Yamaken’s Toyota Mark II Drift Car – Shakedown at Suzuka Twin

Kenji’s car has been built, now was the time for one of many test sessions to begin. First, the shakedown.

 

Since the Mark II has been just been built, we had to take it out to the track for the shakedown. The car also has an all new OS Giken Streetmasters clutch kit fitted, so we decided to head out to Suzuka Twin Circuit. This meant leaving late one night, after work for the 4-5 hour drive there.

We had the Mark II on a “loader” (car transporter) as the car has not been registered for the street.

We stayed overnight at a hotel nearby, so we could get to the track first thing in the morning, nice and fresh. We chose this track as a staff member from OS Giken wanted to be there for feedback on the clutch. Since OS Giken is situated way out west, this track is conveniently located in between Tomei and OS Giken.

One of our young engine builders, Kodama-san was in the region visiting relatives and decided to join us. Well he couldn’t resist not to drift. He likes this track too. To see more on Kodama’s S15, click here.

This is why this circuit is named “Twin”. Today, we were on the left side. Track D. The right side were used for a bike track day on this day.

For those of you whom haven’t been to Japan, yet. This is how the Japanese transport their super low slammed cars around.

First, Kenji needed to get a rough feel for the car, so out he went.

after a couple of laps, he’d come back in, get a few things changed and back out again.

Then it was back in for the real changes. Here are a couple of our guys in action. How would you like to have these guys working on your car in the pits?

Even Kenji was getting into it. Here he is cutting away a section from the side steps to allow clearance for those big wheels.

This is the tracks service mini truck. They’re going for that “natural rat” look. The number plate is cool!

After a few adjustments, Kenji was back out again, going harder to hit the higher rpm range.

Now it’s time to check on the tune.

Kenji would bring the car in, and our R&D cheif engineer, Tomita-san, would check the data logs from the Haltech ECU, and make adjustments to the tune and VVTi.

more and more testing..

it’s a tedious process, which took all day.

This is how we test our products, one of many various procedures and processes of our development stages. The Turbo cleared the testing and was later released. We also used another 2 cars for the testing of the Turbo kit last year both that was released.

This time, this car is one of the test cars that we are using for the development of the new Tomei Camshafts for the 1JZ engine. We had checked one of the profiles we were most interested in. So more testing to come.

Stay tuned to see the updates on the upcoming Tomei Poncams and Procams for the Toyota 1JZ engine.

 

The full version

PART 1

PART 2

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