XDC Round 2 Vegas was quite a weekend for AK Racing. Arriving first thing to the track on Wednesday around noon the team was anxious to wrench on the car. After some major problems from Round 1 at Irwindale, the diff was replaced along with the rear wheel bearings. Green Oil supplied 20w50 was also changed which dramatically helped with keeping the oil temp’s down. HPS Silicone 4 ply couplers, silicone hose and T-Bolt clamps also replaced all of the 3+ year old product. J’s graphic’s also outfitted the car with all new vinyl.

Going into practice on Friday morning Kevin and Brian were on hand from Motorsports Consulting. Right away they made some major and much needed changes. Friday was 6 hours of practice on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Alex welcomed the challenge of the new course. He was consistently entering around the 78mph mark. Practice was a bit of a struggle fighting with the car and the way Alex wanted to drive, but with the support of Motorsports Consulting the car was getting leaps and bounds better. The team ended up only making about 3 clean passes all of the practice day.

Saturday was qualifying day, with about 1 hour of practice in the morning it was vital to get as much seat time as Alex could. After some minor adjustments by Kevin and Brian the car was worlds better. Making about 5-6 really solid clean passes the team was ready for qualifying. Qualifying run 1, straighten on entry. Scratch that run. Qualifying run 2, 78mph on entry, car shuts down into turn one, Alex manages to kick the car back on without straightening, up shifts to 3^rd mid transition, car shuts off into turn two, again Alex manages to kick the car back to life after 3 kicks with minor correction, slam’s the car back down into 2^nd, dip’s 1 wheel off track, transitions the car back to lock, a little far off of the outer clip zone and finishes the course.

Watching everyone run it was definitely going to be close. Especially since the qualifying format was changed a bit from XDC Round 1, it was decided that top 32 qualifying was to be skipped and go right into top 16.  The team qualified 14^th, it was enough to make the main show. The new challenge to face was tandem with Formula D driver, Alex Phieffer.

Unfortunately due to driver error and car malfunctions Alex went off both leading and following against Phieffer. The team went home very content with the weekends results and with a lot of knowledge going into round 4. Round 3 unfortunately had to be skipped due to the declining health of Alex’s wife but Round 4 is ramping up to be the best round yet! Back east the team goes to do some drifting, catch up with old friends and ride some BMX in NYC!

We are very thankful to have these opportunities and we are very excited to have the support and help from everyone. Alex Kors Racing cannot wait for the upcoming season and the prospects of what’s on the horizon. Thank you all!

Pictures from today!

Monday morning we’re on our way to go pick up Blair (Jiinkz!) from the John Wayne Airport. I noticed I had a voice-mail from Ernie @ XDC. He tells me “you’re going to love me or hate me but you’re on the XDC rig for the whole series…” Awesome news! Except we’re 4 days away from practice Friday (March 22nd) I haven’t gotten any days off work and the car isn’t even close to done. At this point it needs:

Paint + Hood/Hood hinges/Hood Pins not installed
Alignment
Safety equipment (helmet, arm restraints, battery box, kill switch handle,tow straps, 5 point harness,etc)
Catch Can
Headlights need to be wired
Oil Change
Tires (i had ZERO rears)
Race gas (no gas at all, 110 octane)
No trailer = no way for me to tow the car to the track.

I had already put a new s14 kouki steering rack, new energy suspension steering bushings, MA motorsports knuckles and new 5 lug front hubs.

How she sat as of Monday.

After making about a 100 phone calls on Monday by 3am I had thanks to my wife and DA bro’s:

Alignment
Arm restraints
Nomex socks
Helmet
12 tires
Tow straps

Tuesday comes around and while I’m at work my wife and business partner run around and grab:

Race gas (15 gallons of 110)
Tires
They tried to get a 5th point for my harness but no avail

When I get home I make a few phone calls and Richard Rabe @ R.B Body & Paint gets on board to spray the car in my garage the next day. I stay up til about 4am cranking on my car and get some more stuff pulled off for Richard.

Wednesday I had to go to work again to make up for not being able to go on Friday and Saturday. During the day Richard picks up the paint and starts prepping the car for paint by taking off panels/lights and by the time I get home its pretty much ready to go. We mask the whole garage off, soak the floor, clean the car and he wastes no time and lays down sealer @ 8pm. Last coat of Porsche silver metallic w/ blue pearl and blue frost goes on @ 12:30am.

Wednesday also led me to an old friend Victor @ Emergency Hookers Towing. He really knows his stuff and offered his hand in getting my car up to the track on Friday morning on his #1 Hooker (flatbed.)

