Ghetto Fabulous

 

Here is why so many drift cars look so ghetto; you can give your car a performance upgrade for $6! If you have been following my posts on http://drift50.com you will see that I have been having some problems cooling my engine bay and I decided to try to what you see on a lot of professional drift cars including Geoffrey Chandler’s Drift Fox. It’s cheap but effective. I believe the screw on the hood hinge is either a 5/16” – 24 threads per inch x 3/4” or an 8mm – 1.0 x 25mm. I took the bolt into Home Depot and screwed it into their sizing thing and it screwed perfectly into the 8mm x 1.0 but when I tried to put it on it gave me hell but I forced it on. I know I’m retarded but I just wanted it to work. Just in case you are an idiot like me and know nothing about working on cars here are the steps I took to install the spacers.

1. Go to Home Depot or your local Auto Zone or Advanced Auto Parts and grab 2 hex bolts measuring 8mm – 1.0 x 30mm (the OEM ones are 25mm) ($0.53 * 2 = $1.06 + Tax)

2. Grab some washers use as the spacers. I got a 50 count of 5/16”. ($2.97 + Tax)

3. Open and prop the hood

4. One side at a time loosen the front bolt enough that you can lift the hood up enough to put the rear bolt in with the spacers but do not remove it

5. Remove the rear bolt

6. Put one washer on the hex bolt

7. Install the hex bolt measuring 8mm – 1.0 x 30mm with eight washers on the top side of the hood hinge. (I could have done more like ten)

8. Tighten the hell out of both bolts making sure that you line the hinge back up with the hood groove it was in otherwise you hood will be on crooked and the gaps will tell on you

9. Repeat on the other side

10. Make very sure that the hood latches perfectly by dropping it and then pulling it up from all angles because if not you will have a bad day when that sucker pops loose and breaks out your front window.

11. If it doesn’t latch properly re-adjust the hood hinge locations or possible consider taking some washers out of each if has been raised too high.

This should give you a ¾” gap at the rear of the hood. It looks really cool and it’s very functional. After I ran her hard down some of my back roads I gassed her up and I could feel the heat rolling out from underneath the hood. When going in a straight line the low pressure area created in that gap will cause a vortex to suck the hot air out. Obviously when traveling at an angle it allows the air to flow across the top of the engine and out the other side having the same effect but better. Here are the pictures I took of it.

Bad shot but you can see my work van really good.

  

Some more angles.

    

Here are some shots of the spacers.

The next generation of drifters will never remember a day when they discovered drifting like we did. How cool would it be to have a daddy that drifts? Lol.

I wish the domestic car companies had enough sense to make a reliable, cheap, light car that in 16-20 years will be the new drift star. Things are looking bleak for them now with this bullshit CAFE crap. I hope they hang in there. They really need to appeal to today’s youth like Scion does. Can you imagine the excitement if Ford premiered a car in the way that Hyundai showed their Genesis or offered and publicized all those options that Scion does. It’s time for a new pony car with the weight of an import, the power of a domestic, and the handling of an European car and the driving excitement of a front engine rear wheel drive package! The new Mustangs are just so damn big. They can’t sell Mustangs forever. I hope that this CAFE thing brings about a new, lighter, turbo, RWD car from Ford and they retire the very long run of the Mustang. That is how the Fox body came to be. All the manufacturers were going with smaller lighter cars after the fuel crisis of the late 70’s. Maybe we will get lucky and the next generation will have some hot little turbo hatch to get sideways in!

TOTAL SPENT: $3,820.31 + $6 = $3,826.31

TOTAL SPENT OVER COST OF VEHICLE ($2,600.00): $1,226.31

TOTAL WEIGHT: 2,772 POUNDS

TOTAL WEIGHT DIFFERENCE FROM STOCK (2,827 POUNDS): -55