other reason? I've built similar suspensions for other cars and not really cared about the noise.

Anyway, enough with the rant. I would just like to represent the 4th gen F-body in drifting. It's getting to be a big deal.

1996camarors

No one will flame you I personally like drifting. The Camaro will be a great project car because you can steer the car with the gas.
As im sure you already know you will be going threw tires like a **** that dont know.

Need4Camaro

Should be fun! Z28's get Tailhappy pretty easy... Heck even my V6 can get away from me in the right conditions...

Xscream

I have run the prokit for awhile but I think there might be a better altertnative. I might consider getting a single rate, rated race spring for the rear. I'm not versed with this sport (drifting) but going aginst my road course setup, a harder rear spring will allow for less weight transfer casuing it to slide easier. The prokit is a great all around spring but when the power is on you do get a fair ammount of weight transfer to the rear and side-to-side. You can get a pair of cheap rated race springs for about 30-40 bucks each. Might be worth loooking into.

Z28SORR

I don't think you need to do all this. Just bias what you have for oversteer. Your not setting this up to handle corners well. In fact just the opposite, you want it to handle badly. More power of course would not be a disadvantage.

River City Speed

Actually from my research, I still want a well handling car. Most of the high end Japanese drift tuners build the cars to grip really well. They use power and technique to bring the car into a slide. Maybe with a bias to alittle oversteer. So a set-up for road racing with maybe an adjustable rear swaybar should work equally well. You also want grippy tires for two reasons. First, they give more feedback as to when they are going to let go. Second, they smoke better. I don't want a car that is flailing around. It needs to react precisely to driver inputs. Basically drifting is not about being out of control. It's actually polar opposite. It IS control.

Demus

From what I understand about drifting, weight distribution plays a huge factor. I never actually found out what kind of weight distribution an LT1 has, but I don't think it's very good for drifting. I had a friend who regularly races an older celica at local drifting events try and take my bird out, and he ended up doing a legitimate drift once or twice out of maybe 15 tries. So you might want to consider a different car. From what I hear the LS1s have a much better weight distribution.

Sandman_97Z

As for the weight distribution comment, if you were to split hairs, the LS1 is better, but the difference is negligable.

Anyway, to preface, since there are about 2 local F-Body guys who actually do non-drag-race track events, I hang out on my local 240sx board where theres more (hate to say it) real racing guys.

I know you are asking about car setup, but what a lot of new guys overlook is seat time. Drifting skill is DIRECTLY related to drifting experience. You can throw $10k in parts at your car and if you dont have the seat time you are still going to suck. Case in point: At the last local drift event, a semi-professional drifter decided it would be fun to drift the Lincoln Town Car he was currently RENTING (Read: stock mushy suspension, heavy as hell, rental abused motor, etc). You have never seen anything so amazing as a stock body-rolling Town Car executing a drift at 80 mph. He was literally the best drifter out there.

So I would recommend taking half the money you budgeted for parts and go sign up for a drift day.

And sort of an FYI....when a guy comes out to drift with a fully built car and really sucks, he is generally regarded as a checkbook champion. In other words, your car should reflect your skill level. Sounds cheezy but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

Good luck


PS - Yes F-Bodies would make great drift cars. They are RWD and make gobs of torque. The 4-cyl drifters use turbos because turbos make more torque than anything else on a 4-cyl.

I want to go out and drift mine but I havent been able to bring myself to beat up my car. Drifting, your car WILL get beat up....

River City Speed

You've made a great point. One I may have overlooked. I don't want to show up at a drift event with my car looking like it's a total professionally built "Drift" car. What a joke that would be. I probably couldn't even get it to slide my first time around the track! Or, just spin-out alot! I DO need to put some SFC's in and probably a roll bar to stiffen the sloppy T-Top chassis.

Sandman_97Z

Sub-frame connectors, yes. Roll bar, not exactly necessary. The T-top cars are the same deal as the LT1 vs LS1 weight distribution....yes the hard top is stiffer, but to say that it is better than a t-top to any noticable or significant degree is really splitting hairs

good luck and let us know how you do at your first drift day!

Z28SORR

Well this may be what the Japs. do, but I still think your wrong. The object of a sports suspension is to maintain control to as high a speed as possible by limiting slip. Both under and over steer. The object of drifting is to loose control by over steer "sliding". The only control required is thottle control.
One of the best drifters in the U.S. drives an El Camino. Little weight on the rear with all the polar movement around the nose. Having a "loose" suspension allows you to start drifting sooner or at a lower speed. Giving you more drift time. Like most of what the ricers do, I dont think they understand this any more then they understand what spoilers are for. If they did they would all be driving old turbo Porsches, one of the best natural drifting cars in the world.

River City Speed

You bring up some good points. I have decided to not make any changes to my suspension other than SFC's and basic maintenance for the time being. BTW, the gentleman with the El Camino is a member of a forum I frequent.

Sandman_97Z

umm no offense, but I dont think you know a whole lot about what youre talking about....

Type drift "el camino" in google and you get...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...22&btnG=Search
...nothing but junk, and a couple drifting sites that mentionin in a single sentence some guy who happened to enter an el camino in a drift day...

The first and most successful US professional drifter is Rhys Millen, and he drives a very heavily modified GTO. With MINOR rear suspension tweaks, that car will destroy everyone on this board on a road course...

Type gto drift in google and you get...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ff&q=gto+drift
...52000 links on Rhys Millen and Furmulo D and gto drift cars and etc etc etc. Dang.

You DO want control with drifting. In fact it is the untimate in control. The only time drifters set their car up to be out of control (bald and/or small rear tires, suspension adjustments, etc) is when they are in a stock motor 240sx or AE86 with no HP and no torque. Then, its about a million times earier to innitiate a drift with a near uncontrollable car. But a lot of guys even with such underpowered, poorly set-up cars, will amaze you with the control they can exhibit. Trust me.

This is almost completely untrue. When drifting, you want to have as much speed as you can, since while in drift, you are loosing speed somewhat quickly. Higher speeds make for longer drifts. Lower speeds are not desireable, as you said. And higher speeds necessitate a "tight" suspension, to use your terminology.

Well this is pretty ignorant. If you're talking about the kid down the street with his stock civic and a 2 foot wing, yes, he does not know what a wing is for. However, the wings on professional drift cars are functional. Dont believe me? ok

I'm first going to assume you are talking about front engine rear wheel drive porche, because attempting to drift a MR car is rediculous.

So lets think about this for a second... Drifting originated in Japan. So they use Japanese cars. Just like Nascar originated in America, so they use American cars. Weird.

Also: sooner or later, drifting will lead to wrecking. Do you really want to source old *** Porche body parts all the time?

Lastly: old porches are ugly. Period.

ws6transam

The problem with rod ends is that unless you are willing to spend $50 to $70 apiece for an aurora stainless three-piece rod end with teflon insert, you will find that the constant vibration, dust, and moisture will cause the rod end to loosen up within a few thousand miles. Once it does, it becomes a major source of banging, clunking, and rattling. My rod ends are shot after only 5000 miles, since I chose mid-level rod ends: The ones that came with my Spohn suspension pieces.

This summer I will be converting to Aurora aircraft quality rod ends, along with some precision steel shoulder bolts. Hopefully they will last longer and stay quieter! If that doesnt work, I will toss out the rod ends and go back to poly or high durometer rubber bushings. A NEW rod-end suspension is actually rather quiet. It's when they get sloppy that they get really, really noisy.

MotorCityNova572

shoot dude i love drifting.Me and my buddy tom go out almost every sunday with his V-6 camaro and drift on back roads.....