Hey WMD readers, My name is Brody Goble and I am a Canadian driver on the road to obtaining a pro Formula Drift license. I live in Vancouver, Canada but do all of my racing in the USA. For 2012 we will be making the switch full time to drifting driving as part of the 2012
ASD Mob program in the
ASD |
Falken Tire |
R3 Motorsports |
Enkei Wheels Nissan s13 240sx. Unlike some drifters, I come from a grip background. I fell in love with drifting and originally began sliding cars/go-karts to learn better car control for traditional grip racing.
With a start in go-karts, I progressed through many different classes and ended up finishing my karting campaign in the highest level of kartng in North America, The Stars of Karting National Series. Our team was able to travel throughout the United States hitting some of the best tracks and competing against competitors from everywhere you can think of including England, Brazil, Australia and more. After karting we wanted to keep progressing and learning new disciplines in racing. I found myself in a super cool Formula BMW open wheel car after winning a scholarship test with BMW North America.
[caption id="attachment_3280" align="aligncenter" width="536" caption="These cars were a blast to drive, they have everything an F1 car has just on a smaller scale. Full digital steering wheels, sequential gearboxes and more."]
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While all this was going on, I bought my first Nissan s13 240sx. The stock KA was fun but I wanted more, just like most people with their KA's. In canada, we have access to a ton of Nissan Skylines from Japan. Unlike the States, you can import cars from Japan as long as they are at minimum 15 years old. In my area, the JDM market was booming and I was able to find myself an RB20 powerplant out of a skyline GTS-t for dirt cheap. We did some events just for fun and I found myself feeling very natural drifting the car in just our first event out. We showed up with a box stock RB20 with a huge top mount turbo hanging off it and a good tune, long story short we managed to place 3rd out of 18 drivers in my first drift event ever. After that, I was hooked.
[caption id="attachment_3294" align="aligncenter" width="800" caption="Then another RB20 car was built that evolved into something a little more serious."]
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Above is our 2012 FD car's first incarnation. This featured the RB20 with the big top mount turbo as well as custom fitted RB26DETT individual throttle bodies. That motor was a rocket but is no longer in one piece! There is only soo much factory internals can take...
[caption id="attachment_3281" align="aligncenter" width="800" caption="Our little miata has seen some better days. In Spec Miata "rubbing is racing" mainly because all of the cars are identically prepared, the best driver ends up on top."]
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The change to drifting didn't just come overnight, road racing was a huge part of my life and everyone that had surrounded me since my start in go-karts. After a year off to focus on University, I was able to put together a full campaign racing SCCA National Spec Miata. The team and myself caught on quickly and was able to pick up a few wins, track records and a bunch more podium finishes throughout the course of the season. My tuner Tracy Beier from
R3 Karting remained my tuner for the Spec Miata season. I can not stress how important it is to surround yourself with good people in whatever you do, this can be the most essential piece to the puzzle. I am very happy to say that Tracy will be onboard again as we move forward in drifting. We finished 2011 second in the Northwest Region SCCA points and qualified ourselves for the SCCA National Run-offs. Being my first season racing a sports car, we won the prestigious
CACC Rookie of the Year award to cap off a great season. 2012 is going to be huge and I will report back here with updates on how it all pans out. As I mentioned above, we are making the switch now to drifting full-time as we were fortunate enough to be selected for the much sought after
ASD Mob program. I have been building a new car in anitcipation for the season since last year. It is just being buttoned up now at R3 Motorsports in time for our first event in Portland Oregon on March 16-18. We will be running in the inaugural
Super DC event at the prestigious Portland International Raceway. I have a fair bit of road racing experience at PiR so I am stoked to drift the fast sweepers it has to offer. The other series we will be running in the Pacific Northwest is the widely known
Evergreen Drift series. For a complete schedule of where I'll be check out the schedule page on my personal website
here. Want to know what we are building? It isn't a v8 like most and something a little different (as far as engines go). This thing will sound badass!
[caption id="attachment_3283" align="aligncenter" width="800" caption="The silver is pretty killer, you won't miss it on the track with a ton of metal flake. Wait until you see it in the light.."]
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[caption id="attachment_3282" align="aligncenter" width="800" caption="Here's a photo right after the car came out of paint. I couldn't resist mocking up the fresh kouki tails.."]
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The engine is pretty special and not something you see everyday. For a full specs run down visit
here.
We have fitted RB26 individual throttle bodies (6 of them) for increased response and airflow. The original Ken Nomura ER34 RB25 D1GP Skyline actually ran this exact setup. If you can find the dyno sheets online, they gained over 40hp just changing to this intake! This was a big pain in the a**, we found there is a reason why very few people have actually accomplished this. The stud pattern of the RB25 and RB26 intake manifolds actually slightly overlap, I'll explain briefly how we got around this below.
These are the two adapter plates
Westcoast Hotrods and
R3 Motorsports collaborated to develop. They needed to be ran through the waterjet, tapped and bolted together with countersunk bolts. The RB26 and RB25 stud patterns unfortunately overlap so this had to be done with 2 separate plates with each piece bolting to the next.
The entire intake side was then opened up and port matched, including some knifing between each port :) Tracy Beier at R3 Motorsports is an artist, he used to build my karting motors so of course he has some experience with flow/port matching.
[caption id="attachment_3292" align="aligncenter" width="800" caption="Like most, the wheel of choice for the car is Enkei's RPF1. You can't beat how light the wheel is and how well it is made, especially for the price!"]
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You may have thought to yourself - where's the front end? Well, to keep things simple and easy to work on it's entirely quick release.
There are a ton more photos and some cool videos/media on my personal website. I'm very excited to get the season underway and shoot some killer footage on our
GoPro HERO2 cameras. Be sure to follow What Monsters Do for added updates throughout the season and my quest to make it to Pro Formula Drift! Visit my website -
HERE Follow me on Twitter -
HERE LIKE my Facebook Fan Page -
HERE Huge
Thank You to my partners who are along for the ride -
Autosport Dynamics |
Speedware Motorsports |
R3 Motorsports |
Enkei Wheels |
Falken Tire |
Mechanix Wear |
The Driveshaft Shop |
Heatshield Products |
GoPro Cameras |
Westcoast Hotrods |
Exedy USA |
Blake Media - Brody