Things are shaping up for sure! Except I need to work again on Thursday. So we are less than 14 hours to driving up to the beach @ Normandy. So when I get home Thursday Richard had wasted no time and had the bumpers and roof wing sprayed and drying. We get on reassembling the car, headlights/tail lights/etc etc.

We bang out everything except the battery box by about 1130pm, car is assembled with bumpers and all! Photo shoot time. Photographer Neil Reola came over on super short notice and did a real deal photo shoot with proper lighting etc. By 1:00 we were done with the shoot. Then my roommate/new mechanic for a couple event’s helped me make a battery box, adjust my arm restraints and some other little odds and ends. By 4am I was asleep and 6am I was back up loading my truck up and making sure everything was prepped and ready.

Day 1 @ Irwindale: (boat lands on the beach @ Normandy)
Practice and Top 32 Qualifying

Probably one of the most nerve wracking day’s I have ever had in my life. I really haven’t drifted in 3 years besides the test day I had with Forsberg and Tony. And the last time I had driven Irwindale I totaled a freshly built car into the outer bank front driver’s side corner in and the only thing I could think of was that damn wall. Definitely a bad mental block to say the least.

So I take it slow…very slow during practice, learning the car, understanding the car, understanding the track. First I started with the inner bank and just getting comfortable. Kevin Wells of LS Auto and CFR was on hand and with his and my roommates help they did some minor changes that made a HUGE difference in the way the car drove and felt.

I was still getting used to the car and they started tandem practice, at this point I hadn’t even cleared the bank yet, but there’s no better way to do it, then to have someone else next to you pushing you. As I was following Forrest Wang he started the bank about 3/4th’s of the way in and I just kicked it. Everything felt awesome! So next run, I asked for a solo run and just blasted on the bank. From there on out I would enter at the nascar sign at the flat before the bank started, riding as high as my car could and would on the bank.

Skip ahead to switching to a new set of tires and back on the track while everyone else was changing tires/fuel/etc 3 or 4 of us were just hot lapping the track, so we would all be in rotation and waiting less than 30 seconds to drive. I was getting more and more comfortable.

Finally time for qualifying. Really the whole week had come down to this, so far the day had been a success and I was having more fun than I ever had in my car. I was the FIRST one on the track, suited up, in line and ready to go. I LOVE going first or last for qualifying, it helps take a ton of the pressure off for me.

First Lap of qualifying:
I didn’t heat up the tires, I had no grip and made a pretty big mistake coming down into the lower bank off the starting line clip. Well that wasn’t going to work.

Second Lap of qualifying:
At this point the tires were heated up (along with my car running at almost 220F) and I just nailed it. The run felt great, definitely good enough for top 16 in my head. I was really excited at this point, as I started watching the rest of the field drive I was getting a bit nervous as I realized I was driving against some stiff competition.

Results:
Qualified 7th out of 23 drivers!
Unreal feeling especially after coming back from not driving for 3 years, crashing at this track and against a lot of people who literally must drive 2-3 time’s a month while I was on a hiatus.

I was clocked @ 62mph coming off the outer bank during qualifying, I definitely know now what I can do to make the car faster on entry so next time I’ll be more prepared.

Night time was spent with Jess, Forsberg, Mich, Jarod, Tim, Petty, and Nabil. Got some really good pupusa’s and beers @ a hole in the wall place near the track. Went home and got some SLEEP!

Day 2 @ Irwindale:
Practice and Top 16 Qualifying into Top 16 Tandem eliminations.

Practice
1st run: No drifting just warm up.
2nd run: Drifting the bank, flip past the starting line to lock and use the ebrake to slow down some wheel speed, go to drop the ebrake and pop it back into gear and the ebrake handle stay’s up and it all goes BOOM when I let the clutch out. I come to a skidding halt. Damn, I screwed up.

Now we’ve got less than an hour to get a what I thought at the time was broken changed, so that was 2 axles and a diff.

Problem: we have no replacement diff. we have ton’s of axles, a transmission, etc but no diff.

Thankfully Joon is such an amazing friend and drove ALL the way home, grabbed a spare welded diff and while he was doing that Nabil, Richard and Jess ripped the diff and both axles out of the car. By the time he was back they had started pulling all the cars on the track and in less than 10 minutes they had the new diff in the car and both axles. Car was on the ground and I pulled it back on track.

Qualifying:

1st run: No heat in the tires, welded felt INSANE. car snaps at the end of the bank almost right into the outside bank as it snaps up into the wall, the back starts to come around and i just rail the gas…off the bank. spin. 0 points. whew, still have a car!

2nd run: Heat in the tires, car feels just crazy on the bank, it’s wavering all over the place, etc. Not a good run at all.

