📸 Jack Hsu
Category Archives: 350z
No coast X
Now how can you describe an event like this? A blast? Super Fun? Freaking awesome? None of those seem to grasp what this event was. Although I was incredibly tired from the 10 hour drive from Dallas to Albuquerque, we unloaded minimal items and I had to jump on track and see what it was all about. I followed Missy Waters (A No Coast Veteran) for the first few laps to get a feel for the layout, and then we were off!
Over the next couple hours we were drifting (with some breaks in between) and we were done for the day around 10:pm. We got to meet a lot of new people and reconnected with a few familiar faces. Our campsite at the track was in an awesome location with the Texas peeps. We called it our ‘shanty town’ because it was just a bunch of tents and all of our canopies. Some decorated with lights (that was the smartest thing to do as the track lights end up going out at a certain time).
Cruising into Friday night and things were pretty tame, people were setting up camp, Thaison (AE86) and Samantha made some of the best food all weekend, and not a lot of shenanigans happened Friday night. Photos above are of our groups set up (partially).
Saturday morning, as everyone was waking up, still being in my tent, I could hear the drift cars starting and rolling by. I crept out of my tent, said a few good mornings and started cooking some bacon on my little Coleman portable grill. (lifesaver if your ever camping. 10/10 would recommend for track days and camping, link below). https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/coleman%C2%AE-perfectflow%E2%84%A2-2-burner-propane-grill-stove#repChildCatid=25951
Dan Brockett held the drivers meeting that was at like noon and it was hot as balls out. It was the usual stuff, but on a bit more kicked back way of delivering the message of track etiquette.
Below I’ve put just all the weekends worth of drift pics of us. It’s hard to keep track of which day had what. Special Thanks to the photographers that make us look rad. Thanks to Christopher Ladd (@Yurei_Media on IG) and Eliza Kirberger (@mechanicalfeedback on IG)
Saturday night was something else. We stopped driving around 10:30ish, I think? I have been challenging people to drink offs as long as I’ve been doing car stuff. I can generally handle my liquor. But when I challenged Juan B (AE86) I didn’t know I would be such a pussy. Needless to say, I have no pictures from Saturday night, finishing driving so late, and making up for lost time catching up on drinking… I ended the evening sneaking away (I thought I was sly, I wasn’t) to my tent and the booze came back up, at 3:48am I get a text from Juan asking if I ‘quit’…the fact I didn’t get that until like noon the next day told him everything…smh.
Sunday morn/afternoon, I wake up and its basically my run group that’s about to go on track…definitely missed Sundays drivers meeting, I have to get my shit together. Two Advil, tons of water, and a little taste of food from Thiason and Samantha and I was back out on track…yes…still feeling the night before. Everything was under control and I was driving well, until another car had to be towed off track, and everyone on track had to stop for a few minutes. Longest few minutes of my life, I thought I was going to see vomit in my helmet and then made my way off track as well.
We did a Texas family photo on the track around sunset. And here are the photos from that;
Sunday night I think everybody pretty much took it easy, I was in my tent by like 9:pm to get some sleep for the 10 hour drive the following day back to Dallas.
Monday morning we had a quick breakfast with the gang and headed back!
I can’t thank Dan Brocket enough for holding this event. It was my first NoCoast, and it won’t be my last. It’s crazy that everyone pretty much policed each other, since he only has a few volunteers to put on the event. Good job everyone for not being idots… Well most of you.
-Melissa
Social Distancing
During Covid Quarantine it was super important to keep busy. Trying to take on some work at the house to keep myself creative, obtained a puppy, went to ‘the drift spot’ in Dallas, and did a little road trip.
Meet Shiro (She-row). She is a Great Pyrenees who’s named after the ‘Shiro edition’ 300zx (Z31 chassis). Shiro also means ‘white’ which is fitting!