Day end’s early. Did not qualify which was completely understandable. We figured out at the end of it all it wasn’t a diff but 2 bad rear wheel bearings that were making the rear brakes drag on the bank and the wheels wobble excessively. Hub’s are already on order and we’ll install them along with my Tomei diff into the car @ the next round. I take a lot of my mistakes as they come and I feel as though I can only go up from where I am right now.

To me the whole week/weekend was a HUGE HUGE success and under the circumstances I couldn’t be happier, to have that much fun and come out in 1 piece. The support from everybody the whole week/weekend was amazing and I couldn’t have done it without them! Not even close.

The day ended earlier for me but Dave Briggs DMCC Champion last year went on to win the event. Big congratulations to him.

At day’s end I loaded the car into the XDC Semi Truck behind James Evans ls1 powered 350z and that’s the last I’ll see of her till May 21st in Vegas 2 months away.

BIG BIG Thank you to the following people in no particular order (if I forgot anyone, I’m sorry):

My wife Jessica, All my Drift Alliance brothers, Mich, Jack @ Simple line, Nabil, Richard @ R.B Body Work & Paint, Kevin Wells @ LS Auto/CFR, Jack aka Azndoc, Larry Chen @ Drift Fotos (awesome pictures!), Ross Fairfield @ Dead Pirate Productions, OMG Drift, Victor @ Emergency Hookers Towingg, and work for letting me have 2 weekend days off with 3 days notice…

PS. – I could probably type about 30 more pages of what happened over the week, but this is about as short as I could make it. Next entries will probably be shorter…but I doubt it.

Car:

Richard @ R.B Body & Paint finshed up the body work. (Thanks a lot man!) I’ve choosen a color, I’m going to order it on this coming monday. It’ll be painted as soon as humanly possible, I cant wait. It’s come a long, long, long, long way from when it first came home.

New minor project:

Jet drill press! JDP-15M. 3/4hp, 16 speed configurations. It needs a lot of TLC, but it work’s perfect! For $30 I couldnt complain. I found it retailing online anywhere from $380-$470. First thing I did was take the table part of it off and sanded it down with 120 and then 400, huge difference. Then today I started cleaning a ton of the grime off of it w/ a steel brush, simple green, goo gone, screw driver and a ton of rags. I’m not even close to being done with it but it’s definetly coming along. I need to take some more updated pictures of it as of today but these will do for now.

What’s been going on:

Took out transmission
Took apart transmission only to find the gear selector had a huge chunk broken off of it.
Assembled 2 bad transmissions to make 1 good one.
Richard @ R.B Body & Paint has been slamming out the body work, it’s almost all done.
TE’s pending trade for RPF1′s + Cash.
Paint chip’s coming soon from paintforcars.com
Re did all of the steering; new rack (s14 kouki), new rack bushings, MA-Motorsports knuckles and new 5 lug front hubs.

BIG update soon.

-Alex

The dyno went great @ SR Motorcars on Monday the 26th. Big Thanks to Steve and Forsberg for all the help! Needed a few things after the dyno to get ready for the test day on Wednesday the 28th so Albert took me up to West Covina Nissan and Ray helped me out getting the last minute stuff together. Thanks Guys!! 350rwhp @ 14psi. I’ll take it. Leaving it there for a long time.

On to the test day. After waking up early on Tuesday the 27th and changing my oil before going to work, then going to work, coming home and frantically trying to get the car ready. At 9pm Forsberg and I finally headed up to L.A to pick up Tony and headed out to Lancaster to stay the night @ Nick’s house which is about 10 minutes from Willow Springs. Got there around 11:30 and to our surpise it was about 40 degree’s out!! It was amazing!

Nick and his wife were gracious enough to let us stay the night. Thank’s so much for your hospitality!

Wednesday morning we woke up (i only slept about 4-5 hours…couldnt sleep), got some food which I could barely eat because I was nervous/exicted/nervous to drive again. We finally got to the track @ about 10:30am and met up with my wife Jess, Jack and James. Bill Wood was also there to do an interview with Tony and Forsberg, I ended up being in a few shot’s of them teaching me/helping me out w/ the car and a few driving shot’s too I’m sure. (Can’t wait to see his footage, including the in car!!) So we started to unload, check fluids, prepare for the day ahead.

I had not drifted in over 2 years so I honestly had no idea what to expect and I dont think anyone else did either. So the first order of buisness as per Forsberg and Tony was to just grip the car around the track about 10 time’s both directions just to get a feel for the car, make sure it’s running ok, get the rust off the rotors, make sure it’s boosting ok, etc etc.