My friends Craig and Kimberly have a Great Pyrenees who ran away for a couple days and got knocked up by another Great Pyrenees and had 9 puppies. (Craig restores older Z cars under the name Simtec Motorsports; IG @simtecmotorsports). When I brought Shiro home that day, my neighbor saw her and they went to go pick up Shiros sister… now the sisters get to grow up together!
The first order of work at the house was to complete brakes, hard wiring in a dash cam and radar detector on our friend Zahids GTR.
While we had it, Zahid started thinking about making the car his, and doing some customizing to it to make it pop. We started with new Nismo orange lugs and powder coating the wheels gold.
This looked great, but we needed something that really makes it stand out. I prefer to draw out ideas than build them on the computer… (I know the computer way is better and more accurate, but I really enjoy using my hands to draw it out!) So to the drawing board I went! I drew out three different ideas for graphics and texted Zahid to see what direction he wanted to go. (pictured below is the office, taking a break from the vinyl and looking at new couches)
The final design reflected the Fast and Furious GTR, but with a little twist. Matte black vinyl over a sliver of gold to match the wheels. It came out really nice!
Some fun still had to be had out of the house and in my Z, so we went to the drift spot and showed Hayley (Silver GTR pictured below IG @stig_gtr) what that spot was all about! It was a freaking blast, it always is.
The 370Z also got a make over during this ‘down’ time. We had been sitting on a full new style nismo kit for it, a Seibon carbon fiber hood, sweet wing, and some little side skirt inserts.
Car cruises still existed during this time, and in my opinion that was the best part of social distancing! Thanks to Maly and George for getting a few sweet shots out there! (George IG @_alphalyfe)
Ending ‘Quarantine’ we took the dogs to San diego, and Tucson, visited family and made a planter for some herbs! Very productive.
Vroom Vroom Vroom
New video is up! We went out for a Sunday drive and decided to make a little video.
We had Kristy and Rigo set up on either sides of the road, I had earbuds in with our spotters on the phone to let me know if a car was coming. As you can see, its country.
There was an older guy that came up in his truck that was a little agitated we were there, I explained what we were up to and he left us alone. There was also a couple people on golf karts that came up that I introduced myself with and let them know what we were doing and they were very nice about it… none of the locals wanted to see any street racing around their properties. Since we wern’t racing and I explained we were trying to be as safe as possible about it they all left us to our devices.
Written by Melissa Miller
Just a ‘Smoke’ Break
Everyone is entitled to a 10 minute break/Smoke break. My buddy Josh at work and I decided to take the term ‘Smoke Break’ into another form…a bit healthier.
Both of us are Supercharged now, we initially came out to take photos of our cars, but then I sweet talked him into letting me do some fancy driving around his car…took more coaxing than you would think!
Thanks Josh!
-Melissa Miller
Video taken by Billy Buzbee
Man in video running and owner of supercharged 370Z; Josh Gains
Ten Week OverHaul
Saying we were going to change the complete paint job/livery AND install a GTM Supercharger and all that goes with it in less than 10 weeks was going to be extremely challenging. I wanted it to be ready to drift at the DriftKitchen event in Memphis. We all set goals, some are easier than others to obtain, I got laughed at when I set this one. All in all, we did it. We completed everything but the final color sand and buff on the car. I still cant Thank Chris Waters, Tom Sippel, Kristy Sippel, Daulton Cockerell, Russ Rana, Country-ass Jon, and Z1 Motorsports enough for getting this done!
The Drift Kitchen Event was really fun, smaller track, more technical than fast, and the girls were all super supportive of everyone else. There was even a little gift bag and snail mailed thank you for coming!
Thanks girls for getting this event together and making my ‘break in’ event so much fun!
Every time we go to Memphis we have to hang with our Memphis Z club friends. Really great group of people I’d like to think of as an extended family. Thank You Burch and Erin for letting us stay with you guys! Your house/Garage set up is inspiring!
Photos and Video taken by Melissa Miller and Chris Waters.