Thing’s that went wrong right away:

Boosted 22+ psi due to a faulty boost solenoid on the AVC-R (it was giving me problems on the dyno too.) So we disconnected that and ran 10psi on the wastegate.
Ran on 3 cylinders after it boosted 22+psi. Tony ended up figuring out the ECU plug was loose. Cylinder 1 = No spark. Fixed.
Finally time to drift! Wrong! Power steering high pressure line ended up having a hair line crack in it and was squirting fluid all over the manifold. After about 2 hour’s of BS’ing around with Old/Bad JB Weld, Sanding Copper washer’s Jess/Jack and James found a high pressure line @ an Autozone 11miles away. Life savers!!

NOW it was time to drift. Started out with some donuts then moved onto driving. The car is…amazing. At first I was all over the place trying to figure out what I was doing. Forsberg and Tony were HUGE HUGE HUGE! help’s and rode with me/drove the car a few time’s and really taught me how to drive a car setup this way. The car is setup totally different than anything else I’ve ever driven or built so there was a bit of a learning curve to say the least. Tony and Chris played with different shock setting’s and tire pressure’s and made the car feel so much better with just minor adjustments.

I feel really good about the way I was driving by the end of the day. I still have a ton to learn but am looking foward to it. The car is AMAZING (yes I said it again, it’s THAT good) I have NEVER driven a car that feel’s as good as mine does now.

The car need’s a new transmission BADLY, it grind’s every gear and it just feel’s plain awful. It also need’s the steering sorted out ie; more angle and a new rack.

Maxxis Z1 Drift’s are the BEST tire I’ve EVER driven on. They are unreal, I ran them all around, 235/40/17 up front and 255/40/18 in the rear. The rear’s lasted for over 20 lap’s each and they have grip down till they were completely flat and worn. I’ll be buying these….forever, they are my first and only choice in a tire!

DMax coilover’s were working out really nicely, they were dialing in as we wanted them to and with some more testing I think they are going to be exactly what I need for this up and coming year @ Just Drift’s Top Drift Series.

I could write here for hours and hours, so much happened in such a small amount of time I am just going to leave it at what’s written above and leave you guy’s with some raw footage I quickly spliced together from what Jess filmed.

For not driving for 2 year’s I am thrilled with how the day turned out. I couldnt be more happy and am so glad to be back in the drivers seat. The car is honestly the best car I have ever driven and it’s not even fully dialed in yet. I can’t wait to drive her again!!!!

HUGE Thanks AGAIN to (in no particular order!):
Jess, Forsberg, Tony, Nick, Jack, James, Albert, Steve @ SR Motorcars, Ray @ West Covina Nissan, Dousan, AZNDoc (internet famous Jack), Dmax, City Tire, On Track Motorsports, Simple Line Autoworks.I love all of you guys! Thank you all SO much for your support I couldnt have done it without any of your help.

VIDEO: No driving for 2 years. 10psi on my turbo setup. These are some of the better run’s from what the wife had on our camera. Bill Wood has some of my best run’s which I cannot wait to see!

Dousan and Jack (internet famous) took care of swapping an SR bellhousing onto a spare KA transmission I had. Back up trans is ready to go! Thanks a bunch guys!

Jack took care of putting on my side mirrors and some other stuff that I honestly cant remember.

I just got in @ 1:15am I finshed:

New Spark plugs.
Wideband O2.
Made a spacer for my front fenders to bolt them down on the front side’s under the corner lights.
Springs/latch for my trunk.
Removed OEM trunk springs.
Cleaned/Vacummed out the inside of my car.
Installed the inner eyelet’s for my harnesses to hook onto.
Catch Can made from a Nos energy drink bottle.
20mm Rear spacers installed.
Centered steering wheel.

Dyno in the AM…errr looks like i’ll get about 4 hours of sleep tonight. I wont be able to sleep anyways I’m way to exicted!!

Here’s what’s been done lately:

Body work. Lot’s of it.

Courtesy of Forsberg: Big big thanks buddy!

New exhaust tip welded on (A-Spec Dual Blast Pipes) w/ new hangers to replace the megan racing muffler/hose clamps that were holding it up before. It sounds SO SO SO SO SO much more awesome too. I am super excited how it came out.
Front bumper bracket to hold the middle of the bumper to get rid of the sagging.
Rear bumper fitment
Mounted all my tires

Basic alignment done by Kevin @ LS Auto/CFR .

Monday the car goes to Dyno @ Drift Speed to set the boost controller up, check the timing, tiny shake down and see how much power the car makes. Jerrod @ Drift Speed set me up really last minute for Monday morning.

Wednesday…TEST DAY!!!!!

Pictures:

Started bondo work.

Going to bed before 2:30am is unbelivable.