Drone footage in the beginning of video by Tom Sippel
Lone Star Bash 2018
Lone Star Bash 2018 Video;
Team Topek / R.A.C.E Road Race with JDMSport / Firm400
So this was something I thought would never happen… today at Team Topek Racing/R.A.CE road race event, Steve Millen blew past me in his infamous 300zx race car-while I was full throttle on the straight at Auto Club Speedway… startled the crap out of me, my eyes had a hard time looking at where I was going on track when I had that in front of me.
ZDAYZ 2015; Journey
This year ZDAYZ for us started in San Diego, stopped in Tucson AZ for Mothers Day to visit my mom, went off-roading in her new jeep, then off to Dallas.
West Texas is not for pussies. Going eastbound there was a series of potholes and raised ground… avoiding one patch of shitty road led us directly into another patch of even shittier road. We got a bit of air in the Z and then lost all tire pressure in the left rear tire. The Drag Wheel was perfect, not even a bend, just a tear in the sidewall.
In Fort Worth we stayed with a long time friend of mine John Gamble and his girlfriend, caught up on his recent move and crashed at his house. From there, the next morning we visited my Z32 that Mitch from EP Racing has rebuilt and was at Wireworks Performance for the tune, took some pictures to let people know the car still exists and it is still mine 😉 and headed out to Dallas where we met up with Billy, Vince and the guys ant Courtesy Nissan, grabbed lunch, and headed out to Birmingham, AL to stay with Todd and Nicole Weld.
Once in Birmingham Nicole and I stood in the grass for .5 minutes while we watched Chris Waters wash my Z when I got so many mosquito bites that my ankles formed kankles—tmi? nahhhh.
Leaving Birmingham with Chris, Todd, Nicole, and Amanda, our next stop… ZDAYZ.
ZDAYZ this year was a little bit mellower than years past, maybe i’m getting older, maybe everyone else is getting a little older, maybe a combination. The Z1 Deck party was still awesome as usual… got a little rowdy at midnight when a couple cars turned on in the parking lot and started rev’ing and shooting flames-thats how I knew I wasn’t in CA anymore…Freedom…’Murica… yah.
Chris Forsberg showed up with his rig of awesome. He brought his 240Z, NOS 370Z FD car, and the really mean M45 and took out the 370Z out for a little drifting in Fontana Village streets.
Photos by @Chris_Waters^^
Video of Forsberg Below by Killboy.com
SpecDrift @ Horse Thief Mile
At the start of this trip to Willow Springs I had a series of unfortunate events, which started turning around. Cruising up from San Diego to Lancaster I’m cruising up the 2-lane highway and hit a tire-which surprisingly keeps my front lip in one piece, but takes the paint off of it 😦 We make it to the hotel the day before the event, and everything was fine, wake up the next morning and I’ve got a flat tire… which means drift spares are going on…less tires to cruise on during the event! We start driving to Willow Springs from the hotel in Lancaster and there was a cop that was going the opposite way as me, noticed i was speeding a little bit (flat tire made me late for the event so I had to hurry!) and turned around to start following me on the freeway…. I managed to downshift and slow the car down enough so by the time he actually did get behind me and follow me for a few miles he realized I wasn’t going to do anything wrong and got back on the median and busted a U-turn…phewww!
Overall this event once we got there was a blast. Much more structured than the usual drift events I’d been in attendance to. I only had the tires at this point that I had rolled in on for the whole day of drift and to get me the 4+hour drive back to San Diego. Horse Thief is a much faster track than just your basic parking lot event or skid pad, so conserving tires was hard… Some straits I wouldn’t manji and I would just cruise, and other times I would go all out. At the end of the day, my last run I ended up hearing “THUD THUD THUD THUD” on the second to last corner…oops… i babied myself off track, took a razor blade I had in the car for times like these and cut off the excess tire tread, packed up the car, and went home. I basically closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and hoped that everything would be OK and I would make it home safe.
And I did… but it was sketchy.
Photo Cred. @Chris_Waters
MelissaDrifts.com 